English Language Learners (EL students) in the United States are often considered “behind” in most of the core classes in the United States educational system simply because they lack the English language skills to express themselves coherently in language arts classrooms or the ability to understand teacher instruction in math.  These students often struggle to understand textbooks written primarily in English.  I am writing today to argue that these are exactly the type of students who are “ahead” in the new global world. 

There are still those modernists who are suggesting that America has to find ways to “get ahead” in education and “compete” with the rest of the world in educational standing.  This view in, in my estimation, wrong headed and ignorant of the future in which our students will be working.  When considering history, for instance, there may have been a day long ago when an English historian could gain a place in the world simply because he was in the west while a South American historian would have a harder time making “rank” in the world of global ideas, but this is not the case today.  In today’s wireless world, with the help of technology and grass roots support, this same historian can disseminate his ideas cheaper and to more people.  But the South American may be have the advantage: he has learned English as a second language.  Now his work can be published in two different areas will relative ease. 

You see, it is not the English language learner who is behind.  They already have begun study on language number two.  It is us Americans who, unlike almost every other industrialized nation, refuse to learn more than one language in our quest for greatness.  We believe that we can unilaterally control the market with our “American ingenuity” and our love for democracy.  We have learned from Somalia, Vietnam, and presently Iraq (depending on how you see it) that democracy doesn’t sell and American ingenuity doesn’t count for much when Chinese workers will do it for half the price.

What, then, is the answer?  All students who are able should be required to participate in a foreign exchange program at the high school level in a developing country with new ties in the global economic market.  We are past the age of spreading American democracy to the rest of the world.  While we were sleeping, the rest of the world caught up with America.  They have the same technology as us, and many of them know English and all about America.  The problem? Most of us don’t know about them. 

History teachers can only do so much for promoting cultural understanding.  The reality is that we need to begin implementing foreign language requirements at the elementary level and students must have at least four years of foreign language study by the time they hit junior high.  One plan would then be for students to begin studying that language in high intensity at the junior high level by taking two courses of study: a history of the country in which they are learning the language and a literature course on the country they are studying (both of which should be taught primarily in the language of that country).  At the high school level, students should spend one semester in that country in a rigorous curriculum of math, science, English, and history (plus electives).  This will give our students the real chance they need to succeed in this global world. 

It would, at the least, give skype a new target audience.

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