The colonial, monolingual model of US HE must be rethought

During the Civil War, the US Congress provided free land to civilian colleges that offered military training. The university system also projected “soft” government power in territories and states by implementing US holidays, icons, festivals, flags, monuments, working patterns – and English-only programmes.

In Puerto Rico, a US territory, the intrusion of English is key. The imperial structure links English to everything the future holds. It is the language of upward mobility, so to choose Spanish is interpreted as an abandonment of aspiration. Even the rebellious spirit is faced with an extreme choice: English or failure.

Speaking Spanish is seen by the US academy as a distraction, a problem, something to be erased by “inclusion”. Scholars who use Spanish are an awkward quandary rather than people with experiences, abilities and intellects that enrich their communities and expand the limits of knowledge. This is how you colonise a mind.

Hence, the bilingual approach of the University of Puerto Rico’s 11 campuses is tolerated by US “best practice” merely as a transition step. The colonial model demands that assessment, leadership and literacy itself ultimately be filtered exclusively through English.

Already, if we want accreditation, inclusion, research funding or student financial aid, we must apply in English. Even humanities agencies impose this imperative. If a human being sends an application in Spanish to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) or the American Council of Learned Societies – never mind the National Institutes of Health or the National Science Foundation – it will not be reviewed. Such agencies, in effect, refuse to recognise that we exist.

The Mellon Foundation and Fundación Puertorriqueña de las Humanidades disobey, receiving applications and reviewing proposals in Spanish. But other US funders and agencies treat lack of English proficiency as a mental, social and cultural disability that requires applicants to access “assistance services”, including translation. While communities with non-English experiences, knowledges and cultures are a resource for the academy, they are treated as a burden.

In such ways, non-English-speaking communities in Texas, Navajo Nation, Guam and California – but also Washington, Massachusetts and Oklahoma – are rewarded for moving towards English-only activity.

Some argue that it is necessary to impose one language for utility, like screws with a uniform standard. But these colonising narratives – and the universities enforcing them – dispose of everything built with other standards, so that they are rebuilt with imperial criteria. Translation does not merely change words: it is an aggressive devaluation of experiences lived in Spanish, an institutional attack on people who use it.

Spanish is central to the struggle against Puerto Rico going the way of Massachusetts, where the Wampanoag, Portuguese, Irish and others are silenced through monolingual education. Unlike the Wampanoag, the Portuguese, Irish and Puerto Ricans in Massachusetts and on the island have not been massacred or resettled in reserves, but their culture and language are massacred instead.

Forced monolingualism buries rich landscapes of knowledge and experience beneath fossilised English-only demands. English-only campuses have detrimental impacts beyond education. Studies of Latinx exclusion cite “specific challenges” such as “speaking, writing and thinking in English” and “being perceived as less smart and unworthy” than English speakers. Puerto Rican resistance to US “best practices” – in part per use of Spanish on our campus – means we graduate more Latina engineers than any other institution in the world.

Spanish is not a problem in Puerto Rico but in fact a key to our success. However, this is not celebrated or even noted by US institutions. The University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez is perhaps the top Spanish-language technical university in the world, but Puerto Rican education is not perceived as advanced or futuristic relative to the mainland. On the continent, they know what is best for Puerto Rico. We do not and cannot know: we are supposed to change according to their demands.

It is high time to rethink the colonial model of US higher education. As US enrolments shrink overall, Latinx matriculations are projected to grow 21 per cent by 2030. From Texas to the Pacific, in Florida and in nearly every US city, proficiency in Spanish is not simply useful but necessary. Nearly 10 million more Spanish speakers live in the US than in Spain. Why are higher education institutions not catering for them?

If the US academy institutionalised different language experiences – Spanish in Texas, Portuguese in Massachusetts – what would be silenced and what would be voiced? What can language make possible?

Puerto Rican “best practices” would allow the US academy to look beyond English, providing STEM experiences that recognise Spanish and other languages as scientific tools. It would align medical training and business preparation more closely with public needs. It would give English-only scholars new opportunities, with measurable cognitive benefits and broader employment prospects. And it would also allow pedagogy, research and community activities to be more reciprocal to students’ skills, needs and interests.

Democratising language policies would grow matriculation totals and the opportunities on campus while enriching the mission of the university.

Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera is a professor and director of the Instituto Nuevos Horizontes and Héctor José Huyke is a professor of philosophy at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez.