Selectivity or Simplification

Abstract

IF the ability to adapt oneself to changing conditions in order to survive is a measure of intelligence, then the existence of this quality in teachers of modern foreign languages is now, as never before, being tested by convergent forces. The attacks of the naturalistic instrumentalists is unabated; pragmatical curriculum-builders are issuing ever greater challenges as to the worth of foreign language study; and because of a continuing shortage of jobs in industry-rather than to a love of learning-secondary schools are overcrowded with mediocre students, who have been herded in an unselected mass into overflowing classes. In the face of these conditions, has the language teacher been sufficiently thoughtful and self-assertive concerning the problems which the situation brings into relief? Some of those that stand out sharply are: (1) Shall the traditional standards be lowered to the level of the undifferentiated masses? (2) Shall the teacher insist-against material interest-that numbers be limited and the old standards preserved? (3) Shall some means be devised, through homogeneous grouping and modified courses, to give all the applicants of fair intelligence the brand and the quantity of language culture their parents want them to get? Any floundering indecision among these alternatives must result in the weakest of compromises and failure to achieve any noteworthy teaching success. To lower the standards indiscriminately would savor of the equalitarian idea that none shall eat what all may not digest; but, as Dr. Benjamin Greenberg says in the October, 1936, issue of the French Review (p. 21): It is a curious thing about American education that so much pain is taken not to keep the unfit pupil out but so to modify the course of study as to help keep the weak pupil in. Nevertheless, we must probably charge to our own lack of foresight a part at least of Greenberg's sad commentary that many of our language teachers are surrendering to these theories, namely, that through realia, customs, manners, and institutions, language must be taught as a social science, so that the child will learn to adjust himself to a changed world. He cogently adds: