The Education of a Would-Be Obamacon
It probably hasn’t escaped any regular readers of this blog that I’ve been flirting on and off with the question of whether I am an “Obamacon” – someone who generally considers himself conservative but nonetheless had lent his support to liberal Democrat Barack Obama in his quest for the Presidency. See, for example, here, where I don’t fret about Obama’s Wright “problem;” here, where I wonder whether Obama might “advance the argument” and lead to a better liberalism and, subsequently, a better conservatism; here, where I basically minimize the importance of the surge’s success in evaluating the two Presidential candidates; here, where I try to convince myself that an Obama judiciary won’t be terrible; and here where I compare Barack Obama to Kermit the Frog (and I can think of no higher possible praise). I don’t want to take this too far – I don’t think I’ve written anything especially gushing about Obama, nor have I written anything especially scathing about McCain. But I don’t think I’m revealing anything that wasn’t already obvious by saying that I find the Obama candidacy interesting, both because of his particular characteristics and because of the particular characteristics of this moment in history.
But his recent comments on how “your children need to learn Spanish” are just so monumentally wrong that I feel like I’ve taken a much-needed cold shower.
How wrong? Let me count the ways:
- We do not want a formally bi-lingual America. We don’t! I can think of only one clearly successful multi-lingual polity – Switzerland – and it’s an exceptional society in almost every way. Bi-lingualism is an inescapable historical fact in Canada and Belgium, and as such it is appropriately a political fact as well, but any argument that it has been beneficial would be very strained. And there are plenty of countries with distinct linguistic minorities – Spain, Israel, China – and others with no real linguistic majority – India, South Africa – but in neither case would anyone say that these are optimal situations. The optimal situation from almost every perspective is to have a national language that everyone acknowledges and speaks. And this is what huge majorities of Americans – including most recent immigrants – think as well!
- English-speaking peoples don’t learn a second language. It’s a weird but true fact. I know virtually no Anglo Canadians who are truly fluent in French, and they live in a formally bi-lingual society. Every French Canadian I know can communicate in English. I know literally no native Britishers of British stock who are fluent in any other language but English. And Americans and Australians born of native parents are alike notoriously ignorant of foreign tongues. By contrast, my grandfather, who never went to high school, spoke and read passable (though certainly not literary) Polish, Yiddish, German and Russian along with English. That’s not only five languages, it’s three alphabets! And it’s not like he had a gift for languages – he spoke all five of these languages poorly. But he needed to speak them to survive at different points in his life, and so he did. And English-speaking peoples just don’t need to learn other languages to survive. And so they don’t. We could spend a huge amount of money trying to make America’s students multi-lingual, and we would get relatively little return.
- Spanish is good for basically two things. First, communicating with immigrant neighbors, employees or clients. Unless we are aiming to create a permanently bi-lingual America – and we shouldn’t be – there is no reason for our strapped primary schools to be paying for this; you can get a perfectly good working knowledge of everyday Spanish without studying it in school. Moreover, unless you actually use a language actively, you lose it. I studied Hebrew in grade school, French in high school, and Spanish in college. I can still barely comprehend Spanish spoken slowly; my French is nonexistent; and my Hebrew is kept up basically by use in synagogue, while my conversational Hebrew has deteriorated badly. And while many jobs in Europe really will require multi-lingual proficiency, that’s just not true in America, nor will it ever be. Second, learning any second language is good for expanding one’s cultural and intellectual horizons, gaining perspective on how one’s own primary language shapes one’s thoughts, and so forth. But this is, relatively speaking, a luxury good. For your average student, it’s much more important that they understand the concept of compound interest than that they learn Spanish. And for your elite student, why is Spanish to be preferred over French, Arabic or Chinese? Our cognitive elite needs to understand a whole lot more about the world than they do, and learning foreign languages will help. But that’s got basically nothing to do with the effort to “preserve” our supposed “resource” of native Spanish-speakers.
