The Language Barrier

Josh Boykin here, once again attempting a revival of the blog that digs into all sorts of social questions and ponderings. It's been a while since I've posted anything here, but I'm planning on doing regular Monday night updates from here on forward. Keep an eye out!

For those of you don't know, your favorite blogger (assuming I'm your favorite blogger) has relocated from the Midwest out to the West Coast for an internship. I'm working for Disney as an Attractions Host at the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage. (Translation: I work a ride at the park.) It's a pretty interesting job, and definitely different than anything else I've ever done for multiple reasons. The highlighted reason this post: the language barrier.

To inform the uninformed (another skillful way of saying "for those of you who don't know"), Anaheim, CA hosts Disneyland, a colorful cavalcade of people and places that's been "making the magic happen" since 1955. It's also about 2 hours north of Mexico. Yeah, not so shocking to you CA natives, but I, as a IL resident until about 6 weeks ago, was pretty shocked when I found out the news. Then again, there are a lot of people who come to the park straight from Mexico. And I have to admit that it makes me feel a little ignorant to not be able to convey any information to non-English speakers when there are problems.

You see, when you work Finding Nemo, you essentially get 6 basic questions, each of which have relatively simple answers. They include things like "Does this ride have Fastpass?" (Answer: No.) and "Is the wait time really X minutes?" (Answer: Yes. Our queue always holds tons of people, but we load them all really quickly and en masse.) But when someone asks me these questions in Spanish, or if they need help finding directions to something else in the park, I'm completely at a loss. If we don't have certain Cast Members (that's what we call our employees) on shift, then the Guest is at a loss.

Now, I understand that there are tons of different languages spoken in our park on any given day at any given time, and to suggest that we somehow staff the park to have people who speak all of these languages at all times is pretty outlandish. But when you live two hours away from Mexico, and when Mexican immigration is such an integrated part of life here near the border, I suppose I just expected that more people would be available to handle bilingual situations. That expectation would "handle" the problem, but I don't feel like it would actually HANDLE the problem.

My Spanish education history: 2 years in Middle School (the equivalent of 1 year of HS), and 2 semesters my Senior year of college. That's it. In a country where entire sections of town have so many Spanish billboards that I don't really know what the advertisements are saying, I've neglected to really reach out and break my own personal language barrier. Schools all over the globe teach their students 2 or even 3 languages, while it seems that our education system has been stuck in the "if you're going to be in OUR country, you'd better learn OUR language" mode.

The fact of the matter is that, as the global community begins to truly envelop the globe, more linguistic flexibility's going to be necessary. Yes, English is becoming a bit of a standard, but I definitely feel like in my own life I would have stood to benefit if I'd picked up a couple more years of Spanish. Or French. Or German. Or something. In fact, I think part of the reason that people don't really understand how to speak/write English properly (even when we're raised with the language) is because the focus on basic grammar and the building blocks of language has been done away with; learning foreign languages helps students understand the mechanics of their own languages while applying those concepts to new methods of speaking. Then again, some people aren't really worried about learning how to communicate across cultures, apparently.

One of the most ignorant commentaries on our education system came straight out of the Rock River Times, the free publication distributed in Rockford, IL about (coincidentally) the Rock River area. You can check out the whole post here, but the specific part I'm referring to is here:

"Why do we bother with French, Spanish, gym and other classes that provide no real value to high-schoolers? The merits of PE classes have been well debated for years, but I’m not sure I’ve heard a debate with a replacement curriculum placed in the scenario. PE sacrificed for economics, absolutely. I have heard many adults tell me they had Spanish in high school but can’t speak it. What’s the point? You can learn Spanish for a few dollars in a few weeks if you really had a desire to learn. While we’re at it, let’s get rid of the four-semester requirement for algebra—isn’t two enough? Does anybody remember or use this stuff?"

I'll completely admit that I don't remember much of my Spanish from before college, but that doesn't mean that it never should have been taught in the first place. His "if you really wanted to learn, you'd pay for the lessons and do it on your own time" argument is BS; the reason we pay taxes for public schooling is so that we can educated children about the skills that they'll need to succeed in their environment. As our society becomes increasingly multi-lingual, the concepts that come with learning a foreign language become even more important. How about teaching languages at EARLIER ages, when people's brains are more pliable and are able to more easily adapt to the information? That certainly would have helped me a bit.

-Josh