To the Editor:
Re “Budget-Cutting Colleges Bid Some Languages Adieu” (news article, Dec. 5):
Thinking in another language allows one to see the world through another’s eyes—a lesson most Americans would do well to learn.
If universities cut the number of languages offered, they will enforce the idea that Americans are insular and self-serving. We must see America as others see us. Then we will understand our place in the global community.
Mary-Kay McHugh
River Edge, N.J., Dec. 5, 2010
The writer teaches French in the Park Ridge School District.
To the Editor:
So at the same time that the Obama administration is providing additional financing to community colleges nationwide, in an effort to increase the number of college graduates, many universities are cutting back their foreign language programs.
The movement to cut languages and financing at universities (especially public institutions) is nothing less than a national disgrace.
The United States, the world’s center of higher education, is on the verge of losing its status as a leader in education.
Perhaps the country needs to look into the bleeding of funds in the endless wars abroad and start reinvesting in endeavors that ennoble its citizens, particularly those who seek to change themselves and the world through higher education.
The vast wealth acquired by an infinitesimally small segment of the population over the last 30 years needs to be made available through an equitable tax base in order to properly and completely finance the institutions that helped to make the system of higher education in the United States the envy of the rest of the world.
Howard Lisnoff
Great Barrington, Mass., Dec. 5, 2010
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 