University of Virginia Library

Colloquium

Value Of Language Doubtful

By Charles S. Green, II

—ed.

I have listened this week to a
number of arguments on the value
of language area requirements in
our curriculum and it seemed to me
that only three or four basic points
were made in their defense:

• 1. That the various language
  departments would suffer a
  loss of assistantships and
  fellowships if language requirements
  were dropped. At
  least several of my colleagues
  observed that this outcome
  was not certain and that this
  argument was not germane to
  the issue.

• 2. That languages are relevant
  to future careers, in that
  research papers must be
  translated, teaching and
  traveling abroad requires
  languages, knowledge of
  foreign cultures can only be
  gained through studying
  foreign literatures in the
  original language, etc. Many
  of us felt the argument from
  relevance or utility to be a
  dubious basis for retaining
  language area requirements.

• 3. That languages have a
  liberalizing and humanizing
  effect on our students.

This last argument in particular
seemed to be most effective in
persuading this faculty to vote for
retaining language area requirements
rather than adopt the recommendations
of the Curriculum
Committee. Yet the argument is
based on the assumption that
language study, the study of foreign
literatures, and perhaps even the
whole traditional liberal arts curriculum
(in its various versions) exert
a humanizing and liberalizing effect
on our students.

No Evidence

But I failed to find anyone
citing any studies showing that in
fact the study of languages or, for
that matter, any other subject, has
the liberalizing, humanizing effect
attributed to them. I doubt if any
ch studies have been published.

I would like now to draw on a
piece of research which throws
serious doubt on the assumption
that any particular subject matter
has liberalizing or humanizing effects.
Unfortunately this study has
not been published, largely because
those of us interested and engaged
in it have scattered ourselves over
several continents and much of the
data must remain confidential.

In 1963 I was associated with
the Peace Corps Program at Cornell
University which was concerned
with the training of Peace Corps
Volunteers for (mainly) teaching
activities in Sierre Leone, West
Africa. Virtually all the Volunteers
were college graduates. Those of us
engaged in training activities were
especially concerned with:

• (a) Whether the courses of
  study provided the Volunteers
  would enable them to
  carry out their service successfully
  i.e., with a minimum
  of "culture shock," without
  alienating the people of
  Sierre Leone, etc.

• (b) What kinds of Volunteers
  would be most successful.

Standard Course

With respect to our first concern,
the program of study adopted
closely resembled a standard academic
course of studies. Besides
physical conditioning, courses in
first aid, courses in jeep driving,
etc., Volunteers received heavy
doses of Area Studies, dealing with
the politics, economics, sociology,
and anthropology of Africa in
general and Sierre Leone in particular.
We not only made use of
Cornell students and faculty with
competencies in African studies,
but imported numerous specialists.
In addition, Volunteers received
intensive language training in the
two major languages of Sierre
Leone, Mende and Temne, and also
in the Creole dialect used in the
major cities and towns. A full time
linguist supervised class and laboratory
sessions. He was assisted by six
Sierre Leone students who ate with
the Volunteers and participated in
all their training and extra-curricular
social activities. In addition,
Volunteers received lectures and
film sessions on African art, the day
to day activities in villages and
towns, history and geography, etc.

With respect to our second
concern, the kinds of Volunteers
who would most likely be successful,
we had no preconceptions. In
those early, idealistic years of the
Peace Corps there was no way of
knowing which or what kinds of
measures to use in predicting
success. Hence all measures were
used: college grades, personal
recommendations, the results of
individual and group psychiatric
sessions, sociometric tests, psychological
tests, grades in Peace Corps
training activities, evaluations by
Peace Corps instructors (ourselves),
and Volunteers' self-reports of their
prior educational experiences and
life histories. We selected a number
of criteria of success: dropping out,
or being "selected out," of the
Program; leaving Africa before the
two year period of service was up,
for other than health reasons;
expressed dissatisfaction or inn-effectiveness
by the Volunteers
and/or by their supervisors in
Africa. While by the time this group
of Volunteers had finished their
two years of service most of us who
had trained then had scattered, we
were able through correspondence
with each other and with the
Volunteers to begin to draw some
tentative conclusions.

Two Measures

Only two kinds of predictive
measures seemed to be related to
our criteria of success, and these
measures were themselves closely
related. Success was most closely
related to Volunteers' scores on
psychological tests measuring dogmatism
and authoritarianism and to
their self-reports on their prior
educational experiences. In particular:
those who were successful had
gone to schools where classes were
small, where there was close contact
between students and professors,
where students felt intellectually
challenged, and where independent
study and projects were
encouraged. It is perhaps not
accidental that otherwise diverse
colleges which have these characteristics
colleges such as Antioch,
St. Johns, Wesleyan, Reed, Sarah
Lawrence, Oberlin, Swarthmore,
Bere are noted for the high
proportion of their graduates going
on to graduate school and to
eminence in the Arts, the Sciences,
and even business and the military
on occasion.

Irrelevant Content

It would therefore seem that
what is taught, the content of a
curriculum, may be irrelevant in
liberalizing and humanizing young
people. The factor responsible for
liberalizing and humanizing appears
to be the process of education. I it
encourages students to cultivate the
ability to think for themselves
rather than regurgitating back to s
their lecture notes; I it encourages
them to make difficult moral
choices; I it encourages them to
construct a program of study wisely
by deciding among a host of
alternatives; I it encourages them
to create their own philosophy and
style of life from diverse cultural
materials and possibilities. The
medium, therefore, is the message.

Abolish Requirements

Since we are all presumably
interested in producing liberalized,
humanized graduates, I suggest that
we give far greater attention to the
educational process itself. And in
fostering that aim I hereby move
the abolition of all area requirements
from the curriculum.