Hindi catches on in Amrikan schools

Uncle Sam is generously funding US schools to teach students foreign languages deemed vital to its economy and national security. First, it was Chinese and Arabic, and now there is a great effort to teach Hindi.

A few years ago, Edison, a New York suburb with a bustling Indian population of doctors, engineers and techies, became one of the first school districts in the US to use federal money to teach Hindi. Edison received a three-year grant of $897,500 in 2006. Part of the grant was for expanding the Hindi programme to other school districts.

Besides Edison, nationwide, two other districts, Dallas and Houston in Texas, also offer Hindi as a foreign language. Edison officials are now in talks with administrators in Piscataway High School in New Jersey to help them introduce Hindi next fall.

“The intent is for them to be able to develop our Hindi language programme as a curriculum,” said Martin Smith, the school’s world languages supervisor.
Edison is also working with Rutgers University to create fast-track Hindi teaching certificates.

The demand for Hindi teachers and course material has snowballed. Almost two decades ago, Arun Prakash accepted a job at Bellaire High School in Texas to teach the school’s first Hindi language course. After using photocopies and binders to teach his classes, Prakash came out with a 480-page textbook, Namaste Jii, which is believed to be the first high school Hindi textbook in the US.   

There is a growing demand for resourceful Hindi teachers like Prakash in US schools, colleges and foreign language learning centres. “I earn $25 to lead a 45-minute class every Saturday. There are five children in the class so it is very manageable,” said RP Singh, a sophomore who gives Hindi lessons at a language centre in Tribeca, in New York.

“Hindi may be my meal ticket. The US needs Hindi, Urdu translators to be able to intercept surveillance. I can look for a cool job like that after I finish college,” she added. “You can earn $75,000 a year if you are recruited by the US army for language interpretation and intelligence analysis.”
 
Stretched thin in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US military is now recruiting skilled immigrants living in the US on temporary visas, offering them the chance to become US citizens in as little as six months. The army is looking at immigrants who speak one or more of 35 languages, including Arabic, Chinese and Hindi. There is a premium on Hindi, Urdu and Pashtun-speaking soldier translators for Afghanistan.

“The American army finds itself in a lot of different countries where cultural awareness is critical,” said lieutenant general Benjamin C Freakley, the top recruitment officer for the army, which is leading the pilot program.

Top US universities, including the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Chicago, Princeton, Harvard, Yale and the University of Pennsylvania offer Hindi.