University of Virginia Library

THE PRESENT CRISIS IN MODERN LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION

By Robert Herndon Fife, Ph.D., Columbia University

The bromidic remark, heard very often three years ago, that "things
will never be the same after the war" has proved as true a prediction in the
field of modern language instruction as in other fields. The war seemed at
first to bring an immense increase of interest in our subject. For the first

time in history America sent its soldiers to fight on the soil of Europe, with
its sharp linguistic divisions and rivalries. To hundreds of thousands of
young Americans, French ceased to be a memory of the school bench or an
unreal tradition of something far off and unknown and became the daily
speech of comrades in trench and field and of a citizenry bound to ourselves
in the daily routine of a common cause. German, somewhat more often
heard here as a living language, and consequently more vital to us, was no
longer merely the vernacular of handworker or cheese-and-butter merchant,
but became the expression of the spirit, living in the mouth of prisoner or
captor, of a nation in arms, seeking to destroy our ideals. Italian and Polish,
Russian and Bohemian, Servian and Roumanian and Greek, all shot into
reality and half a dozen more tongues forced themselves as living organisms
into the consciousness of the youth of America, which up to that time had
scarcely dreamed of their existence.

The first result of all this was to demonstrate how insufficient and unpractical
our instruction in the modern languages had been. Young men
and women, who had spent precious years in the acquisition of what they
fondly imagined was a practical knowledge of the French language, found
themselves face to face with Frenchmen and unable to understand the first
word or express the most urgent want, and even months of intercourse
with the people of the country was insufficient to do more than supply the
means of conveying the simplest daily needs, because of the lack of a proper
basis of training in idiom and vocabulary.

One immediate consequence of the declaration of war was a tremendous
growth of interest in the language of the associated nation on whose soil
the western front was drawn. In camp and cantonment, in school and club
the size of the classes in French depended only on the number of available
teachers. These teachers were often blind leaders of the blind; but if they
had been the most expert of their profession, the conditions under which
they had to work could have made anything like real success out of the
question. For it now became generally clear, something which of course
was known already to the trained teacher, that the use of a modern language
for any practical purpose is an art which, to be acquired successfully,
needs the plasticity of youth and a perseverance and method which the
crowded months of the war could not admit. The urgent days of the
struggle and of repatriation of the forces did little more for the study of the
foreign modern languages than to show the defects in our system.

This revelation of defect was, however, of sanitary value, for it came at
a time when America's changed position as a result of the Great War put a
practical knowledge of the modern languages among the absolute imperatives
of national security. Whatever currents may flow on the surface of
the political waters, however politicians who have been washed to the top

by the muddy ebb-tide of war may prate of American isolation or appeal to
short-sighted selfishness with smug platitudes about America's national
interests, the intertwining of our affairs with those of Europe cannot be
undone. Economic forces as irresistible as those geological changes that
come with the cooling of the planetary crust have set us down among
Frenchmen and Italians and Germans and Poles and Czechs and Russians
and have made us industrially dependent on these peoples. Heretofore it
has been simply the bonds of a common civilization that have held us to the
Continent, and these have been drawn mainly through England. From
now on it is the life cords of economic preservation and national development
which unite our banks and farms and factories to the capitals and
commercial centers of every European country. We have recently witnessed
the effort, more or less disguised, of both former associates and foes
to make America out of its wealth pay the cost of the outbreak of European
jealousy and ambition. We may rest assured that unless we are fully
equipped for defense in the field of international finance and commerce, we
shall not only find ourselves paying the German indemnity and rebuilding
France but left behind in the planetary race for commerce which is even now
being staged.

Unfortunately also, the war has brought about changes in modern
language instruction which have left us poorly prepared to face the present
crisis. German has been very largely driven from the schools. This came
as a result of conditions which brought us into the conflict and through the
impulsive character of our national temperament; but the consequences
have been none the less destructive and from the standpoint of national
strength deplorable, for in 1917 German was, as a rule, the best taught of the
foreign languages and as a branch of secondary school and collegiate instruction
was in many parts of the country on the way to develop a methodology
of teaching at least on a par with that of the better English schools
and not far below that of the Continental schools themselves. French
was immediately lifted into a position of tremendous importance, with the
resulting overcrowding of classes. Teachers, whose sole equipment consisted
of some knowledge of the French verbs and the buoyant disposition
that came with the outburst of national enthusiasm, were put in charge of
classes where overcrowding would have made success impossible under the
most experienced instructor. Spanish, which five years ago was scarcely
known as a high school subject in the New England, North Atlantic, and
Middle Western states has, through the indifference of school directors and
as a result of an unheard-of propaganda, been given an importance among
school subjects which is far out of proportion to its cultural and scientific
value, and in most sections of our country in no relation whatever
to its commercial significance. As a matter of course, no consideration

