It escapes me why American--and Irish and British--schools persist in at once proclaiming the benefits of foreign languages and 'globalization' generally whilst simultaneously making it as difficult as possible for their students to learn those languages. I find it similarly incomprehensible that anyone actually listened to the philistines who threw Latin out of the curriculum; most of my skill in diction and grammar stems from my three years learning the Roman tongue. (It has also come in handy as a way to amaze friends and professors by coining neologisms and--badly--translating Roman ruins.) Latin may not help you get a job at the factory, but neither will English literature or calculus, and anyway the factory's moved to Mexico, thence to Korea, and finally to Shanghai.

It really is stunning how ignorant of other languages and cultures Americans are. True, ignorance of other cultures is not a uniquely American problem: Most of the rest of the world thinks that "New York City" and "Los Angeles" are typical examples of the civilization of the United States. But at least they can be ignorant in such a manner because they know enough English to read the New York Times or watch American films, whereas Americans are trapped in a monolingual cage. Given the predominant position of the United States in the world, such ignorance is troubling; were we to drive our cars with the same degree of care we manage global affairs, we--the entire U.S. citizenry--would be guilty of negligence and possibly manslaughter.

I offer here a revealing anecdote: In Shanghai, I was reliably informed, it is no longer enough to speak Shanghai dialect, Mandarin, and English, but ambitious job-seekers also need to speak French, German, Korean or Japanese. (Not in that order.) Also from my own experience, I can attest to the enthusiasm with which Chinese third-graders speak English (better, in fact, than I speak Mandarin, although that's a low bar). And every language you learn makes it easier to learn another language.

Yet in the States languages are treated by school administrators and legislators as something extra to the educational enterprise. And they are supported and reinforced in their belief by the wrongheaded attitude of voters who have no interest in rendering value for tax dollars, voters who would rather pay a low tax to provide their fellow citizens with a crummy education than a marginally higher tax to give the rising generation a lifelong advantage. Justifying this attitude is the false concept of "competitveness." I agree with Milton Friedman's analysis of the public schools, and I generally support--in principle--efforts to voucherize schools and thereby introduce real competition.

To understand why sixth graders in Lawrence Township can't learn languages until next year, then, we have to understand the low-tax, low-service ideology that justifies such decisions and precludes the possibility of intelligent management of the school systems by adopting a scorched-earth, "starve the beast" mentality. (Those who adopt this attitude, I should note, are typically either those with the resources to escape the public system, with a religious or ideological prejudice against the very instituiton of government-funded and -managed schools, or without the formal education to understand the benefits of superior schooling.)

The true test of competitiveness, in fact, is not always with the local market. If any measure of competitiveness should be applied, it is the success that children have after they graduate from high school and become either nominally independent adults or students in higher education. Success in this market is the product of many variables, of which funding is only one, but it is a market in which the products of Hoosier schools are not known for their outstanding successes. (That being said, the specific proposals of the Daniels administration appear to me to be necessary in order to redress certain longstanding structural problems in school financing.)

The problems that confront us now are not the problems of a competitive market. Nor is the public apt to support a fully privatized market in education in the next, oh, never. And while I remain aware of the problems teachers' unions and inefficient administrations cause (indeed, given that I have never attended any schools but public schools, I am remarkably well aware of these problems), I am not willing to support the quest for the will-o'-wisp ideal of a private market with the resulting stunting of the educational development of American children.