Americans Take A Worldly View
Pragmatism Inspires Interest In Languages and Contacts
By Brian Knowlton International Herald Tribune
WASHINGTON - Contrary to a view often heard in Washington, Americans are not turning their backs on the outside world. They are studying it, preparing for it, doing business with it and learning its ways in numbers that continue to rise.
A raft of statistics points to increasing awareness of the interconnected nature of the world and pragmatic efforts by Americans not to be left behind.
Consider these indicators: More Americans are studying foreign languages than a decade ago; more Americans are working or living abroad; more are enrolling in
international-studies programs; more are getting passports, and more are using them; more are placing overseas phone calls; more are doing business abroad; and more are expressing interest in overseas volunteer programs like the Peace Corps.
The number of colleges and universities offering international-studies programs has risen steadily, said Louis Goodman, dean of the School of International Service at American University, in Washington. Mr. Goodman said the number of graduate-level students entering those programs nationwide rose each year until 1995, when it leveled off at 5,000 to 6,000.
With the end of the Cold War, those students increasingly are pursuing business-oriented goals. ''In the '70s and '80s, lots of people came to our schools because they wanted to promote peace rather than war,'' Mr. Goodman said. Now, he added, many come out of a desire ''to engage productively in international economic matters.''
The same pragmatism is reflected in those who study abroad. In the decade to 1995/96, the number of American students who studied abroad for credit rose from 48,483 to 89,242. A growing proportion of those students, though still a minority, are in business or science courses.
Even at the Peace Corps, long considered a haven of idealism, pragmatism plays a growing part. The number of inquiries about joining the overseas service program has risen steadily for years, said Brendan Daly, a spokesman. From 100,000 inquiries in fiscal year 1994, the first year for which he had figures, the total rose to 150,000 in fiscal 1997, Mr. Daly said.
''There is an increased interest in service,'' he said, but that is only part of the picture. ''People understand that it is a global world, and even by helping people, you can, from a selfish point of view, get a leg up for your career, by learning a language, a culture, by your experience abroad.''
For a variety of reasons, more Americans are traveling. The number of passports issued annually has risen by roughly a half-million a year in the past decade, except for a drop in 1989, amid the turmoil in Eastern Europe, and in 1991, after the Gulf War. Forty-five million passports are in circulation, meaning about 1 American in 6 holds one.
In 1986, 12 million Americans traveled abroad (not including to Mexico and Canada). By 1996, the figure had risen to 19.8 million.
Overseas phone calls have soared, more than doubling in number from 411 million in 1985 to 984 million in 1990, and then nearly tripling in the five years after that to 2.8 billion, according to the Federal Communications Commission.
The number of Americans living abroad has more than quadrupled in the last 30 years to around 3.3 million, according to State Department estimates. Groups representing Americans abroad say many go uncounted; they believe the true total is 4 million to 5 million.
In a sign of bottom-up change, the number of U.S. public and private elementary schools offering foreign languages has risen by 9 percentage points in the past decade, to 31 percent of all schools, according to a study by the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington.
''There are dramatic increases in starting languages early, in elementary and middle schools,'' said C. Edward Scebold, executive director of the American Council on Teaching of Foreign Languages, in Yonkers, New York. ''This argues against any notion that we don't care about the outside world.''
The number of secondary schools offering language instruction has held steady, around 86 percent, but is expected to be pushed up by the growth from below. The percentages of high school students studying foreign languages (51 percent in public schools; 78 percent in private schools), are the highest since the 1920s.
States like Oregon and New York have toughened language requirements, reversing a nationwide trend.
In a sea change of sentiment from days when many people said, '''Let them learn our language,' parents are going to principals and superintendents and really demanding foreign languages,'' said Nancy Rhodes of the Center for Applied Linguistics.
''People, even in middle America, are realizing how they can get ahead in their jobs and careers if they have the extra skill,'' she said. ''It's globalization.''
The growth is goal-oriented: Americans want their children to learn languages like Spanish and Japanese that will make it easier to do business - abroad or at home. The interest in Spanish is fueled not just by increasing business with Latin American countries but by the rapid growth in the Spanish-speaking community across the nation. One in 10 Americans is now foreign-born, and half of them were born in Latin America.
''We can't stock enough Spanish classes,'' said Raymond Erickson, dean of arts and humanities at Queens College in New York.
U.S. direct investment abroad has continued to climb, rising from $640 billion in 1994 to $796 billion in 1996, according to the Commerce Department.
And yet, indications are that when it comes to international news, Americans are getting less than in the past. Coverage of international developments by the American news media has been in decline for more than two decades, studies show.
The amount of time network television devotes to foreign news declined from 45 percent in the 1970s to 13.5 percent in 1995, according to a survey quoted by the Columbia Journalism Review.
A new survey by the Pew Research Center confirmed that the public appetite for both national and international news was waning, and the trend is likely to continue. Only 33 percent of Americans aged 18-29 said they enjoyed keeping up with the news a lot, the survey found, while 68 percent of older Americans like following the news.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, said he found the trend perplexing.
''This country is on a binge of preoccupation with entertainment,'' he said. ''The dominant action in this country, other than eating and working, which are necessities, is seeking entertainment.
''I'd bet you that many more Americans know about the last Seinfeld episode than about the Indian bomb or the Indonesian crisis.'' |