whatever has been given to the desperate lack of trained teachers of Spanish.
Many men and women, formerly efficient teachers of German, have become
inefficient and discouraged teachers of Spanish. While it must be said of
these that they have at least had some general pedagogical experience in
modern language instruction, which may in part compensate for an ignorance
of Spanish, a great number of the newly recruited teachers of Spanish
lacks even this asset.

It would be bad enough if we had simply destroyed our former values.
We have done more. We have shaken the confidence of school superintendents
and the public generally in the teaching of the modern languages.
From every side comes the statement that pupils are discouraged and
unwilling to continue the subject, that school principals have either reduced
the already insufficient time assigned to the modern languages or threaten
to eliminate them altogether, that school committees are not sympathetic,
that parents are restive and want to see their children taught something
where demonstrably useful results may be obtained.

It must be said that the attitude of certain modern language teachers is
not of a character to recommend the subjects which they represent. At a
time when the value of violent and persistent propaganda has been demonstrated
to a sufficiency in every country in the world, the modern language
teacher has not failed to note the lesson and has cried his wares with an
insistency that does credit to a commercial age. The German teacher, to
be sure, has been under the shadow; but with the coming of technical peace
he may be trusted to rush to the fore with the others. In the meantime the
representatives of French have found conditions most favorable. The
Spanish and Latin propagandists have fought merrily over the bones of
German instruction and proclaimed the value of their substitute with
unhalting voice. The advocates of Russia were warming up for an advance
on the schools in 1917, when certain events in St. Petersburg brought their
advance to a sudden halt. Italian has a small but vociferous band of devotees.
Brazilian trade,—or its promise,—brought Portuguese to the fore
in certain cities, while the nationalistic urge from Ireland and commercial
prospects in the Orient have led to an enthusiastic demand that the schools
teach Gaelic and Chinese. In the larger cities of the East there are signs
that Poles and Czechs and Jugo-Slavs look yearningly toward a share in the
modern language programs of the schools supported by public funds.

Under these circumstances it is inevitable that the public mind should
be greatly confused as to the purpose of modern language study. The
nationalistic propaganda which the war has so much intensified fills the air
with its watchwords and seeks to make a battle-ground of our American
schools. Even those who should be able to take an expert and objective
view of education are often unclear in their own minds as to the object of

teaching foreign modern languages and the choice of the languages to be
taught, so that the average teacher is left without any proper idea of purpose
and method. School committees and school principals, all too ready to
yield to local political and quasi-political pressure, are without direction or
leadership and swing with the emotional currents of the day. In view of this
chaotic condition, it may be proper in the few minutes remaining to me to
formulate some ideas on this matter. Aside from the importance of the
national crisis, there are two considerations which make the discussion of the
problem peculiarly proper on this occasion. First, the great interest which
Mr. Jefferson took in instruction in the modern languages both at William
and Mary and at this institution, which was the first in America to teach the
modern languages as carefully as the classical; and, secondly, the distinguished
position which the graduates of this University have taken in the
service of the nation. It is from this standpoint, that of service to the
country rather than that of benefit to be derived by the individual, that
the subject should be viewed in the present crisis.

From this viewpoint, then, there are three purposes from which the
study of modern languages derives importance: for trade and commerce,
for scientific research, and for national culture. I need make no apology
at the present time for placing the cultivation of our national trade in the
first position, since through its success alone can the national bases of wealth
and progress be made permanent. It is not necessary to point out that the
time has passed when we can hope to be self-dependent, either as an industrial
nation or as a producer of raw materials. It is well known that even
before the war the United States was organized industrially to a point where
foreign markets had become a necessity for our factories, and the years from
1914-1918 speeded up this organization until not merely the prosperity,
but even the solvency of great communities in the New England and North
Atlantic states and the Middle West depend on gaining foreign markets.
It is also too well known to repeat that the war has made us a creditor
nation, something which creates an entirely new dependency on the maintenance
of intimate relations with Europe and the Orient. In the race for
the world's business we shall now have to strike into a faster pace than
that which marked our easy-going methods of seven or eight years ago.
This is perfectly clear to those who will look across the two oceans and see
how the nations of the world are stripping themselves for the conflict.
The knowledge of foreign languages was not the least of the assets which
Germany possessed before the war and by means of which she was able to
elbow her way into the front rank of exporting nations after 1895. That
is a lesson which England especially has learned from her rival. The
appointment of a committee to investigate modern studies, by Mr. Asquith
in 1916, and its important report show how fully the eyes of the British had

