How close are we to the reality of all students having the opportunity to learn another language and gaining support for these efforts from the general public? The answer has a long history, which we point out by referencing articles that span the 50‐year history of Foreign Language Annals. From the 1979 President's Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies report under President Jimmy Carter (Perkins, 1979) to the recent article by Kroll and Dussias (2017) on the benefits of multilingualism, this article tracks ACTFL's advocacy efforts over the years, including the 2017 launch of the Lead with Languages public awareness campaign and other initiatives such as the Seal of Biliteracy that are rapidly propelling our field closer to a “new normal” in the United States where language education is accessible to all and is viewed as essential to the well‐being of all Americans.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.