Liberal Arts Language Requirement: Theory And Practice

Abstract

Periodically, die value of die liberal arts language requirement is questioned and sometimes reduced or abolished, followed by serious consequences. This seems to be as inevitable as the seasons. Foreign language study in America has always been a sometime affair (now emphasized, now neglected), in spite of the Army Service Training Program of World War II and die new methods which grew out of it. Paul A. Miller, Assistant Secretary for Education of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, has said that foreign language study is often no more than a casual nod to convention and that language at the graduate level is for most a shallow charade. Mr. Miller is persuaded, however, that competence in one or more of the major world languages other than one's own is the key prerequisite in the curriculum, and our present curriculum must be carefully articulated and planned in anticipation of the coming revolution in international education.1 This comment alone, expressing the concept that the education of modern man will be incomplete unless it includes the integrated experience of a foreign culture, plus the fact that in many institutions of the nation die requirement of foreign language for the undergraduate degree is being reduced or abolished, are enough to motivate us to reassess the part tiiat languages play in die liberal arts curriculum. We should be reexamining our philosophy, our course offerings, and our methods, and making known our belief in those values. Naturally, when the foreign language requirement is removed from an institution's curriculum, enrollment figures in foreign languages may tend to plunge downward, and teachers may be urged to move elsewhere, if not out of the profession. Then the nation may be caught unprepared when an emergency arises, having discarded sometiiing of value.