“Education for Global Leadership: The Importance of International Studies and Foreign Language Education for U.S. Economic and National Security” is available from the Committee for Economic Development.
Because of the intense focus of the federal No Child Left Behind Act on reading and mathematics, some schools around the country have reduced the number of foreign-language courses offered or stopped teaching foreign languages altogether, says a report by the Washington-based Committee for Economic Development, a nonpartisan policy-research group made up of business and education leaders.
The report compiles information from a number of sources to make the case that to stay competitive in the global economy, schools in the United States need to do a better job of teaching cross-cultural understanding and foreign languages.