US can only stay competitive through multicultural awareness
The change that comes with studying abroad — switching from the familiarity of the U.S. to the unknown of a foreign country — is a strange feeling. Surprisingly enough, that strange feeling doesn't arise from being in a different culture or seeing different people or adhering to foreign customs. The real reason is that, no matter where I am, I never seem to be all that far away from America.
It's certainly an eye-opener. All of my classes, save for my language classes, are taught in English. Most of these classes are also comprised of local Hong Kong students. I've met exchange students from France, Norway, the Netherlands, South Africa and Israel. Nearly all of them can speak, at the very least, three or four languages. I visited the Philippines this weekend — a poverty-stricken mess of a country — and even there, nearly every single person was able to comfortably communicate in English.
Being in Asia for more than six months now has made me realize that we Americans are the cultural underdogs of the world. That shouldn't come as a surprise: We're often stereotyped as being arrogant and ignorant, and I used to resent that a great deal. But when I see the ordinary 5-year-old students in my English class speaking more languages than I can, I can't help but wonder why we, as a country, don't try just a little harder to be global citizens.
The answer seems simple enough: We've never had to be. The upside of being one of the first countries to develop and achieve stability as a whole is that we are the world's pioneers, the shepherds of the herd. The downside is that we're not actively integrating into the world. We're sitting back and letting the world integrate into us, and while that makes our lives easy for now, there's also something to be said for the cultural awareness we're losing while other countries are catching up.
It is no longer enough to justify our lack of multilingual cultural infusion with "America is the world power," because the fact of the matter is, we can no longer guarantee we will have the same influence in the coming years. And even if that fact could be guaranteed, expecting others to conform to our language and not doing the same in return would hardly promote unity in the midst of globalization. Rather, it would only further advocate hegemony in the global sphere — "Americanization" rather than "globalization."
It is crucial that we begin to infuse language learning into earlier stages of education, and it is crucial we begin now. Not doing something "because we don't have to" is not a good enough reason. If we want to be a great nation, then we must be progressive. An integral part of being progressive is having the ability to actively reach out and understand others, not depend on others to understand us.
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