What are the foreign language skills of American presidents? The answer points to the need for stronger foreign language education in the U.S.
It seems logical to me that a world leader such as the President of the United States would be proficient in more than one language. Sadly, this isn't the case. I had hoped to highlight fascinating trivia about bilingual American presidents--past, present, and future. Instead, I feel embarrassed by the lack of foreign language skills in the U.S. Historically, most of our leaders have been monolingual.
One exception is Dutch-speaker, Martin Van Buren (1837-1841). He is the only U.S. President whose native language was not English. Thomas Jefferson studied several languages, but was not a fluent speaker. George W. Bush supposedly speaks limited Spanish, as does former President Jimmy Carter.
Here's the low-down on the 2008 presidential candidates: John McCain is monolingual. The Congressional newspaper,The Hill, reports that Barack Obama speaks Indonesian (Bahasa) and limited Spanish. Although Barack Obama and John McCain may have made statements about America's need for global language skills, neither candidate's campaign website specifically addresses stronger foreign language education.
So, here's my official position: foreign language proficiency and multicultural understanding must be a priority for Americans, right along with math and science. We should begin foreign language education in kindergarten, continuing through grade 12 and beyond.
Douglas McGray, author of the article "Lost in America" in the May/June 2006 issue of Foreign Policy Magazine writes that 2/3 of U.S. high school students graduate without studying a foreign language, and 92% of U.S. college students never take a foreign language class. Unacceptable.
I would love to see American presidents with the language skills of a leader such as Pope Benedict XVI. Besides his native German, he speaks Italian, French, English, Spanish, Latin, and some Portuguese. He can read Ancient Greek and Biblical Hebrew. (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2007.) Those are linguistic skills I can look up to.
