by Robert Oliphant
Columnist EducationNews.org

Are Americans being invaded by their own language?  Yesterday a Kaiser Permanente nurse from Jordan read off my medications from a computer screen in flawless standard worldwide American pronunciation English (S.W.A.P.E.).  Understandably so, since medical and other high tech Latinate terms are now fundamentally the same in foreign language dictionaries as they are in American ones, c.f., cardiovascolare (Italian). kardyovaskuler (Turkish), and others (Arabic, Hindi, etc.) via translation.dictionary.com.  With over 80% of our 315,000-word stock identifiable as coming into "English" from Graeco-Latinate sources, SWAPE is a planetary language now, and so are its dictionaries.

Immigrant high tech professionals. . . . For most of us the most visible evidence of our high tech vocabulary invasion can be found in the directories of medical and other professional office buildings, all of them displaying strange unfamiliar names buttressed by impressive advanced degrees and other qualifications (certificates, licenses, etc.).  As opposed to 1941, when the USA had the best educated high school dropouts in the world (enough so to win the war and earn advanced degrees via the GI Bill), we now import professionals who learned their high tech SWAPE vocabularies at home from foreign language dictionaries, supplemented by audio-examples and cross references in unabridged electronic dictionaries available free of charge via dictionary.com. 

The dominance of "seat time" education. . . . So why aren't American boys and girls taking advantage of their dictionary-based electronic learning opportunities?  The answer can be summed up in our somewhat cynical Watergate maxim, "follow the money."  This is to say that American students today get their funded education (including tuition) on the basis of  "seat time" enrollment numbers: classrooms, buildings, credit hours, attendance, teachers, administrators, etc.  In years past, of course, almost 30% of a student's time would be spent in non-funded test-monitored learning activities, following the European model, outside the credit-hour umbrella with no price tag attached. 

Language requirements back then were met via testing "outside the budget," as it were.  So were department and university requirements (theses, oral exams, multi-hour written exams, etc.) — all this linked to the thrifty no-frills structure of American K-16 education prior to 1960.  Consequently, given today's massive "seat time" budgets, professional educators are bound to see alternatives like dictionary-based electronic learning (test-monitored independent reading is another one) as hostile viruses threatening their very existence, not just a few administrative perks here and there.

Unemployable graduates and workplace-relevant learning. . . .   Today, of course, our frightening recession is beginning to have an impact upon the behavior of both educators and students.  Our federal infrastructure projects will boost employment among blue collar workers and high tech specialists, not unemployable "seat time" high school and college graduates, enough so that baccalaureate and baccalaureate-prep programs will more and more lose seat time students to other forms of learning. 

Offshore tech schools are already here, of course, along with dictionary-based electronic learning.  But there's also a good chance that the European study-exam-license model will also creep back into our educational economy.  If that happens, we may see a re-democratization of American education accompanying our economic recovery, along with greater emphasis upon quality control.

LOOKING FORWARD. . . . Based on my own experience with the Kaiser's step by step move toward a high morale total information computer-driven quality control system, I'm quite sure that, despite kicks and screams, American educators and students will have soon have access to multi-level information regarding how their system is working.

At a time when America's working class and lower middle class are being pushed to the wall more and more, the iffy years that lie ahead will be grim indeed if our educators refuse to rethink their obsession with seat time.  Granted that high concentration and solitary learning time are somewhat unpleasant, they are still necessary for productive worker bees these days: even more so for all of us in the iffy times that lie ahead. 

Published February 23, 2009