As one of the initial writers (when I was part of the NJ Education department) of the grant that Edison eventually won to institute the teaching of Hindi in schools, I am glad that the WW-P community is finally considering the introduction of this language as part of the curriculum. I am very glad that parents are pushing for this idea to become reality.
As mentioned in one letter to this newspaper, business may be one reason for learning Hindi in schools. Teaching a language also means teaching a culture, and that is 50 percent of the value of language instruction. It may indeed include the culture of doing business. But it does so much more.
The US state department has long needed non-European languages and cultures to be taught in US schools, and within the last 10 years this has become more essential. For instance, Hindi is on the list of languages in all US-sponsored examples below:
— The Critical Language Scholarship Program, part of the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, offers summer programs/institutes for 13 non-European languages (https://clscholarship.org/).
— National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y) to provide merit-based scholarships to U.S. high school students and recent graduates interested in learning less-commonly studied foreign languages overseas — seven languages.
— STARTALK (startalk.umd.edu/2012/) has student and teacher summer programs around the country to learn and prepare to teach 10 non-European languages.
— The 2012 Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (NECTFL) has a session — Bringing Math and Environmental Science into a Culture-Rich World Language Curriculum — showing again that it’s not just the language, it is the language in real life and in all of life.
According to a May 12, 2012, post on FederalTimes.com, Glen Nordin, principal foreign language advisor for the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, said, “The biggest difficulty we face is that our leadership is as unaware of the needs for languages within their organizations as the general populace is failing to be aware of the needs for languages in their community. It is a national disgrace in that respect, and it’s that lack of knowledge that we need to correct. We need to find a way to communicate to our people just how important that interpreter/translator at the social services office is to a community’s well-being.”
I could continue with examples. I would certainly prefer, as I have said in the past, that West Windsor-Plainsboro lead forward with Hindi and other non-traditional languages. An excellent place to start is with a legacy language, since many resources can be found within the community — as mentioned by the parent group.
Lavinia Kumar