- Whatever one might think of it in theory, in practice, bi-lingual education is a massive boondoggle that hurts immigrant children. It hasn’t been eliminated because lots of interest-groups have an interest in maintaining it (e.g., the teachers’ unions, who get jobs for teachers who would not otherwise be qualified; local Hispanic politicians and pressure groups, who can posture in defense of their culture; and Spanish-language television, who can be assured of a continued captive audience), while those who are opposed are, mainly, poor parents, both native and immigrant, who frequently don’t (or can’t) vote. Anyone who is serious about improving American education should be opposed to bi-lingual education; we can debate different strategies for immersion, where we should place our funding priorities relative to other programs, as well as how big a Federal role there should be in this question in the first place, but bi-lingual ed as such should be dead. Now, one of the main domestic-policy hopes of the Obamacon is that Obama could be Nixon to the NEA’s China. (Or, perhaps better, that Obama could be Corey Booker on a national scale.) Why? Because he isn’t in hock to the teachers’ unions from the primary, because he’s made the right reformist noises here and there (supporting charter schools, for example), and because he’s an African-American Democrat (and so would have exceptional credibility in approaching the issue). The fact that, rather than take the opportunity to signal that he intends to do something about this boondoggle, he instead parrots the most disingenuous pro-bilingualist line (the Colorado anti-bi-lingual-ed referendum was killed in part by ads claiming that it would end dual-immersion programs that were really only relevant to elite students) is extremely depressing.
- Finally, who is Obama talking to here? Far be it from me to try to teach the greatest political phenomenon of the season how to suck eggs, but who is the audience for this message that “you” need to make sure your children learn Spanish? Who is he lecturing here? I agree with him to this extent: when I go to Brussels on business, and everyone I meet with is at least tri-lingual (Flemish, French and English), and frequently quadra-lingual (add German to the mix), and sometimes penta-lingual, I’m embarrassed. I’d like to be able to use my high school French to follow some of the water-cooler or cocktail-party conversation that swirls around me (though I still wouldn’t be able to spy; if they really don’t want me to understand, they could always switch to Flemish). But what does this have to do with being President of the United States? Why is this wish even remotely on the list? If I thought this was some indication that Obama thought tougher education of the American elite needed to be a higher Federal priority, that would be an interesting development. But it isn’t. It’s just intellectual luftmenschtichkeit.
No, this is probably not the most important thing for me to glom onto. And yes, Obama could probably have made the same point in a way that didn’t rub me the wrong way. But he didn’t, and it did, and here we are. I was bound to glom onto something sooner or later, and this turned out to be it.
When you talk about bi-lingual education you should be clear about what flavor you are talking about. There are many different ways to educate non-english speakers in american public schools. I also wonder if you are really sure that “bilingual” education is a boon-doggle. I am not sure that it is. I would welcome a post on this issue. But because “english only” is a dog whistle slogan for a certain clique of the far-right and becasue you don’t really explain what is wrong with bilingual education, I can’t tell where you are really coming from. I doubt that you are coming from the far-right English only crowd, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you had some good information on the subject, but who really knows.
And I agree that in schools with large populations of struggling kids, we don’t have time or money to waste on learing a foreign language. But in many, easily a majority of our schools, learning spanish is perfectly legitimate and valuable use of resources. We spend plenty of time teaching advanced mathematics that the vast majority of graduates never use again. Knowing some spanish might actually be more useful. It is certainly useful as an intellectual exercise (as is learning math).
You are also talking about two differnt things here. The education of non-english speakers in the public schools, and native-english speakers learning english. Are they both bad? You’re argument is kind of confused in my opinion, which is why I’m responding.
And finally, as you state: “I was bound to glom onto something sooner or later, and this turned out to be it.” That suggests to me that you have been looking for reasons to reject Obama. That’s reasonable, because it makes sense to think about politics in the long term and and that means supporting a party or ideology over the long term and not just picking whichever candidate seems best in any particular election. But I actually think an Obama presidncy would be the kick in butt that republicans and conservatives need. His election would (hopefully) put an end to the culture war strategy that has really been harmful to conservatives. The culture war party is really a third party that the rational conservatives allied with. But having to give lip service to culture war ideals put rational conservaitves into an irrational box. For which they are now paying the price.
So I think you can be a conservative and vote for Obama with the long term success of (a particular kind) of conservatism in mind.
— cw · Jul 14, 03:59 PM · #
Precisely right. After straining so hard so many times to make excuses for Obama’s silliest positions (as you helpfully point out yourself), you’re calling this one correctly. The most charitable interpretation of Obama’s statement is that it is just another example of his “arugula elitism”: “Even though I don’t speak a second language myself, I’m just so embarrassed by crude monolingual Americans; we should be more like the superior Europeans whom I admire.”
The funny thing about Obama’s taking this position is that the heyday of the militant bilingual education movement is long past. Twenty years ago, the bilingual education movement was calling for extending bilingual education for Spanish-speaking children from three years to six years, to nine years, through high school, and then through college. Today, all but the oldest and most old-fashioned advocates of bilingual education speak of it as just a temporary measure, claiming that its only aim is to help children learn English more easily. Few of its advocates demand any longer that the host society make it its duty to learn the languages of immigrants, rather they acknowledge that it is a requirement on immigrants to learn the language of their host society.
