Opinion: Don't know Don't care

EDITOR's NOTE: This article originally published in The Advocate on March 7, 2012. To view original post, visit AccentAdvocate.com.

A person who speaks three languages is called trilingual, and two is bilingual.

However, to speak one language is called being American.

This joke paints with a broad brush this country's views of foreign languages and, while it is hyperbolic, it reflects the United States' perception of those outside its borders and others looking in.

Americans undervalue foreign languages. It is obvious when looking at the level of funding, time of instruction and the politicians representing the American citizenry.

More than half of the world's population speaks at least two languages, François Grosjean writes in his book "Bilingual: Life and Reality." But only 10 percent of Americans, about 50 million people, are multilingual.

By systematically producing a "monolinguistic" populace, a message is sent to other countries that "If you don't speak my language, I don't care what you have to say."

In this age of globalism, everyone should be at least bilingual and American schools and politicians need to support multilingual education.

Even in California, one of the most diverse places in the world, foreign language learning is not a priority.

It is not at Contra Costa College and definitely not in California high schools.

The state's Department of Education does not require foreign language studies to graduate from high school. Instead, it requires one year of foreign language or a performance or visual art.

Nonetheless, the department does not reinforce foreign languages.

Only 10 states have high school foreign language requirements and two-thirds of all graduates never studied a foreign language.

However, California's public universities have foreign language requirements for incoming freshmen.

The UCs require two years of the same foreign language in high school for incoming freshmen and transfer students, but the high school courses also count when transferring. The CSUs do not have a foreign language requirement for transfer students.

The systems do not require all students take additional foreign language courses to graduate once accepted.

But speaking a second language is not like riding a bike.

For one to remain proficient in reading, writing and conversation, it takes focus and practice.

The two years spent in high school learning fruits and vegetables from a poorly recorded instructional cassette are long forgotten after four years in college unless that six-year-old shopping list is glanced at periodically.

Although there are 120 sections teaching 11 languages throughout the Contra Costa Community College District, the variety of language courses available at CCC is abysmal.

CCC offers two languages in eight sections: seven in Spanish and one in Mandarin (Chinese 120).

The course title is not even the name of the language. This is also the case at Los Medanos College where its two Tagalog courses are called Elementary Filipino I and II.

The campuses most like CCC in the district are LMC and Diablo Valley College centers.

DVC's San Ramon Center offers 10 sections in Spanish and sign language. The Brentwood Center has six sections of the same languages.

Spanish is the only language with more sections than sign language.

Forty-four sections of Spanish are offered across the district on all five sites. Sign language is taught in 19 sections on every campus in the district but CCC. Twelve sections of Japanese are held at DVC in Pleasant Hill.

Of the three most popular languages in the district, Spanish is the only one offered at CCC.

DVC exclusively teaches six languages in the district: 12 sections of Japanese, six of German, four of Russian, two of Arabic and one of Persian. Nine sections of Italian and 10 of French are offered between LMC and DVC.

The variety of courses throughout the district represents not only the variety of residents in the area, but also their diverse interests.

The desire of students to communicate across cultures is strong, but the support from politicians is lacking.

In 2008, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama said it was "embarrassing" that he was not multilingual.

Since Franklin Roosevelt, 67 years ago, the U.S. has not had a multilingual president. Jimmy Carter spoke "un poco" Spanish and Bill Clinton studied German, but the last two presidents could not speak any other foreign language, even though George W. Bush was governor of Texas and Obama was a senator in Illinois, states with high Spanish-speaking populations.

Voters need to stop electing politicians who do not promote multilingual education from elementary school through college.

The arrogance of isolationism and the appreciation of ignorance continues to manifest itself.

Like Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the president's chief foreign affairs adviser, laughably said in 2008, "'Sí se puedi' [sic] is right. Yes we can."