Education Reform in the United States of Hispanic-America

The Instituto Cervantes reported in 2015 that about 51 million native speakers of Spanish lived in the United States. Such statistics are always suspect. Some estimates put the current number at 57 million. Then, there are about 11 million Spanish-speaking students with varying abilities. Given the open-border policy of the Biden Administration, we can probably add another 10 million on top of that. Let’s be honest and round up to 80 million. I wager even this number is low.

The first-order conclusion is the obvious one.

The U.S. is now the second largest Spanish-speaking country after Mexico, with about 128 million inhabitants. And it’s not even close. The U.S. has nearly twice as many Spanish speakers as the third largest country Spain at 46 million.

The second-order conclusion is less obvious and more disorienting.

When we consider birth rates and immigration trends, the number of Spanish speakers in the U.S. will likely overtake the population of Mexico sometime in the next fifty years. The pull of the most powerful economy on earth is unlikely to diminish compared to the economies of the twenty Spanish-speaking countries south of the Río Bravo. Then there’s the push of the high rates of corruption and collectivist decay in those countries. Recently, Mexico’s outgoing socialist president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, declared his intention to turn his country’s judiciary into a mechanism for single-party rule. Similar policies consume or threaten Cuba, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Colombia, Guatemala, and Venezuela, and so the immigrants will keep coming.

It’s hard to grasp the velocity of this change. But consider that in 1900 the Spanish-speaking population in the U.S. was roughly 500,000 out of 76 million inhabitants, or 0.65 percent. Today, we have 80 million out of 350 million, or 23 percent. It’s unreasonable to think this number won’t be over 50 percent by the end of this century.

Moreover, the 80 million number obfuscates the reality of a more concentrated and, thus, more rapid transformation.

Already, California, Texas, and Florida have experienced decisive changes that will continue to increase faster than elsewhere. This means that the influx of Spanish-speaking immigrants has affected and will continue to affect the culture, economy, and politics of the U.S. in ways that the rest of the country cannot fully appreciate. John Jay spoke of “tides” in human affairs (see Federalist 64). He had in mind mass movements and revolutions in the mentalities of citizens, but he might as well have meant the demographic march that is upon us.

The map below shows the population by county of people defined as “Hispanic” fifteen years ago. Not all of these people speak Spanish, but most do, and the demographic shift in language preference would surely produce a similar map. And what it shows has only intensified over the last fifteen years.

United States Census Bureau — 2010 US Census Hispanic Population by County — Wikimedia Commons

In short, a tidal wave has already swamped the U.S., and it’s destined to grow.

This massive demographic shift means a radical influx of new cultural norms and values. Some of these are innocuous—such as cuisine and music. As a Texan, it has been mildly annoying to hear classic rock radio stations give up the ghost and turn to música norteña and ranchera. But I’m happy to report that my answer to the classic “If you could only eat one dish for the rest of your life” has finally changed—it’s now chicken enchiladas with mole, served with sides of black beans and rice. Of course, I’d have to snack on broccoli and spinach throughout the day to get my greens, but it’d definitely be worth it.

Other cultural changes implied by this demographic wave, however, are more meaningful—such as language, social habits, and political attitudes. One of the most significant is the effect of our linguistic pivot on the education sector. Indeed, because education affects social habits and political attitudes, this sector is arguably the most important.

Two points. (1) Any proposal for education reform that doesn’t account for the fact that the U.S. is on course to be the largest Spanish-speaking country on earth isn’t serious. (2) Any proposal for education reform that seeks to push back against the ignorance of collectivist and anti-free market ideas, and which doesn’t account for the fact that the U.S. is on course to be the largest Spanish-speaking country on earth, not only isn’t serious; it amounts to sticking your head in the sand at the bottom of a river.

I’m perplexed when I hear education reformers in the U.S. argue for more principled, traditional humanities or civics courses or even for more courses in science, technology, engineering, business, and mathematics without making the slightest effort to take into account the present and future predominance of the Spanish language. On what fantasy planet do these people live? Even more striking is the fact that many of these reformers are focused precisely on Florida, Texas, and California.

I have three basic questions for such reformers—these usually go unanswered.

(1) Are you prepared to offer Spanish-language courses focused on math, basic measurements, laboratory concepts, personal finance, and major scientific theories?
(2) Are you prepared to offer courses on the history of political and economic freedom in the Hispanic world?
(3) Are you prepared to offer courses that investigate the ways in which the Anglo and Hispanic worlds have cross-fertilized their respective traditions of respect for individual rights, limited government, and free markets?

Again, any education reform that does not do these things is listing before it leaves port.

Eventually, the bilingual problem in the U.S. will fade away as English recedes into minority status and then vanishes altogether. But that will probably take 150 years. For now, teaching substantial courses on everything from science and history to economics and civics in Spanish and to speakers of Spanish and learners of Spanish is a pragmatic necessity.

A possible wildcard here is Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI might translate everything instantaneously and pipe it straight into our brains. Or, coming generations of children might be raised by humanoid robots who will train them in two languages from a very early age. In these cases, individuals and their families will decide when it is finally appropriate to flip the switch and move us entirely into Spanish. But if AI addresses my first question above concerning the availability of vocabulary for science and math, I’m not so sure it handles the other two, which seek to bridge the different cultures transmitted by each language.

If we want to preserve freedom and justice, we ought to remind the incoming Hispanic population of the juridical, sociopolitical, and economic concepts that it has abandoned for so long such that it’s now forced to flee the consequences in countries like Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Mexico. By the same token, any new or reformed university in the Western Hemisphere that chooses not offer a course on Bolívar, Tocqueville, Jefferson, Palafox, and Cervantes in Spanish, for example, is not serious. Yes, I’m biased, but I’m also serious.

Art by Miguel Ángel Blázquez at Bookman