On the Right - Xenophobia on The Wing?(Brief Article)

NEW YORK, MARCH 9

On almost the same day, 1) Iowa declared English to be the state's official language; 2) Drake University, Iowa's largest private college, announced that it would cease offering modern languages in its curriculum; and 3) the Census Bureau announced that the proportion of Hispanic Americans had grown to 12.5 percent of the population, 35 million people.

The decision by Drake's president, David Maxwell, to drop foreign languages was done under his own claim to immunity from the charge of provincialism. The reason? Before becoming president of a college, Mr. Maxwell had been a teacher of Russian. This datum was shot out at his critics in addition to the larger cultural protection: He is all in favor of learning foreign languages, he said, but teaching a foreign language to students sitting in a classroom in the middle of Iowa isn't the way to do it. What you should do is encourage aspirant polyglots to travel abroad and live there in such circumstances as would require them to learn the language thoroughly. If you want to learn French, Mr. Maxwell is saying, go to France.

The Chronicle of Higher Education's website registers enormous alarm, and disdain, over the Drake situation, which leaves l5 foreign-language teachers unemployed. "I am totally appalled," writes a Russian-language professor at the University of Utah, "that a university would drop its language programs. Would they dream of dropping the philosophy department? Dropping languages means it may no longer even be worthy of the title of 'university.'"

The old question of course arises, ought education to be tied to utility? The University of Utah has in turn proposed that science majors be relieved of the usual language requirement. Why should scientists be asked to speak to anybody?

Are those Hispanics who live in Iowa, now a one-language state, going to settle down in permanent Spanish-speaking enclaves, or will they yield to the national momentum in favor of English?

These questions crowd the cultural landscape. Some will cite the experience of Switzerland, where there are people who speak (only) French, German, Italian, and Romansh. And they live side by side, happy ...