The Melting Pot’s Missing Ingredient: Foreign Language Education
The US must address both English language education and foreign language education to foster a truly bilingual student body. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
The US proudly calls itself a ‘melting pot,’ a nation home to countless peoples and cultures. Yet, beneath this ideal lies an expectation of assimilation—one that has fundamentally shaped the country’s approach to language education. Even though the U.S. has no official language in an effort to recognize the more than 350 languages spoken within its borders, English has long been enforced as central to American culture. In the words of former President Theodore Roosevelt, “We have room for but one language here [in America], and that is the English language.” From the imposition of English in US colonies after the Spanish-American War to the violently enforced assimilation in Native American boarding schools, the US has continually reinforced English as the dominant—and often compulsory—language.
Only recently has bilingualism become widely popular, with research highlighting its positive effects on cognitive development and health, socio-cultural awareness, and long-term career growth. Its implementation is closely linked to the particular promise it holds for students from non-English-speaking households, who historically have lower levels of academic achievement. Recent legislation suggests that states like California, Maryland, and even Texas are pushing for educational reforms to make bilingual education more accessible and robust. But by focusing on the socio-economic barriers immigrant and first-generation English learners—a term used to describe a person whose native language is not English—face, the U.S. is perpetuating the linguistic assimilation inherent in the ‘melting pot’ metaphor. English learners are expected to carry the responsibility of bilingualism, while English-speaking students face little pressure to learn another language. If the US truly values bilingualism, it must reevaluate its foreign language education system.
In the past few years, there has been significant progress in promoting bilingual education on a legislative level. According to a 2018 report by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, nine out of ten US employers report a reliance on US-based employees with language skills other than English, with one-third (32 percent) reporting a high dependency. That same year, only 16.9 percent of adults reported being multilingual—defined as speaking another language at home and speaking English “well” or “very well.” The US Department of Education’s “Raise the Bar: Lead the World” initiative aims to close the gap between the high demand for bilingual skills in the job market and the low rates of bilingualism in the country. By investing over $890 million to enhance English learner education and pledging to improve professional development and working conditions for bilingual educators, this initiative signals a critical shift towards efforts to prioritize bilingualism in our education system.
Change is also happening at the state level, and California is leading the way. Initiatives like Global California 2030 aim to make bilingualism accessible for all, setting the ambitious goal of having half of all K-12 students in bilingual programs by 2030. The English Learner Roadmap Policy (EL Roadmap) seeks to support the unique needs of English learners in their bilingual education. Other states are following in California’s footsteps with their own initiatives: Texas Senate Bill 560, for one, pushes for the development of effective bilingual education. The Indiana Teacher of English Language Learners (I-TELL) program, which provides funding for educators to become trained in English learner instruction, is another promising legislation.
However, all of these policies primarily focus on English learners. Even research highlighting the benefits of bilingual education, like the UCLA Civil Rights Project’s 2023 paper, centers around its importance for English learners. Across meta-analyses evaluating bilingual education, researchers recognize that the majority of policies target English learners, even though bilingual education is proven to be beneficial to both English learners and foreign-language learners.
This emphasis on English learners has been a vital way to combat the socioeconomic barriers that make it so only 71% of English learners graduate high school—compared to 85% of all students—but they do not address the shortcomings of foreign language education available to native English speakers. Foreign language offerings and requirements are limited at every education level—only 20% of K-12 students studied a foreign language in school—and instruction often begins in middle or high school, after age 10, which is the ideal language acquisition period. The Commission on Language Learning estimated that only 25% of elementary schools teach languages other than English, and this number drops to just 15% in public schools. Compounding this issue is the shortage of bilingual teachers in public schools—twenty-six states and Washington DC reported a lack of qualified world language teachers in the 2023-2024 school year. According to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, only 16.3% of people who reported speaking a language other than English acquired it at school. In this sense, bilingual education continues to reflect the national ideal of assimilation—it seeks to bridge the educational achievement gap for English learners rather than create an equitable multilingual community.
Despite targeted policies, English learners continue to be held to a higher standard because the criteria for foreign language learners do not adequately teach bilingual skills. Even so, it is more difficult for English learners to obtain recognition for their bilingualism. The Seal of Biliteracy, for example, is an award given by states or schools designed to incentivize multilingualism and recognize heritage speakers. However, the majority of these seals are currently being awarded to foreign language learners rather than English learners. A recent study by Georgetown University finds that proficiency tests for English learners tend to be more rigorous than for their English-speaking counterparts, and there are limited proficiency testing options for less commonly spoken languages. Even though English learners are the ones becoming truly bilingual, foreign language learners, who are not learning their second language at the same level, are more likely to be recognized for their bilingual skills.
The time has come for the US to prioritize foreign language education as part of its commitment to bilingualism and linguistic equity. This is not to say that efforts to help English learners access high-quality bilingual education are not important; rather, we must supplement these efforts with improvements to foreign language education. By doing so, the US can involve the entire student population in fostering a robust bilingual community instead of relying solely on English learners to carry this responsibility. The first step: upending the fundamental idea of assimilation through the metaphor of the ‘melting pot.’
Ariana Campo Prego (CC’27) is a staff writer at Columbia Political Review planning to study Linguistics and Latin American Studies. Her interests include languages, US-Latin American foreign policy, and social justice issues.