— Gary Imhoff · Jul 14, 04:14 PM · #
Well, I never really take Presidential education initiatives seriously, considering that educational progress starts and always will start at the home. So his pandering for a more bilingual electorate is fairly irrelevant, because as you point out, no one gives a crap.
I think his comments were a sophisticated way of attacking perceived American xenophobia. Being the PC liberal that he is, he probably views calls for a universally English language in this country to be a backhanded method of applying Anglo-Saxon cultural traditions to non-Anglo Saxons. He thinks this marginalizes minoritiies.
He is of course wrong. Many of our anscestors came to this country not know one word of English. My mother is an English and an ESL teacher, and her mother was a first generation Italian American immigrant, whose mother (my great grandmother) couldn’t speak a word of English. I’m sure I’m not the only one who shares this history.
The educational left goes wrong in this country when they try to impart the notion that multilinguality is a skill, and a useful one at that. As you mentioned, many people learn to speak multiple languages not through educational systems, but through daily interaction with other languages. I could probably learn more Spanish by living in Mexico for 6 months than I learned in 5 years of high school education. Therefore, multilinguality is not so much a skill as it is a learned social tool. Which is why the left loves it and people like me don’t see it’s value.
I’d prefer multilinguality education reform in the form of Java and C++ vs. Spanish and French from our school systems any time, though.
— mattc · Jul 14, 05:08 PM · #
I was bound to glom onto something sooner or later, and this turned out to be it.
Previous comments have focused on the bi-lingual education issue, but I am reading your post more as a statement of your ambivalance about how to vote in a situation where you personally admire a candidate who represents an ideology that you do not accept. Allow me to offer this:
Any President is a figurehead to a certain extent. This gets overlooked due to our recent history. The decision to go to war is one of the major exceptions where a President is the final decider. In most other contexts the team he or she brings in to run the executive branch will turn out to be more important than a President’s individual policy preferences.
I think the importance of his cadre is even greater in Obama’s case, since:
1. Obama is a relative newcomer to politics generally, a complete newcomer to national/international politics. He will be forced to draw upon the institutional Democratic party for appointments where McCain will have his own connections in many areas.
2. Obama has a history of questionable associations and influences, which mitigates against the usual comforting thought that “at least the guy will put people (operationally) in charge who are saner than he is.”
— aldo · Jul 14, 06:42 PM · #
I think that you’re radically overstating the intent of Obama’s speech here: it was hardly a policy proposal, and barely even a statement of position. You seem to think that he’s advocating some radical bilingualist agenda, when I hear him correctly pointing out that “English-only” is a meaningless symbolic issue. In particular response to your points:
- Obama wasn’t calling for a formally bilingual country. I think you know this. Furthermore, I think you radically overestimate the disadvantages of such a polity. Why is India’s lingistic plurality a problem?
- This is hardly admirable, but I do think that we have to take it as a given.
- Here is where I don’t understand you. Even if Obama had actually called for extensive Spanish education, what would be the problem? As other commenters have said, the utility of knowing a second language compares favorably to the utility of knowing, say, trigonometry.
- Obama said “They’re going to learn English”. And they are—second-generation immigrants usually have better competence in English than in their parents’ language, and third-generation students barely speak their ancestral language at all. I don’t know if bilingual education makes a non-trivial difference in this statement. I also find it disingenuous for you to say “we can debate different strategies for immersion”, then insist that “bi-lingual ed as such should be dead”. Is bilingual ed not one such strategy for immersion?
— JS Bangs · Jul 14, 07:33 PM · #
Can you post a quote from Obama’s speech where he argues for a bilingual America, or argues that Spanish is the only important language? In the speech I heard, he merely argued that learning a foreign language is important, and that militant “English Only” slogans serve no purpose except to rile up the anti-immigrant base— “they’ll learn English,” as Obama says.
— Pat · Jul 15, 12:49 PM · #
While the Obama campaign has been an event on so many levels, this is just another instance where his disconnection with average folks shows. As a teacher, I can tell you that we have students who are given PreK through 12th grade education and support for ESL/ELL and still do not have grasp of English. Why should they? There are TV stations, radio stations, newspapers, magazines and countless other chances to avoid English on a daily basis. But the irony is that for all the pride of La Raza with their forcing of Spanish on the American scene, in reality this sets up situations where students are limited in their job and educational opportunities. There’s another puzzle regarding this that I would love to see someone address: if we are mandated to print every government document in any of several languages, and those aren’t used, doesn’t that violate the concept of a paperless “green” society?
— Ellen K · Jul 16, 10:00 PM · #