There has been some interesting dialogue recently concerning the teaching of French in New York City elementary and middle schools. This NY Times article talks about how French has rapidly risen in the ranks of the newly formed dual-language curriculum schools across New York City, following the dominating Spanish and Chinese, and accompanied by still more world languages. John McWhorter in his response article is surprised by the positive tone of the NY Times article, and strongly supports the claim that French should be cut completely from US foreign language curriculum. His response generated a lot of interesting debate on reddit, with proponents both for and against McWhorter’s arguments, coming to greatly expand on the relatively short list of reasons he gave for the dismissal of French. My favorite commentator is Ifkl, who I thought gave the broadest explanations for why McWhorter’s claims are narrow-minded, though not lacking valid reasons.
I think the main argument is whether or not French is practical for the average American. The simple answer is probably no, considering how easy it is for the majority of Americans to pass their entire lives, personal and professional, totally in English, particularly because of its recent status as the most common lingua franca in the world. However, if a majority of Americans do not need French, they also don’t need any other language for that matter, so then the question becomes why we’re teaching foreign languages to children in school at all. In addition, most languages in American schools aren’t taught to an extent that can applied in an actual practice of the language outside of the classroom, so they simply aren’t used despite any potential they may have to be employed.
In a general point of view, it can be very beneficial to spend time learning a language, regardless of how much it’s used after confronting it for a few years in school. Learning a foreign language usually broadens a person’s mind to a more global perspective, as they realize more acutely and personally that there are other cultures and ideas in the world. It also gives the learner a better view towards their maternal language and how it works; and for the case of English and French, this is particularly relevant given the enormous linguistic ties because of the languages’ intertwined histories. The initial learning of a foreign language, no matter which one, can later help in the acquisition of other languages even if the first was not mastered, because the idea of “how to learn a language” has already been instilled and tested by the student; if you understand the work it takes and different approaches to learning French in school, you may not use the French, but you may use the techniques to later learn Russian or Chinese, etc.
In a more narrowed perspective, I don’t believe that French can be considered null and void for American children. For one thing, geography does play a role, and while there are statistically more Spanish than French speakers in New York City, the city is still close to the French-speaking regions in Canada, and New York City itself houses a healthy French community. Speaking more globally, French is a primary language in four European countries, and it is a lingua franca in many countries across Europe, Africa, and even in Central and South America. So while not every student will have the opportunity to travel to said countries in their lifetime, the chances that they will come in contact with the language is still great enough for them to have even a meager understanding of French. And as many commentators asserted, French is still highly prevalent in literature and therefore history, and cannot be ignored. Speaking again to the relevance of French for English, I have recently come to understand more of how English is structured and why certain phrases exist, because they came from French or were influenced by French at some point in history; while this may not be helpful in a generalist survival approach in the US, it certainly is interesting to me personally, which is as valid a reason as any to learn a language.
Also, even if a student only spends time learning one language in school, it doesn’t mean that they’re not capable of switching to another language when they’re out of school. McWhorter believes that languages like Chinese should be taught from an early age because they’re harder to master and need more years of schooling, but many Indo-European-derived language native speakers have no difficulty learning Chinese or other languages with different alphabets and structures when they are adults, as the commentator Ifkl asserts, and as I’ve seen in following the internet famous Irish polyglot Benny. Every language requires dedication, and the world needs multilingual people and not just bilinguals to thrive, so it generally doesn’t matter which language is initially taught in school, but rather the students’ ambitions as adults.
Back to the practicality, it is true that Spanish is more relevant than French in the United States and Chinese is quickly becoming the language of commerce. But it seems as if McWhorter forgets that those two languages are already the top two most taught languages in these bilingual school programs. So, what’s the problem if a lot of kids want to learn French instead? My main praise is simply that these bilingual programs exist at all! I would have been ecstatic to have had the opportunity to start learning a foreign language in elementary school and at a high volume, rather than vaguely dabbling in it in middle school and gaining a basic understanding in high school. Why are we ignoring how lucky these students are to have this chance in the first place? The main problem hindering retention of these languages past our school years is the fact that we never spend enough time on them while they’re available and that they’re not always widely available to begin with.
Therefore, I think McWhorter’s claims are too focused on insubstantial arguments such as practicality, and that he ignores the bigger picture. For one thing, French is not totally useless on any scale. But more than that, it’s not really important which language is quickly rising to being #3 in this type of schooling, rather the fact that thousands more students are annually being added to such programs in the first place. In addition, the French government is personally getting involved in these programs, which shows a potentially huge boost in international relations. If more countries would get involved in a such a way, the US foreign language curriculum opportunities for students would explode, and the educational system would therefore provide its students with a better opportunity to participate in a global dialogue. Even being familiar with a foreign language is priceless, especially considering that the US may not always be the top world power and therefore be a beneficiary of English as lingua franca. The question of French is one thing, but the question of learning foreign languages in general is much more far-reaching.
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