One Tongue, Two Tongues
Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.
Robert Frost
A week or two ago, I went to the end-of-the-school-year program for a granddaughter, who is in third grade. It wasn’t an ordinary program. In fact, I didn’t understand a single word. Not one. That’s because it was all in French. My granddaughter is part of a Dual Language Immersion program, and she’s the third of my grandchildren to tackle it. One of her older cousins has now had almost a dozen years of French and will be a senior in high school next fall. She’s hoping to work and go to school in France once she graduates. (Her little brother, who also has completed the elementary program, is now in the middle school French, but so far, it looks like football may have a more magnetic pull than a foreign language.)
The elementary program showcased all six grades, with a brief presentation from each. Story-telling, songs, and dialogues highlighted the show. The multipurpose room at the elementary school was packed. (I estimated somewhere around 300 proud family members showed up to cheer their students on.) There’s no question the students were impressive, even if what they said was totally unintelligible to me.
I chose to sit on a lunchroom table at the back of the multi-purpose room so I could be high enough above the crowd to actually see what was going on. (This particular granddaughter is super bright and downright beautiful, but she is TINY and easily lost in the crowd!) I casually introduced myself to the woman sitting next to me, a grandmother also. Even though her accent, skin color, and hairstyle suggested another culture, we immediately bonded over our clearly exceptional grandkids and agreed to meet again, same time, same place, next year.
On the other hand, French is difficult and sometimes seems highly illogical (in my limited experience). Son #3 learned French when he spent two years on a mission in Switzerland (half the country speaks German, the other half French). He loved French, and since my sister’s family was stationed in Germany when he finished his mission, we went to visit for three weeks, picking up my son during our stay. When we had traveled with him in France, most Parisians were startled to discover he wasn’t native.
After he got home, he dual-majored in Biology and French for his bachelor’s degree. During graduate school, he discovered an upside to all the years he spent learning French. Each student in their medical program was required to spend part of a semester providing instruction in modern healing techniques to a “third world” country as the humanitarian section of their degree. Africa was a typical destination. Not for Son #3; he was sent to the Caribbean. His assignment was to demonstrate and teach the latest in advanced healthcare on the island of Martinique. (Did I mention he was in the Caribbean?) Why? His fluent French. I don’t know how much cutting-edge medical treatment he shared, but I have lots of pictures of him swimming with dolphins and manta rays in spectacular blue ocean waters, or cliff jumping, or sailing, or snorkeling, etc.
On the other hand, speaking a foreign language had its downside for Son #4. He went to the southern tip of Argentina on a two-year mission, so his fluent Spanish was beyond useful when he got a job in the IT industry, where technology-based companies tend to be internationally based. But until the 911 attack on the Twin Towers, this mother could never have imagined that being multilingual might pose a threat. Son #4 has dark eyes, very dark hair, and a dark complexion–thanks to my father, whom he resembles, in both appearance and body style.
Son #4 did a good bit of traveling for one of the early IT companies he worked for, and it was something of a shock to him the first time the TSA folks at the airport pulled him out of the boarding queue and searched him, asking dozens of questions about his background, his job, his political loyalties, and why he spoke a foreign language fluently, etc. Seems they mistook him for a terrorist—probably Lebanese. He finally talked his way onto that first plane, but on multiple trips thereafter, his buddies at work laid bets about whether he’d be detained at security again. It happened disturbingly often. (A brand-new problem that his mother had heretofore never once considered adding to her I-can’t-sleep-till-my-kids-are-safe list.)
There is a good deal of research that details the brain benefits of learning another language. Son #6 and his wife, the parents of my young granddaughter in the French performance, studied much of that information in detail before they enrolled her. (One of the all-time smartest people I know, a colleague at Bingham High, spoke 11 languages!) But the benefits go far beyond the changes in the brain. Young people are fortunate to have the opportunity to be exposed to the way another culture processes decisions through language. That clarity of understanding could be a key to opening a door to mutual respect, empathy, and even unity. Perhaps my grandchildren will be able to do a better job than we have of figuring out how to live with the rest of the world in peace. I would be willing to watch a lifetime of incomprehensible elementary school programs for that kind of outcome.