U.S. must accelerate language learning

Tension is created when there is a gap between what we do, what we can do, what we should do and what we must do. The tension ought to be unbearable seeing the enormity of the difference in what we do and what we must do to educate our children in the major languages of the world.

This embarrassing lack of both depth and breadth of training in the various spoken and written idioms should be particularly worrisome to political leaders, educators, businessmen and businesswomen but especially parents concerned for the financial survival of their children in a global economy.

The "must we do" is to start immediately giving students the opportunity to learn more languages. The "should we do" is to fund the necessary teachers needed. The "can we do" is to recruit the many native speakers living in our state who could advise the schools the best ways to get started and be some of the teachers. We can also create a network of international guests, visitors and naturalized citizens who could even assist in the elementary and junior highs to introduce the value of language and the people of the world around us. There are thousands of returned LDS missionaries who could support such programs. In areas of few students, there already exists distant learning in some languages that could be opened to a greater variety of these sounds.

Arabic is not only at the center of current political strife but is the primary source of holy writ for over a billion believers on this planet. It is also sadly the language probably at this time most needed for national security.

Hindi, the idiom of the largest democracy in the world, India, is growing increasingly important as we become more closely linked economically and as a political counterweight to China.

Portuguese is the voice of Brazil, a country nearly as large as the United States and a growing economic powerhouse and an incredible ecological wonder straddling the equator.

Russian's criticality may be less with the demise of the Soviet Union, but today Russia is still the only country that has sufficient nuclear warheads and missile throw power to obliterate the world many times over.

Mandarin is spoken by more tongues on this globe than any other language. It is said by some to be the language of the future in technology and commerce. Our governor speaks Mandarin and could lead the way in the language effort.

Utah has the potential to lead the nation in the education of its students — our children — for their proper place in the world. It won't happen if we just keep babbling along atop our own tower of Babel. We need to turn the current educational gap into a tension of creation, not a strain of failure.

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Dr. Joseph G. Cramer is a founder of Cottonwood Pediatrics