Article: A second language; Foreign language classes are scarce in American schools

President George W. Bush's putative observation that "the problem with the French is they don't have a word for entrepreneur" aptly summarizes the state of foreign language proficiency in the United States today. The problem with Americans, others might say, is that we reside in the largest English-speaking nation on earth, where the world's undisputed international language confers a privileged remoteness from the linguistic heterogeneity of, say, India or Peru. And despite all the sturm und drang since Sept. 11 about the vital national security interest in foreign language education, there is no real evidence that either the federal or state government is making a greater commitment to ...

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