been opened to the necessity for overcoming the advantage which Germany
enjoyed in this field before the war. Unless American banks and exporters
and importers can find young Americans who have laid at least a sound basis
for the command of the leading languages of commerce, they will have to
entrust their trade commissions and trade secrets to foreigners. In the race
for primacy in trade the two great rivals whom we shall meet in every market
are the British and Germans, both of whom have through their geographical
position superior advantages in learning modern languages. We
must not be deceived by the fact that we enjoy for the present advantages in
capital and the disposal of raw materials. The time is not distant when
American business will have to meet the foreign trader on a battle-ground
where educational equipment will count as heavily as material assets.

The second great national demand in modern language instruction
comes in the field of scientific research. Both in the natural sciences and
the human sciences America has to create and maintain the bases
of national greatness. In the steel industry, in textiles, in the chemical
trades and in every branch of electrical technique and agricultural chemistry
and biology, an up-to-date knowledge of the languages of the other
great producing nations is in a new sense a part of the alphabet of the
scientist. The war has made the sciences more truly international than ever
and has welded into an indissoluble union laboratory experiment and
national production, both agricultural and industrial. No nation can
afford to rest its knowledge of what is being accomplished in foreign laboratories
to any great extent on the circumlocutory methods of translation.
Its scholars, down to the last laboratory assistant, must be trained in at
least the chief languages of research. If this is true of the physical scientist,
it is equally true of the historian, the economist, and the philosopher. The
possibilities of national culture and the ability for leadership depend on the
ability to take part in the great international exchange of ideas with those
nations which aspire to leadership in civilization.

National greatness depends not only on factory and farm, on scientist's
laboratory and scholar's study. It depends also upon the ability of
the great mass of educated men and women, especially such molders of
public opinion as clergymen, journalists, and political leaders, to share
at least to some extent, in the culture of other peoples. Some one has said
that while training makes men better citizens, culture makes them better
men. No nation, least of all America, can live to itself. We believe ourselves
engaged in the creation of a peculiar and original type of national
culture, but the whole basis for it in school and college is that European
culture from whose loins our own has sprung. In this sense our national
history is the prolongation of the history of England, Holland, France,
Germany, Italy, and Spain, and to some extent of the Scandinavian North.

Our poets are the heirs of Burns and Tennyson, to be sure, but also of Dante
and Goethe. Our drama is sprung from the stock of the English stage,
from Shakespere to Shaw, but also from the French realists and Ibsen
and Hauptmann. Our novel traces a long line of ancestors, which include
not only Fielding and Thackeray, but also Cervantes and Mérimée. No
American national culture is thinkable that does not rest on what is best and
most characteristically national in the civilization of Western Europe,
none that does not keep step with the philosophical, political, and economic
theory and the belletristic literature of the great peoples across the Atlantic.

The question as to the choice of modern languages for study in the
American schools and colleges is not one that can be decided a priori.
America is large and the various contacts with its continental and trans-marine
neighbors make varying demands on its business and professional
life. A very strong reason for the study of Spanish exists in the Gulf States
and Southwestern states. The importance of the Oriental trade makes it
advisable to give especial attention on the Pacific coast to the languages of
the Far East. Nevertheless, for the great bulk of American youth the question
has to be decided on broadly national grounds, with a full consciousness
of the great significance of the decision. As a rule our schools can offer no
more than two foreign languages and they do well, indeed, if they can give
efficient instruction in these. In comparison with this last consideration, the
quality of instruction, all others are of secondary importance. It is much
better to do French or German well, for instance, than to try to do French and
German, or French, German and Spanish, as has been tried in many poorly
equipped schools. It must be remembered that while each language has
concrete values and peculiar charm, when a choice is made, regard must be
had to all the factors of national service that have been outlined above.
Thus, while Italian ranks very high for the student of literature and perhaps
also of the theory of the State, its value in other fields is in so far negligible
that it cannot come into consideration where the limit is two languages for
the average high school boy or college boy. It must be emphasized also
that our schools and colleges teach a European history and civilization and
that we live to a great degree from a foreign trade that is in the main European,
though increasingly Latin-American and Oriental. In the economy of
educational life we are driven to confine ourselves to those languages which
open widest the door to all sides of business and cultural possibilities.

