The Role of the College and University in the Preparation of Foreign Language Teachers

Abstract

When your distinguished Secretary invited me to speak to you today, we spoke casually of a factual report on the language development feature of the National Defense Education Act. It is tempting to rehearse for you what this Act has already done and what it shows certain promise of doing for the development of modern foreign language study in the United States; to report to you that only a year after the Act's passage, more than 50,000 youngsters are getting better instruction as a consequence of institute training for their teachers; that the so-called “neglected” languages have been given so much attention that French, German, and Spanish now feel distinctly neglected; and that more money has been committed for research in the teaching of modern foreign languages in this past year than has been spent for this purpose in all recorded history. But all of this can be read (or told to you by the Prophet Mildenberger and his disciples, who, so far as I can see, are stationed at every corner of this hotel) and I prefer to direct my remarks to a single aspect of the complex language development program in which we are jointly engaged; one that I trust has great common interest for this audience, and one that in its implications suggests some weighty responsibilities for your profession: the role of the college and university in the preparation of language teachers.