America's Lacking Language Skills
The Atlantic
Just seven percent of American college students are enrolled in a language course and 95 percent of these enrollments are in European languages like French or German, despite an increasing demand for fluency in non-Western languages.
Through alarming statistics and anecdotal evidence, journalist Amelia Friedman describes the current state of decay of language education in the United States.
Why Global Competence Matters: It's Not Really a Small World
Education Week
From Jaime Casap's vantage point as Chief Education Evangelist at Google, global competence is decidedly the most important quality for today's students to develop. Contrary to the famous Disney song, Jaime argues that it's not a small world anymore.
To Make the World a Better Place, Teach Arabic
The Chronicle
Monolingualism is taking over higher education, according to Brian T. Edwards, an associate professor of English and founding director of the program in Middle East and North African studies at Northwestern University.
While Edwards supports teaching and learning all world languages, he asserts that the number of Arabic enrollments in particular is drastically low compared to the importance and relevance of the language in the world today.