By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — Studying a foreign language helps prepare students to compete for jobs in the global marketplace, witnesses testified today before a legislative committee studying the possibility of attaching a foreign language requirement to lottery-funded college scholarships.

The Higher Education Subcommittee of the House Interim Committee on Education is conducting an interim study on a proposal by Rep. Randy Stewart, D-Kirby, to create the requirement. It heard testimony Friday from several witnesses in support of the idea, including John Miller, an executive with Dassault Falcon Jet, which operates a plant in Little Rock.

Miller said the plant, whose employees speak 23 languages, contributes about $1 million in tax revenues and about $129 million in gross income and wages to the state’s economy annually. He said the plant expects to deliver 1,000 corporate jets to China over the next 10 years and that companies in Russia, India and Brazil are expected to be the next largest buyers.

“Not only is it a nice thing to have a foreign language and impress the relatives, but to compete in today’s society, and for Little Rock and Arkansas to continue these revenue streams, we must continue to provide our young people with more than reading, writing and arithmetic,” Miller said. “It is clear that without foreign language skills our graduates are at a distinct disadvantage in today’s global market.”

Jennifer Deacon, secretary of the Arkansas chapter of the American Association of Teachers of French, told the panel research has shown that the longer a student studies foreign languages, the higher the student is likely to score on college aptitude tests. Also, college retention rates are higher among students who studied foreign languages before college, she said.

“It enhances their cognitive ability,” she said.

Barbara Culpepper, unit coordinator for the state Education Department’s Office of Teacher Quality, testified that Arkansas has an agreement with China under which Chinese teachers will teach Mandarin Chinese in at least five Arkansas school districts starting in the 2012-13 school year.

Houston, New York, Philadelphia and Portland are poised to launch Mandarin Chinese programs, she said.

“I feel like … Arkansas needs to be right there with them,” Culpepper said. “We don’t want our children to feel like they’ve got to go to Chicago to get what they need to succeed in this world.”

Rep. Garry Smith, D-Camden, said he believes the state is “headed in the right direction.”

“The fences are all down. For our 21st century graduates to be competitive, they must have a foreign language experience, whether it’s Chinese, Spanish, or whatever, but they need to be bilingual,” he said.

Stewart, the subcommittee’s vice chairman, filed a bill in this year’s legislative session to require two years of a foreign language in high school as a requirement to be eligible for an Arkansas Academic Challenge Scholarship. The bill died in committee.

Arkansas currently requires high schools to offer at least two years of foreign language courses but does not require students to take the courses. Foreign language classes previously were a requirement for the Academic Challenge Scholarship, but the Legislature removed that requirement when the program began receiving funding from the state lottery last year.