Original_To:  BITNET%"mbu-l@ttuvm1.bitnet"
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.mbu-l
Date:         Tue, 15 Dec 1992 20:15:00 EDT
From:         "Composition Digest (Robert Royar,
              Moderator)" <R0MILL01@ULKYVX.BITNET>
Subject:      (Fwd: *C&CD*) RE: RE: But what can we isolated YouEssers do? (3)

Entry: 3
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 04:55:54 EST
From: IN%"RobertRoyar@Delphi.COM" Robert Royar, (C&CD Moderator)
Message-id: <1992Dec15.045554.v7.046.1.Grendel.Lair@Cratylus>
Subject: RE: RE: But what can we isolated YouEssers do? (3)
Reply-to: "Computers & Composition Digest (R. Royar)" <R0MILL01@ULKYVX.BITNET>
Organization: Cratylus Educational Software

I still don't think anyone has dealt with the problem I posed which was NOT
that there aren't adequate speaking communities of non-English language in
the US, BUT that these are not NATIONAL entities whose languages are kept
alive and made public. There are for example large numbers of Vietnamese
living in France, yet I doubt many French citizens without Vietnamese
ancestry speak the Vietnamese language. One need only look at the
GastArbeiten uproar in Germany to see how well much of Europe tolerates
cultural diversity.

A further interesting irony can be seen in Japan.

An article in _Science_ (sometime in Feb. 1992) described the problem of
Japanese manufacturing and r&d which is having some trouble (about like the
US 10 years ago) keeping/getting skilled workers and research specialists.
In fact the article described how so many young Japanese college students
are going into business, marketing, and finance--because of the highh and
quick payoffs--that the sciences and technical areas (engineering etc.) are
having difficulty finding new workers. This happened in the US when
business schools were riding high and the Stock Market was a real
quick-wealth arena.  We're still paying a price for it. It now seems to be
happening in Japan.

One way the US was able to replace some of the lost "new blood" was by
employing young, foreign college graduates. Japan for the first time since
before WW II has begun to attively attract foreign students from the far
east into the engineering and science programs--educating and training them
to take jobs in Japanese industry and r&d. The primary curriculum is
offered not in Japanese but in English.

There are three points I'd like to emphasize:

 * I'm not arguing for English language supremacy, just that the perception
   that we're doomed if we're not multi-lingual is not based on what's
   actually happening in the supposedly "advanced" countries of this planet
   and

 * economic factors that make the US look like a failed experiment in
   individual indulgence are hitting the rest of the world (albeit a few
   years later than here), so to see the decline of capitalism as a US
   phenom is to miss the point of what's going on in the supposed NEW
   economic powerhouses of Germany and Japan (BTW both were already
   industrial nations prior to WW II), and

 * anti-american snobbery has been a Europaschian pasttime since before the
   English coined the term "Yankee"--a buffoon and all-around jerk. I mean
   "why squander such wealth on the 'dregs' of society anyway?" has been the
   attitude for almost 400 years.

So back to my original question. In a country as geographically vast as
this, how do we get the majority of citizens (regardless of ethnic/national
heritage) to learn and practice a second language? We don't have the
opportunities on the scale that people in European or other nations have for
real second-language interaction (see Nancy Duke S. Lay. "Learning from
Natural Language Labs". _JBW_ 11.2 Fall 1992).

 -- Robert Royar (RobertRoyar@Delphi.com) New York Institute of Technology
    "If the Russians can get rid of the Communists, the Americans can get rid
     of the Republicans."                                       - Rudy Rucker

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