Teaching Languages in the Army University in Florence

Abstract

H ISTORY and Purpose. The idea back of the universities set up by the United States Army in Shrivenham (England), Biarritz (France), and Florence (Italy) was at least two-fold, to keep Army personnel out of trouble while waiting for transportation back to the United States, and, more seriously, to make up to the soldiers for the waste in time and training caused by their military service. Obviously the most valuable years sacrificed by young soldiers were precisely those years in which college training would normally be completed. World War I had given the older Army officers some valuable experience in estimating the advantages of university training after an armistice; American soldiers had attended French universities for special post-war courses, and the experience was generally hailed as highly successful. During this war the Army considered how best to offer such post-armistice university work. Plans were made and the Army machinery was set in motion which led to the elaborate set-up in the university centers in the three countries named above. Let there be no doubt that the set-up was complicated. Organization. All responsibility for these educational experiments devolved upon the strictly military personnel. Each post had its Commandant, usually a Colonel or a Brigadier General, and under him were about a hundred or more officers of all grades and functions. Most of the instructors in these universities were also Army personnel,. though by no means all officers. At Florence probably over half of the teachers were corporals and sergeants, with a good sprinkling of plain privates. All these were drawn from their previous military units, assigned to the university centers, and received no change in status, i.e., they received no promotion or increase in pay because of their new duties. This fact created considerable discontent, because a private getting fifty dollars per month frequently taught the same course as a captain or a major who might be getting from three hundred to four hundred per month. Additional instructors were drawn from civilian university ranks, and they were generally paid somewhat more than they received at home. They remained civilians, though expected to wear Army uniforms and to submit to the usual military orders. The