Sask Gov't and foreign languages

Apparently, the Saskatchewan government thinks knowing foreign languages is a good thing.

In an article published in the Leader-Post and StarPhoenix today, it was revealed that "The government is developing an international education strategy, a big part of which aims to better connect Saskatchewan students with international trade and business markets."

A large part of that, of course, means being able to communicate in languages other than English. The program will, according to David Boehm, assistant deputy minister of the advanced education, "put an emphasis on the development of international languages so they can interact with those markets and those opportunities in a more effective manner."

A business professor at the University of Regina is quoted praising having "a working level of a second language" in order to "appreciate what is going on in other parts of the world," and, of course, be able to improve business relations.

 I very nearly laughed when I read this. The University of Saskatchewan has been slowly strangling languages and linguistics programs and classes for even my short duration at the University. Getting a degree in French? If you don't plan your classes out perfectly, you could be looking at six years to get your degree because a course is only taught every second year. For me, as an English major trying to get enough languages to fill my language requirements for grad school, it was quite tricky to plan out my schedule when I had to choose based around the only two French courses I could take.

Even worse, due to budget cuts, first-year language classes are now taught in jumbo sessions of 100+ students. Luckily, I made it through when classes were limited to twenty people, and there were still opportunities to interact with the professor, engage in broken dialogue with other students, and participate in the other class dynamics that learning languages needs but jumbo classes just can't offer. The weekly smaller tutorial sessions? They can't make up for that much jumbo class time.

There's a smattering of German, Russian, and Ukrainian classes every year, and Spanish is generally popular. There's even a few Cree classes, which I think is awesome.

However, I can't help but think of the town halls held a few years back when administration was addressing student and faculty concerns of cuts in the humanities and fine arts. They began talking about teaching Chinese and other languages that there were a "demand" for. You could sense the disbelief in the crowd, and finally a student stood up and asked something along the lines of "How are you going to bring in new language programs when you hardly support the ones you have now?"

Currently, of course, the University of Saskatchewan is going through some (projected) financial troubles and is planning to make some massive cuts to the tune of $44.5 million, based on the "quality" of the program. The humanities and fine arts (or HumFA as we are now known, bleh) are understandably wary, and I'm not sure whether this new strategy bodes well or ill for the languages. Are languages that are inefficient and can't bring in business deals going to get scrapped? Why learn Ukrainian, a language very important to the history of Saskatchewan and Canada and still relevant culturally today, when Chinese is so much more economically relevant?

The article notes that "At this point, it's not clear how much money the government will funnel into its strategy." On the one hand, maybe the languages could gain some extra funding and exposure. On the other, I hope that if attempts are made to cut back other languages in favour of pumping up the business end of things, students, not just those involved in the languages, will raise their concerns loudly, and in as many languages as they know.