For purposes of general culture French stands first for the American
student as for the youth of every people in Europe. The justice of this is so
generally recognized by all who have any knowledge of the history of
Europe since the Crusades and of present-day European conditions that it
seems unnecessary to enlarge upon it. In assigning the second position from
this standpoint, one might select Italian, but for one very important consideration.

As French has been for generations the lingua franca for the
culture of Western Europe, German plays the same rôle to the East of the
Rhine and north of the Alps. For centuries even those nations which, like
the Poles and Czechs, have been in arms against the German advance have
depended upon Germany as their medium of communication with Western
Europe for all branches of culture as well as for business. The same is true,
though to a less degree, of the Scandinavian peoples, and to an even greater
extent of the peoples of the Eastern Baltic and Russia. To their own
immense and significant contributions to physical and historical theory and
economic theory and also to those of their neighbors to the East and North
the Germans open a door which must of necessity pass through Central
Europe. From the Scandinavian tier of states, Ibsen and Björnson and
Strindberg and such moderns as Bojer and Nexö and Lagerlöf found their
way into world literature first through German translations. The same
is true of Tolstoy and Gorki and Sienkiewicz and of dozens of minor novelists,
dramatists, poets, and essayists of the Scandinavian and Slavic world, many
of whom would remain unknown outside their own vernacular but for the
busy German translators.

In the field of science the same is true. Here only two languages really
come into consideration, German and French: the latter through the accomplishment
of its scholars in the fields of the mathematical and historical
sciences, medicine and philosophy; the former through its philosophers,
chemists, physicists, biologists, geologists, and mineralogists. Here again
German plays a significant and indispensable rôle as the intermediary between
West and East. For instance, all of the states that came into existence
as a result of the dissolution of the Austrian Empire and the plucking
off of parts of old Russia have been for many years busily engaged in the
development of their own national culture. The universities at Warsaw and
Cracow and Lemberg, at Dorpat, Prague, Agram and Budapest are centers of
a throbbing national culture that regards the national language as its most
cherished and distinguished asset emblem. Many of these universities
have made in the past important contributions to the world's store of
science and it is probable that under the present conditions these contributions
will be greatly increased. For centuries, however, the Slavic and
Hungarian scholars have depended on German to make their discoveries
known to the western world. It is not presumable that it can ever be otherwise,
for whatever political ties may bind these peoples to England and
France, the bases of their scientific and business life rest on an ancient bilingual
tradition, in which German holds its place as the Koiné of Eastern
Europe.

The gradation series of importance for general culture for American
students then reads, in my opinion, French, German, Italian, Spanish.

For scientific research the position of the two leading languages should
be reversed. In neither field does Spanish play an important part.

Conditions are, however, different when we consider the position of
America in the field of commerce. Here indications point to a relatively
diminishing importance for French as compared with the other languages.
Here Spanish makes a far stronger claim to consideration, for the spread
of the study of Spanish since the war rests on a solid basis, though perhaps
not so broad a one as its more vociferous advocates claim. Its importance
to be sure, lies mainly in the future, but that there is an immense and hitherto
undreamed-of responsibility both politically and commercially in our
relation to the countries to the south of us is one of the results of the falling
of the scales from our eyes that came after 1914. That we were once blind
in this direction does not, however, excuse us for becoming blind in another
direction, for blind we shall surely be if we permit ourselves, in view of the
present disorders in Russia and Central Europe, to overlook what a great
share of our national prosperity depends on the trade of the part of the world
whose Koiné is German. In general, in the choice of the language to be
studied for commerce, some regard must be had to regional considerations.
For the New England and North Atlantic and North Central tier of states,
the Central and Eastern European markets are of the greatest significance,
and even for the cotton-producing states of the South the finger of necessity
points in that direction.

It is far from my purpose to be dogmatic or to do more than to seek to
lay before you the present condition of affairs in modern language instruction
and what seem to be the fundamental bases upon which reconstruction
must rest. In this hour of our national history, when so much
depends upon the discovery of means of economic relief and cultural development,
the country needs no ex parte statements or a priori conclusions.
What it does need desperately is a broad survey of the situation by patriotic
men, among whom ought to be included not merely modern language experts
but practical educationalists and men of affairs, who shall go deeply into the
reasons and methods of modern language study in America and prepare a
program that puts the needs of public service in the foreground.