The Critical Language Needs Of The United States

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Significantly, several major higher education associations Womens Shoes have enthusiastically expressed their support for the NSLI, viewing the legislation as an opportunity with the federal funding attached to it for schools to redesign undergraduate and graduate education to prepare students to respond to the political, economic, scientific, and social challenges facing the world.

For example, the Association of American Universities (AAU) and the American Council on Education's Coalition for International Education (CIE) both applaud the government's efforts to expand foreign language and study abroad programs, even as they explain that, for the desired ends to be reached, the federal government must increase its basic funding of science, mathematics, and foreign language ...
... research by 8 to 10 percent annually for the next seven years.

The CIE in particular recommends that, rather than appropriate NSLI funds to create new programs, Congress should redirect this money to bolster programs that have already been established through both Title VI of the Higher Education Act, which specifically targets international education programs, and the Fulbright-Hays legislation, Wholesale Shoes which provides material support for study abroad programs.

The National Research Council, meanwhile, notes the necessity of the NSLI and declares that universities must be ready partners willing to refine and direct their programs toward mutual goals" (Committee 9). At the same time, however, the Council calls on the federal government to initiate more dialogue with higher education institutions to identify these mutual goals and to determine the conditions that are needed to meet them.

As these examples suggest, major higher education associations support the federal investment in university research and educational programs, seeing the mission of universities and colleges in part to be using their research and teaching skills in the public interest. At the same time, these associations demand that the government provide the material resources needed to address the nation's challenges in a substantive, sustained way.

Along with this federal money and universities' commitment to serving the public interest come obligations for many students to use their language skills in service of the nation's military and intelligence needs. For example, David L. Boren Scholarships and Fellowships, which are part of the National Security Education Program, fund undergraduate and graduate students to travel to countries that are critical to U.S.national security interests and to study the languages written and spoken there through practical, academic, and research experiences.

In exchange, award recipients must commit to at least one year of U.S. government service after completing their program of study. Certainly, one thing that a national language policy should do is address the government's language needs, and not all programs under the national language policy would be tied to government service.

Nevertheless, a national language policy should create material conditions that enable motivated students to learn any language that helps them achieve their own personal, professional, and civic goals, not just those goals stipulated by government agencies. English scholars committed to promoting multilingualism have a stake in this national language policy debate because of the potential for government funding to alter the infrastructure and influence the responsibilities of U.S. language arts education.

Engaging this debate entails proposing alternative definitions of the nation's "foreign" languages and its critical language needs that account for the linguistic diversity of the U.S. populace, the social needs and resources located within the nation's linguistic minority communities, and the ways in which non English languages reinvigorate democratic participation in the United States.

Advancing these types of definitional arguments can be an important step in English scholars' efforts to promote multilingual language arts education as a means for students to acquire the linguistic and rhetorical skills that enable them to participate in public and professional life in any way that they find meaningful, whether that involves serving local communities' medical needs, working in national security, exploring one's familial or communal histories, or contributing to public policy debates about the critical language needs of the United States.