THE DEMAND FOR TEACHERS OF FRENCH AND SPANISH
By H. Carrington Lancaster, Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University
When I was asked to come here to-day and offer some constructive criticism
in order to show how the University would best fulfil its function in
regard to the teaching of French and Spanish, I felt somewhat overwhelmed
by the thought that the institution where I learned to appreciate this field
of knowledge should turn to me for suggestions concerning it. But I soon
came to the conclusion that you really regard me as one of many scouts
you have been sending out and that I am now called back to headquarters
merely to report on conditions as I have found them. What you prefer to
hear from me must be the conclusion to which I have come as a result of
finding myself at one of those cross roads in academic life where students
come to prepare themselves for the profession of scholar and teacher; and
college presidents to fill up gaps in their faculties.
From the outlook that I get from that observation post I have no hesitation
in saying that the great need of the profession just now is student raw
material of the quality that is produced here at Virginia. This has not
always been the case, for there was a time when our greatest need was of
another sort. But in recent years opportunities for graduate study in the
Romance languages have been greatly improved. Universities are better
equipped in books and scientific journals. The intercollegiate library loan
helps to supply the books that many institutions cannot buy. There is a
far greater variety of specialists than formerly in the various fields. There
are more numerous reviews in which they can publish their work. Opportunities
for study abroad have increased decidedly. When I was a student
it was rarely, if at all, that a man went to Europe on a traveling or research
fellowship. Now there are special organizations that provide scholarships
generously and many universities have traveling fellowships of their own.
Moreover French and Spanish scholars are more ready to coöperate
with us than they used to be. American exchange professorships, clubs like
the American University Union in Paris, and most of all the war itself have
helped to bring us all together. Proposals are now pending that may
enable Americans to study for the doctorat-ès-lettres.
In our own Universities, as well as in the French, Romance philology
and medieval literature are no longer taught to the exclusion of modern
literature, so that another reason that may formerly have kept students out
of the Romance field has ceased to exist.
Statistics recently published in the Modern Language Journal, though
by no means complete, illustrate the great increase among students of these
subjects. In some 109 colleges and universities there were, in 1914, 10,177
students of French; in 1920 there were 19,501. In 1914 there were only
2049 students of Spanish in those institutions; in 1920 there were 12,545.
Indeed, whether we approve or disapprove of this orientation in cultural
studies, the fact is that the public is coming to look upon the Romance
languages next to English, as the chief subject for study among the humanities;
upon the Romance languages with History as the chief subjects by
which we can learn to understand our neighbors in Europe and in Latin
America.
So large is the number of those who study French in an important
western university that the department has had to limit the size of beginners'
sections, but the limit is forty! It is superfluous for me to point out
to you the kind of results one gets from classes of this size unless one is an
adept in the college yell method of instruction which had, as you remember,
a certain vogue in army camps a few years ago.
But with even so generous a limitation there are not enough teachers for
the classes. When I left the Johns Hopkins in June, 1907, there were only
two openings that I had heard of and I was in a position to hear of any that
were reported to the department. This year, my colleagues and I in the
same department have been written to by the authorities in seven colleges
and nine universities. In the list occur a number of our leading institutions
and all of the positions are such that they would give a satisfactory start
to a Ph.D in Romance languages. In some cases we have been able to
supply the man or the woman needed, but in most cases we have not been
able to do so. We are considerably embarrassed by our inability to meet
this demand. The kind of man they usually want is one who understands
the American college boy, who has been abroad enough to speak French or
Spanish with fluency, who can interpret a foreign literature and a foreign
civilization with understanding, and who has shown in his own scholarship
enough originality and energy for him to be counted on for future additions
to the general knowledge of the subject.
Now we do get Ph.D. students who will develop into this type of man,
but we get far too few. And when I say we, I do not mean merely the
University with which I am connected, for I am sure you will get the same
reply from Chicago and Princeton, from Columbia and from Harvard. And
where are we going to turn?
Not, I think, to foreigners to any considerable extent. Several of them
are among our leading scholars and teachers, but their numbers are strictly
limited and necessarily so. Initial difficulties with our speech, more serious
difficulties with our ways militate against the success of many. Those who
have already won fame in their own country are not likely to leave it permanently.
We must, then, depend chiefly on Americans, just as France
depends upon Frenchmen for instruction in English.
What we do need is the graduate of an American college with enough
cultural background and capacity for work to get his training by graduate
study here and in France. While I taught in Amherst College I used every
year to see men graduating that were just the kind we needed, but most of
them were going into business. I suppose that much the same situation is
found here to-day, though I think it was better here in 1903. I wonder if
something cannot be done about it? Certainly business is far less attractive
now than it was a year or two ago. An economist said to me the other day:
"It's a good thing to have hard times now and then; if we didn't, everybody
would go into business." I hope that we can at least take advantage of this
opportunity, when business does not offer its former attractions, and put
before undergraduates the advantages and values of our profession.
And I wonder if this task is not particularly the province of our Alma
Mater. A French friend of mine the other day, after a visit to Mount
Vernon, told me that he had been much impressed by the similarity between
the life in Virginia before the Civil War, as he saw it exemplified there, and
life in France, so much so that he thought that those who were familiar
with our older culture would have a special aptitude for understanding
things French. Perhaps he was carried too far by a pleasant visit to Virginia
or by his politeness to me, but there is, after all, at least this much
truth in what he said. It was particularly here in Virginia that a form of
American civilization was developed in which, to use a consecrated phrase,
men were primarily interested in the art of living, which is, of course, the
essential vocation of the Romance peoples. And while we have doubtless
in many instances sold our birth-right for somewhat dubious advantages of
another sort, there surely remains something of the old spirit in the state
and especially here at the University. So that is one reason why one may
turn to Virginia with hope of a genuine response.
Another reason is—Dr. Wilson. If there is anything that stands out in
my memory of the years I passed here, it is the charm of his teaching. And
from what the alumni tell me he has never lost his rare gift of making
Romance civilization real and vital, of inspiring students with a devotion to
the subject he teaches that may carry them through life. If then, you ask
me how the University will best fulfil its function in regard to Romance
languages, I should say that it would be by making a serious effort, under the
guidance of Dr. Wilson, to interest men who are graduating here in going on
with post-graduate work in order to fit themselves for meeting the very
general and insistent demand for teachers who are in the best sense scholars
and interpreters of foreign manners and of foreign thought.
