Sounds like there's something about which Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama agree: Nothing could be more dangerous for an America already losing its edge in the world than to teach its children to disdain other languages and distrust other cultures, to skip geography, to forget about travel abroad.
If the Chinese, the Indians, the Brazilians and the Russians are busy learning English so they can do business with us, doesn't it behoove us to learn their languages, too? (In China, all elementary school students must study English.) At a time when the West is threatened by Arab jihadists, don't we need many more intelligence agents and soldiers who speak Arabic?
While activists alarmed about illegal immigration have spent the last decade supporting "English-only" codes and decrying the loss of cultural touchstones associated with Western Europe, the actual harm to the nation lies in our refusal to acknowledge the growing economic competitiveness of other countries. South Koreans aren't shunning English. It's one more weapon in their arsenal as they advance in commerce, engineering and the sciences.
