The numbers are dismal: Less than 1 percent of all high schoolers study Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Japanese, Korean, Russian or Urdu — languages the U.S. government is pushing American students to learn.

Worse, perhaps, only 24 percent of American public elementary schools teach foreign languages. And of those, only a fraction teach tongues other than Spanish and French. Even at the high school level, only 44 percent of American students study a foreign language. Sixty-nine percent of those students are enrolled in Spanish and 18 percent in French.

Not a single public school in the Central Susquehanna Valley offers a comprehensive foreign language program at the elementary school level; not one school here teaches even one of the languages on the government’s “critical” list.

Katherine Faull, chair of the foreign languages program at Bucknell University, Lewisburg, said she thinks the lack of critical languages at the local level speaks to America’s reluctance to embrace multilingualism as a whole.

“There is an idea in this country that languages are something extra, that they’re not needed,” she said. “I think it comes from the historical idea of assimilation. America is a country of immigrants, and the idea is to have immigrants assimilate to American identity by, first, trying to forget their native languages as quickly as possible.

“We need a change of attitude about foreign languages in America.”

Recognizing this imminent need, the Bush administration in 2006 launched the National Security Language Initiative. Self-proclaimed a “bold attempt by the president to secure America’s standing in the world as well as our ability to compete in the world of ideas ... and commerce,” the government in 2007 put $114 million where its mouth was in teaching grants for students to learn the critical languages.

Meanwhile, the European Union was in the midst of a push for students to become trilingual. In China, more than 200 million children are studying English. These countries, Faull said, embrace science by teaching languages to elementary school-age children — seeding young minds while they’re still ripe for learning.

“When you get older, there’s a brick wall you run into when learning a language,” she said. “We start teaching them after they’ve already lost those mechanisms in their brains. I’m learning Arabic now. It’s incredibly difficult for me, and I’m the chair of a languages department.

“Everybody knows that after the age of 12, those synapses that enable you to learn a language are turned off.”

It’s difficult to blame local school districts for a lack of foreign languages. Some area districts, like Danville, Lewisburg and Selinsgrove, are pondering whether to include critical languages in their curriculums. But so far, there has been no pressure at the state or federal level.

“First and foremost, we work with federal and state curriculum guidelines, and there’s nothing in the state that would require us to teach ‘x,’ ‘y’ and ‘z’ languages,” said Mark DiRocco, Lewisburg superintendent of schools.

And there are other difficulties involved in adding new languages.

Barry Tomasetti, superintendent of the Mifflinburg Area School District, said budgetary concerns weigh heavily in the decision to add any new department.

“With salary and benefits, you’re looking at close to $60,000 for one teacher,” he said.

There are also enrollment concerns, Tomasetti said. Two years ago, Mifflinburg offered German. But enrollment was low, the German teacher retired, and the district hasn’t felt a pull to resurrect the program.

Frederick Johnson, superintendent of the Selinsgrove Area School District, said his staff is considering a partnership that would offer its students Japanese. But Johnson pointed out there’s no magic button for adding a new language.

“Before we’d add one, we’d have to eliminate one,” he said. “(Salaries) have to come from some place, you can’t just keep raising taxes.

“This is a lot more complex than just saying you want to add a course.”



Out of work

Despite a resume filled with successes, experience and education, local Russian teacher Dani Sanders has been unable to find a job for three years.

The Selinsgrove resident spent her time off authoring and illustrating “Russian For Skyla,” a cheery and well-written children’s ode to language learning.

Since she moved with her husband to Central Pennsylvania, doors have been closing on her left and right, Sanders says. A native of Bulgaria, she took her masters in Russian language and literature from Sofia University in Bulgaria before teaching Russian at high schools and colleges in New York and California. She’s fluent in five languages, has taught for decades, but Sanders simply cannot find work at any area public schools.

“They tell me that people need English and math, but nobody is open to Russian,” she said.

Sanders knows firsthand how students react to learning a new language.

She knows it means they catch onto the culture of a new place, helping them understand the world and the people who live in it just a bit better. She also knows learning a new language instills children with mental dexterity.

“When you learn a new language, you begin to understand the culture — it opens your eyes,” she said.

Bucknell University foreign languages Chair Faull doesn’t think the country’s seeming reluctance to integrate critical languages ultimately boils down to anything too complex.

“I think it’s a question of priorities,” she said. “I am very, very disappointed at the lack of opportunities students are given.”

Sanders read aloud from a children’s book, her tongue twisting through pages of child-friendly rhymes before landing on the word waiting there all along — the word she wants her young readers to come away remembering.

“Preevyeht!” she pronounced. It was the Russian word for hello.

“Baby steps,” Sanders explained. One day it’s “preevyeht,” hello, the next children are speaking in full sentences, ordering borscht, reading Chekov, dreaming in Russian.

“Learning a new language,” Sanders said, “is like opening a door to another world.”

n E-mail comments to dgessel@dailyitem.com.