Language Acquisition: Then and Now. Part 1

written December, 2022.

The History of language education is one of parallel ideas and continuously changing movements. From the age of the Enlightenment to our present time period there has always been multiple ways of thoughts and methods on how to teach language. In the time leading up into the 1700s, Christianity and its various lineages had played a major role in shaping the way in which people had thought about education, including languages; however, by the end of the 1700s, the character of education had changed. This was because the Age of Enlightenment had fundamentally changed how scholars and the public had looked at religion and thus this directly impacted the way in which education was taught. Secular education took a more important role in the upbringing of many professionals and thus while Latin was the main language of science and with its supplements of Ancient Greek, by the end of the 1700s and as the 1800s progressed, vernacular languages of English, French and German had become dominant in the time of the Industrial revolutions.1 With this reality in mind, it becomes sensible to limit the examination of this history of language acquisition to the United States, in order to track the developments from the 1700s onward. This is appropriate since despite the colonial foundation that had settled the Americas, the United States was more free to pursue different lines of heritage for its education. In the Americas, individuals such as Benjamin Franklin and Horace Mann had called for reform of education.2 This included establishing “classless schools” and public libraries. Such luxuries were not available to the common person in other western nations; therefore, it gave Educators the ability to develop into separate and remarkable paths for all education and more specifically language learning.

In following the paths language education was to take, it is appropriate to consider the origins. Class played an important role in European and American systems. The Monastery and private institutions gave those with capital the ability to become knowledgeable in a strict education of the Bible and great works composed by those who had established themselves as remarkable in the discourses of philosophy. Latin, being the language of religion and many scientific works in its later Latin form was studied and grammatical cases and tables were studied vehemently.3

This sort of rote education is not unique to the Western education experience from that time period of the 1700s to 1800s, as education in other parts of the world, notably cultures in the Asian continent utilize a lot of the same education pedagogy for thousands of years4. As the 1800s progressed, the monastery lost a lot of power of authority with the diffusion of knowledge to the majority and thus, private religious schools and secular schools became the prime mover of education.5 Along with this, a robust tradition of literary excellence established in the old world and beginning in the new world gave more students the opportunity to expand their horizons for understanding text. This motivated many to learn German, Italian and French in their studies to understand the radical ideas of writers of the day.6 What the diffusion of knowledge also allowed was the substantiation of knowledge being taught to those of the working class. From the 1840s onward, class played less of a role onto what education one received. Horace Mann in his role as secretary of Education in the state of Massachusetts, he worked to create a standard system where teacher would learn about trends of teaching and pedagogy that had been accessed as meritorious.7 In addition, he believed in taxes from the locals to fund their school systems and more involvement from the community, a common core that embraces democracy and ideas of the US constitution, Education must not be religiously aligned to one sect versus another, and that teachers should be well prepared to teach.8 To support his idea, he traveled to Europe and reported changes that were to be made in benefit of the school system. For the aspect of language education, he focused on children learning whole words instead of the alphabet, this is similar to how phrases can be learned in the approaches to learning foreign languages. Although, Horace Mann’s idea was limited in scope, as time progressed, more people came to support the idea of learning phrases to learn language.9

One of the biggest challenges that had been persistent among Americans in the 1800s and early 1900s was the problem of illiteracy.10 The nature of the US economy of the time meant there was many factors that had played into limiting education for people. Many immigrant groups did not speak English when they arrived at the United States and due to crowded conditions in cities, some did not have the opportunity to good schooling. To add on, there was the existing minority population within these areas whom due to racism and other factors such as economics had to send their children into the work force early or did not have the institutions to give people a solid education.11

For the immigrant populations, the rise of nationalism; particularly around the World War 1 era directly impacted German immigrants that they were not taught their heritage language. Other groups, even if they weren’t considered enemies of the United States were told by societal powers and even amongst their own families to assimilate and leave their culture behind.1212 This mentality was very unfortunate since many children missed out on rich literature from their home languages and didn’t receive a strong education in English and thus limited their prospects for advancement in the economy. What is interesting about this is how despite not being a direct class system like in the United Kingdom, the wealthy and business classes were actually showing the opposite of this trend. Language learning had always been important to those in Europe in order to conduct business and diplomacy and the same was true in the United States. Education at Ivy league schools and other elite institutions prided themselves on their robust philology program13

Philology, coming from the Greek root of Philologia, or the “love of language” is the term for the study of language in written and oral sources. It had a rich heritage in Europe and that knowledge had permeated the United States education system along with its overall ideas of the Prussian education.1414 With such a strong connection to Germany and its academic community, some scholars rejected the ideas and manners of this study due to World War 1. Of course, this mindset had roots in blatant nationalism and not objective criticism in methodology of learning language, it did wane the term in the United States, but the ideas still existed just under different labels. In the North East United States, specialization and overall rates of literacy were increasing at a steady rate; however, in other parts of the country, particularly the Southern United States, efforts were not as widespread.15

Many in the Southern United States did not receive a strong education until long into the 20th century, as Jim crow laws and other barriers kept many from joining their northern peers in educational attainment.16 This mentality kept the South behind in development, but did not affect the north as much as although education had been more centralized by the end of the 1800s, by the middle of the 1900s; much of education had a common school system but with a very decentralized structure. States more than anything had instructed schools on how to run their curriculum.17

For some of the gaps in education that existed, there was the increasing role of libraries and private tutoring that emerged to fill gaps. Public library systems greatly expanded in the 20th century, particularly in the American South and West, where large populations were moving to in the 1930s and 1940s. Philanthropists such as Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller had established foundations and trusts to give away vasts amount of money to establish universities and public library systems. For those systems that existed, buildings and material was added in vast amounts.18

One of the primary institutions to benefit from this philanthropy was the University of Chicago. University of Chicago along with University of Berkeley, UCLA and Colombia had established themselves as premier places to learn history, philosophy and in that pursuit, languages.19 Language learning in the 20th century became even more important as the archives of European libraries and Universities became more accessible. It was not enough to know the just the English speaking approach to a historical or philosophical topic, but rather all Western sources needed to be consulted to have robust scholarship. In this vein, scholars would learn the language of the area in which they were studying more in depth. This tradition had originated in the British Empire as they expanded their colonial borders. For example, many interpreters and scholars of Sanskrit, Arabic, and Persian emerged in the ranks of the British East India company to reap the rewards of civil service in addition to basically having little real barriers to accessing ancient and contemporary works.20 From the transition from the company to the British Raj, their role only became more important. Imperialism was not the only factor in this, but the Industrial revolutions continued the need to exchange information on different technology.