Language Education And National Strategies

Language is the key resource to the advancement of a nation. It has become the very foundation of the harmonious society. With the further development of globalization and integration, the role and status of language education is becoming increasingly prominent, which has been recognized by people from all circles of the society in the United States. Protecting language resources means protecting the historical and cultural heritage. And the government of a democratic nation should focus on asserting minority language rights, which plays an important role in language education policy making.Long before European immigrants arrived in America, there existed many native languages there. Immigrants brought with the land a wide variety of languages. In order to maintain the authoritative status of English, the Federal Government adopted extreme measures to exclude and restrict the use of minority languages, aiming at maintaining the core value under the predominant Anglo-Protestant culture. It seems that the conflict between language unity and language diversity is irreconcilable. In the large, multi-ethnic society, unity within diversity has become a challenge for the Federal Government. Can diversity of languages and national unity co-exist? The government feels a delicacy about solving such problems.In fact the historical and present situation of language education in the United States reflects the traditional ideology of the whole society. Because of the influences of history, politics and culture, the belief of English Hegemonism is deeply embedded in the society. Since colonial time, European descendants have ingrained superiority complex, which hinders with obstacles or difficulties to the development of language minority education. Language education in the United States has been closely related to the national identity, which influences its national strategies. Especially when the nation is considered to be at risk, language education will show its national interests orientation. While just at that time, language education is stimulated to develop rapidly.With the deepening diversity throughout the world, it is becoming more and more important for the government to implement rational as well as scientific language education policies. Language education planning should be in accord with the objectives of national political strategy. Only in this way can language education serve national interests.In the United States the slogan 'one nation, one flag, one language' can well explain the essence of language minority education, which involves the essence of linguistic nationalism. As far as linguistic nationalism is concerned, it has some special meanings in this immigrant country, which is concerned with the core value of Anglo-Protestant culture.Language policy and language education orientation rest with ideology. And language education should serve the national interests in political, economic and cultural fields. The objective of language education is to realize national development strategies, aiming at maximize national interests. In order to achieve this goal and comply with the development of society, Federal Government will focus on making policies adapting to the new situation to balance language education and national interests. The principle should be based on a dedication to serving the interest of the language minorities.This doctoral dissertation focuses on the study of language education on the horizontal as well as vertical route. The horizontal study is based on the three language orientations presented by Ruiz, that is, language-as-right, language-as-resource, and language-as-problem. It is concerned with three kinds of language education - native languages, immigrant languages and foreign languages, among which the concept of English-only education will be involved. While the vertical study deals with the history, current status and development trend of language education in the United States.Language rights, the concept of nationalism and national interests constitute the main perspectives of this study, with language education as the direct clue and language policy as the indirect one. Nothing exists in isolation, and both language education and language policies are of no exceptions. Language education policies are not formed in isolation, but rather emerge in response to special social forces: political conflicts, changes in migration and globalization. These factors interact with one another. The history of language education in the United States makes up a conflict of language rights and national interests. On the one hand, government must always endeavor to improve and assert the language rights of the English-speaking people to maintain the 'American Identity' under the official creed of the United States. While on the other hand, it takes measures to exclude the inferior minority language education and advocate English-only movement through means of assimilation.This dissertation aims to probe deeply into the causes and problems in language education in the United States. Seeing the history of language education in the United States as a whole, it examines the orientation and characteristics of policy making. And finally, this dissertation gives some beneficial references for similar attempts in China.