STATEMENT OF LORI L. BREEN
IN SUPPORT OF KEEPING FOREIGN LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION
IN PENNSYLVANIA’S SECONDARY PUBLIC SCHOOLS

DECEMBER 4, 2003

Lori L. Breen
2144 Old Dominion Drive
Monroeville, Pennsylvania 15146
(412) 856-0852

There can be no mistake that the state’s budget is tight. The fallout from September 11th caused tremendous unplanned expenditures for statewide security. The decline in the stock market and the sluggish economy of the past two years cannot be disputed. Our Commonwealth is working hard to meet the mandates of No Child Left Behind. In light of all of these events, shifting resources away from foreign language instruction may seem logical. Even easy. I am here to tell you that an honest, thoughtful analysis by policymakers, parents and educators leads to the inescapable conclusion that Pennsylvania’s children need world language instruction. I will come back to that issue in a moment.

In order to place my statements in their proper context, please know by way of brief background that I was born in the South Hills area of Pittsburgh and raised in nearby Monroeville. I attended public school and graduated from the Gateway School District. I had studied French since the 7th grade when our teacher was Mrs. Rebecca Poljak at South Junior High School. I graduated from Westminster College with dual majors in Political Science and French. Incidentally, without secondary foreign language education in junior high and high school, I never could have studied in France during my junior year of college. My college education was entirely self-financed. My study abroad was financed through a program that would allow my financial aid package to transfer accordingly. I have been a practicing attorney since graduation from Duquesne Law School in 1992. I stand before you today as a Pennsylvania parent whose past and future are heavily invested in this Commonwealth. The future of this Commonwealth is our children and vital to our children’s future is quality public education of which world language instruction is an essential component, which brings us back to my original point.

There can be no doubt that the world is shrinking. Growing up in the 1970’s, our house would become on “lockdown” if a “long distance” call came in from a friend or relative. We would tiptoe around like mice at this extraordinary event of someone calling from far away. Now, many of us make and receive nightly long distance calls thanks to our free long distance during evenings and weekends on these devices known as cell phones. Obviously, this accessibility to each other was unheard of 20 years ago. Today, our grade school children have pen pals in foreign countries but no one is putting pen to paper; instead, they are communicating in real time from classroom computers or through electronic mail. It certainly makes France or Japan seem not so far away, doesn’t it? If this is the evolution of our world to this point in 2003, the inescapable conclusion is that our means of worldwide communication will continue to increase exponentially in the next 10, next 20 years. I do not think that anyone will argue that we will become a more isolated culture. Even the Berlin wall was taken down so that cultures could unite and know one another. It is simply the direction our world is headed from the 20th and into the 21st century.

Before coming here today, I spoke to a friend whom I have known since the first grade. We attended the same grade school together and both had our earliest introduction to foreign language instruction through the Spanish that we learned through the gifted program, beginning in 3rd or 4th grade. My friend, Dr. Elizabeth (Clark) Pawlowicz, a resident of Cranberry Township, studied French in the Gateway School District from grades seven through twelve. She graduated from Franklin and Marshall College and the Pitt School of Dental Medicine. She would have been here but she is nine months’ pregnant and her baby’s delivery was being induced at 6:00 this morning. By the way, it’s a girl. She believes, as I do, that it is the height of xenophobia to suggest that we withdraw foreign language from our public school curriculum mandates and that it is the height of American arrogance to suggest that other cultures learn English to accommodate us.

Beth and I would both stand before this Honorable committee to demonstrate that we exemplify the virtues that flow naturally from a curriculum that includes foreign language instruction. Please allow me to elaborate on that point. If it is the desire of this Commonwealth to guide a segment of our children into professions like law, in my case, or medicine, in the case of my friend, then those kids had better fasten their seat belts for the rides of their lives in terms of the education and testing they must endure to become lawyers and doctors. High school exams, the SAT, college exams, entrance exams and graduate school exams are just some of the academic hurdles to overcome. Take it from us that foreign language instruction helps students to simply be students in many ways. First, it creates a heightened awareness of English language use by, consciously or otherwise, causing the student to think through words, phrases and sentence structure. This is because they have experience with piecing apart words and phrases of foreign language in a manner not done through the study of English language, which tends to be more taken for granted. Second, the knowledge of a world language helps students to understand the etiology of many English words they see, hear and use. This knowledge is extremely helpful for college and graduate school entrance exams where the vast majority of these exams require analysis of random passages of text which, in turn, require an ability to demonstrate a high level of comprehension of unfamiliar prose in a matter of seconds. We simply cannot call upon our children to aspire to these types of professions equipping them with the tools to do so.

Setting aside a look at the lawyers and doctors, even the student who gets out of school and works for, say, McDonald’s is affected by the global nature of that particular business. With any time spent working for McDonald’s, the child would quickly see how the presence and expansion of stores in other countries, not to mention world events, affects his or her salary, the food types, food prices and stock prices of the very McDonald’s in his or her own corner of the world. As Pennsylvania parents and educators, we must equip our children to approach the working world with all of the tools they will need to see the global interaction between countries, people and companies. We cannot bind our children academically by binding them to only learning one language.

I urge this Honorable body not to put up a Berlin wall around our children that would deprive them of knowledge of other cultures, other politics, other children and other value systems. I respectfully ask that Pennsylvania not falter, not take a step back on the path to quality public education at the expense of world language instruction. Our sons and daughters must be exposed to world cultures in Pennsylvania’s secondary public schools; foreign language is a natural, necessary element of this indoctrination. Please consider these words and those of my colleagues, fellow parents and educators. Please keep Pennsylvania public education strong and be the body that makes the correct, inescapable decision to keep foreign language instruction. Do not leave our children behind the emerging global economy.