University of Virginia Library

Language Essential

Your editorial "Faculty Fiefdoms"
in The Cavalier Daily for
Friday, December 5, is not especially
helpful in clarifying student
opinion.

I offered to give the keynote
speech in the campaign for the
retention of the language requirement,
out of a conviction, rein-
ford by a lifetime of experience
in Europe and America, that
knowledge of a foreign language is
an essential part of the equipment
of an educated person. The Department
of Art asks nothing from the
language departments and expects
to receive nothing. Our program
will stand or fall on its own merits.
There was no slightest hint of
"faculty politics" involved in our
support of the language requirement.

You refer the intelligent student
to computer translations. I wonder
how much of the quality of Dante,
Goethe, or Racine the computer
would leave intact, or, in fact, what
use a computer would be to the
student attempting to make his way
through a foreign country. You are
quite right in contending that most
college language teaching is insufficient
or actual utility. I, for one,
was abominably taught in Italian at
Columbia University many years
ago. I now speak, read and write
that language with some case and
fluency, achieved by long residence
in Italy. But I went there with at
least a knowledge of the basic
structure of the language, without
which I would have had a hard time
indeed, My contention was and
remains that language is an essential
means to extricate us from cultural
provincialism and to broaden our
international horizons.

In a college from which, as it
now appears, 25 per cent of the
students graduate each year with a
cumulative grade-point average of
less than 2.0, it is fair to ask what
else besides languages such students
will recall after graduation - even
in their major subjects.

Although as an historian and
critic of the arts I cannot share a
sociologist's feelings about the
value of language, I was deeply
impressed by Mr. Greene's principal
argument at yesterday's meeting,
ably summarized by your reporter.
So undoubtedly were many of my
colleagues, even while voting down
Mr. Greene's proposal. We would
indeed have a far more vital and
effective educational experience at
the University of Virginia if all
except a few spectacular lecture
courses could be given as "small
classes, with close contact, opportunity
for independent studies, and
the exposure to difficult moral
decisions."

Can such a system really be tried
out at a state university? How large
a faculty would it require? Where
would we find them?

Let us clear the air of charges
and counter-charges, in the faculty
meetings and in your columns, and
stick to the problems before us.
Who knows, we might even solve
some of them.