I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown.

I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown.

Over dinner, a colleague suggested that universities were justified in cutting language programs.

English is the Linguifrenka of business, they said.

Why should American students study a language

they are not likely to use?

For all sorts of reasons, my jaw dropped,

my fork hung midair. I was shocked. Mainly at the explicit cultural hegemony that informed

his perspective. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that by 2019, 651 foreign language

programs had been cut from college curricula over a three-year period.

I didn't need the report to witness what I've seen firsthand.

The teaching contracts of colleagues who taught Italian, Polish, and Arabic

languages not being renewed.

This is so different from previous generations of college administrators who thought that a well-rounded education

included the ability to speak a non-English language. To them, the benefits were obvious. Second and third languages

increased awareness of the human family. Enhanced our worldview, made us better thinkers, taught us respect for other

cultures, and served as the basis for understanding our history in relation to another.

I thought of my high school French class with Mr. Piajini.

Year round, he wore ruffled pants, tweed jackets, topped off with an elegant silk neckscarf.

Mr. Piajini gave us our dose of the French Revolution of 1789 alongside

verb conjugations. But he also wanted to hear the idioms we spoke in the streets, like

fresh and dope. So language learning for me was grounded in a kind of cultural exchange.

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