Cultural values, hierarchies, and traditions often play out in language. I am not a linguist but having now studied four foreign languages I recognize the tight relationship between language, culture and how we think. Studying another language (or two or three) increases the effectiveness of cross-cultural communication, not only in knowing words, but in developing a deeper understanding of language generally and its relationship to culture. Today, most, if not all, university graduates will need to be able to communicate across cultures, but there will have been very little (if anything) included in their undergraduate program to help them to develop those skills. While it is now almost cliché to refer to our “increasingly globalized world” that reality hasn’t been embraced by universities to the extent that it should be. Worse still, some study abroad programs now allow students to take classes in English, rather than the language of the host country.

The proposal acknowledges that a language isn’t something to cross off a list of requirements, much as other universities have allowed students to do by testing out, but rather a deep dive into culture and communication. In her November article, Colleen Flaherty noted that the trend has been in the other direction with most four-year institutions in the United States retreating from foreign language requirements. Princeton’s latest general education proposal would require all students to study a foreign language, even those already proficient in another language. Yet studying a foreign language is much more than the ability to speak another language fluently. I wish I had a dollar (or a euro or a yen) for every time I heard someone say that they couldn’t learn a language.

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