ABSTRACT
From the 1700s to the 1920s, the US government demonstrated a pattern of involvement in US schools through policy formation. The government's attempt to unify populations and develop consistent educational goals for common schools resulted in the promotion of English-only instruction (Saracho & Spodek, 2006; Spring, 2001, 2010, 2012). The subsequent formal Americanization movement resulted in negative perceptions of bilingualism and the decline in high school foreign language enrollment (Brown, 1943; Smith, 1923). To reignite interest in foreign language instruction in public schools and the US government, the Rockefeller Foundation invested millions of dollars in materials and scholarships related to foreign language education. One of the Foundation's largest initiatives was supporting the US Army Language School (ALS; Fosdick, 1952). Originally training service personnel in Japanese, the ALS quickly expanded to offer other languages (Aggeler, 1950; DLIFLC, 2017; Hempel & Mueller, 1959). The Language School's unique instructional practices, high-quality faculty, and cream-of-the crop students contributed to effectively maximizing foreign language acquisition in minimal time (Agard et al., 1945; Aggeler, 1950; Bess, 1954; Hempel & Mueller, 1959). The ALS later refined its instructional practices, which eventually trickled down into university and public-school language instruction (Agard et al., 1945). By the end of WWII, the US observed the merits of developing bilingual service personnel and responded with the passage of the Foreign Service Act (FSA) of 1946 (Liskin-Gasparro, 1984).
