38 - Season 3 - STARTALK: Another Peace Corps for the 21st Century

America the Bilingual

On September 11, 2001, the value of knowing another language was probably the last thing on the minds of most Americans. But 9/11 revealed another fissure in this country’s infrastructure: the thousands of jobs going unfilled in our intelligence agencies because not enough Americans speak the language of the countries these agencies must understand. The Department of Defense has done something about it, funding a summer program throughout the country to teach what it identified as critical-need languages. Called STARTALK, the program is the reason why some Americans now speak Russian, Korean, Arabic and Urdu. In Episode 38 of America the Bilingual , host Steve Leveen talks with teachers and students who are strengthening America’s linguistic infrastructure through STARTALK