All high school students should be fluent in a language other than English, and it’s a matter of national urgency. So says Russell Berman – and as president of the Modern Language Association (MLA), his opinion carries some clout.
“To worry about globalization without supporting a big increase in language learning is laughable,” the Stanford humanities professor wrote in this summer’s MLA newsletter, in an article outlining the agenda for his presidency.
In conversation, he is just as emphatic, calling for “a national commitment to ramping up the quality of education.”
“Budget attacks on language programs from the Republicans and Democrats are just the contemporary form of a xenophobia that suggests we don’t need languages – and it’s deeply, deeply misguided.”