Comments of Dr. Lewis Jillings

Executive Director and Associate Dean for Internationalization, The Pennsylvania State University

Before the State Board of Education,

November 17, 2005

Pennsylvania needs to have world language standards in place and to adopt a language attainment as requirement for students for graduation from high-school.

Tom Friedman (New York Times): The World is Flat: we must draw the necessary conclusions for education in schools and universities. 

Sick birds in Thailand touch off policy worries in Atlanta and Brussels.

In an interdependent world, more countries are competing more determinedly, enhancing educational capacity at all levels. The US needs to be nimble to retain its hegemonic edge in education. Arguably, the country is already losing at high-school level.

Education needs to foster intercultural competence and equip students to move across boundaries, navigate unfamiliar territory, and see the world from multiple perspectives.

Language learning is part of the necessary response and must be given the status of core subject underpinned by attainment standards.

Language learning is important not only for the intercultural understanding it engenders, but also for the competitiveness of the state and the security of the nation.

Brookings Institution Report, December 2003: competitiveness of the Pennsylvania economy: Pennsylvania needs to be more globally attuned if it is to be competitive. 

US companies outsource to India not merely because workers are cheaper – but also because they are increasingly better educated, more adaptable, innovative.

Richard Wagoner, President & CEO of General Motors (at Duke University, Jan 2003):

Globalization, tremendous growth in developing nations, the growing importance of what we used to call “international business” – all of these mean that we need graduates who are prepared to do business virtually anywhere in the world. And among other things, that means graduates who are foreign-language proficient....

Well, when we moved to Brazil, I found out that I had to speak Portuguese to do my job well. That was not typically what our US assigned executives did then. But I quickly discovered that, in Brazil, not only did Portuguese help me conduct business better, it also made me a better businessman, and for two reasons.

One I could communicate better with the people I was doing business with. Two, and more important, the Brazilians wanted to work with someone who took the time to learn their language. And of course, the same thing is true today, in countries all around the world.