To the Editor:

I was disturbed to read that an all-too-familiar scenario is playing out in my hometown: Possible budget cuts threaten world language education. At the same time, I was proud to read the recent editorial in support of French from three of my colleagues. Thank you for providing a forum for our thoughts, and I hope that readers will carefully consider priorities before agreeing to lose the high school French program.

A product of Marshall Public Schools, I am now an assistant professor of French at Fairmont State University in West Virginia. In 1988-89 I was able to complete French IV only because Madame Schultz was so generous and committed to teaching that she offered to tutor me in an independent study. Without this opportunity to continue my studies at an advanced level, I might not be where I am today.

In short, we need more language education in this country, and it needs to begin at an even earlier age. My own students who study abroad return to confirm what we already know, that people in the rest of the world are multilingual as a fact of life, and Americans are notoriously monolingual.

They go abroad to learn about France, for example, and they arrive to find a whole European community that can communicate across linguistic and cultural borders with ease and confidence. The good news is that they return with this intercultural confidence and a new sense of horizons. People speak and write better English as they learn more French, and they begin to understand that every language comes with many cultures, social contexts and ways of thinking. We must equip our students with the tools they need to become truly global citizens, ones who do not have to wait for everything to be filtered back into English.

My job puts me in contact with recruiters from a range of government and business fields who report a major shortage in applicants who can speak French, a language of immense practical use on every continent. I regularly see statistics that link world language proficiency to salaries that are 8-20 percent higher.

There are many reasons to make language learning a priority, and countries around the world are investing in international education and study abroad in rough economic times because they understand that the world of tomorrow will be increasingly interdependent, and that intercultural conversation can strengthen our global foundation and spread stability and growth.

Let us safeguard the path for those MHS students who will choose language learning and become the global leaders of the future, working at home and abroad, in big and small ways. I challenge us to reorient the discussion and consider which languages we should be adding, not subtracting.

Erin Hippolyte, PhD

Fairmont, W.V.

(Marshall High School graduate)