I grew up in a suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota. I graduated from Minnetonka High School, perennially ranked among the best high schools in the state and, consequently, the nation. Of course, that was eons ago, in 1990, before anyone knew what email or the internet was; years before Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Zoom became part of our daily lives.
Nonetheless, Minnetonka High School was considered quite visionary in the late 1980s when it became one of the first schools in the state to offer Mandarin Chinese classes. Some visionaries in the school district correctly identified the disproportionate role that China, and consequently its language, would play in global trade in the decades to come. It was a bold move that has now expanded; the school district now offers a variety of K-8 immersion programs in Mandarin, followed by Chinese language studies at the university level in high school.
The same kind of bold thinking is now needed regarding Portuguese. According to a comprehensive 2017 study by the American Council on the teaching of Foreign Languages on enrollments in world languages across the formal educational system in the U.S., Portuguese was offered in only 37 different high school programs, or 0.2% of all high schools in the U.S. These numbers are likely a bit conservative, as they do not account for smaller private schools and other non-traditional academic programs, but the trend is clear: for the sixth most spoken language in the world, with about 270 million native speakers – and particularly the language of a powerful economy like Brazil – more U.S. high schools
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should offer students the opportunity to learn Portuguese.
When it comes to world language curriculum, resources are always a limiting factor. However, why, compared to Portuguese, do over 1,500 high schools offer German, a language spoken by far fewer people – 130 million people worldwide? The fact that German has such a disproportionate influence on American high school curricula is nothing more than a vestige of America’s distant past, when German immigration was still ongoing and again later due to geopolitical considerations stemming from the two World Wars.
But times have changed, and it is high time that language offerings in high school be brought into the modern era as well. It is worth noting that Portuguese is not the only language that receives superficial treatment in American high schools. Arabic, Russian, Korean, Farsi, and Malay should be taught much more widely and could be considered far more strategic to American foreign interests than German and possibly even French, the second most widely available language taught after Spanish.
Nonetheless, here are five reasons why U.S. high schools, along with their students and parents, should more vigorously advocate for the inclusion of the Portuguese language in their local schools:
1. Job Security. Despite the large number of native speakers, few English speakers learn Portuguese as a second language compared to other global languages like Spanish and French. Historically, there has been intense interest among multinational corporations for English speakers fluent in Portuguese.
2. Brazil. With an annual GDP of nearly $2.5 trillion, the Brazilian economy is by far the second most robust in the Americas and the ninth largest in the world. And it is a country where English is still not widely spoken.
3. Angola. From 2000 to 2010, this oil and diamond-rich African nation was the fastest-growing economy in the world, boasting
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an average annual GDP growth of 11.1 percent. Its vast lands, waters, and mineral resources will make this former Portuguese colony a major player in Africa for decades to come.
4. Spanish vs. Portuguese. As someone who speaks both languages quite fluently, it is easy to see why the transition from Portuguese to Spanish is easier than the reverse. And Brazilians can understand any Spanish speaker, but the opposite does not occur easily without formal training.
5. It’s a Truly Global Language. Perhaps only English and French enjoy greater geographic penetration on a global scale. Portuguese is spoken in 11 countries across 4 continents and is the official language in nine of them. Unlike many languages that are losing speakers due to demographic aging, in the coming years, more and more people will speak Portuguese, primarily as a result of Brazil and Angola’s economic and demographic growth. UNESCO estimates that by 2050, Portuguese will be spoken by approximately 335 million people.
It is time for U.S. public schools to begin expanding the number of Portuguese language programs available to American high school students. Their futures may depend on it.
ARICK WIERSON
CNN columnist, television producer, and political consultant
Twitter: @ArickWierson