The Worst Is Over

Abstract

THE last twenty years have been like a nightmare to us language teachers, but let us forget the past and look forward to a more encouraging future. There is no point in indulging in useless recriminations about the Modern Foreign Language Study and its impossible challenge of giving our students any reasonable command, oral and written, of any language in two years. Nor would gain anything by whining about the way school administrators shunted out the courses in mathematics and foreign languages on the ground that they were too difficult. We can now smile at these same educationalists who shooed our American youth into vocational and technical programs during the great depression to prepare the young people for industry and commerce when there were no jobs to be had. You can now read with some degree of equanimity and without fear educational pamphlets like the famous What the High Schools Ought to Teach which was a most ridiculous indictment of our subject. No longer should be indignant at the story that when our foreign language teachers offered the languages for the war effort, administrators laughed at our spokesmen on the pretext that there was no place for the foreign languages in the war effort. In fact, one of the most important superintendents of one of the largest cities in the United States shouted and dismissed us with a Falstaffian laugh, we don't need foreign languages, need soldiers. Let first things come first. Today languages are a recognized part of the war effort, and while much time was lost before the Government finally realized their importance, they are today an essential part of training programs in camps, in A.S.T.P. courses, and in many Government training divisions. Yet, must not fall asleep and expect that our nightmare will suddenly change into a rosy, dreamy paradise. We must prepare for the peace effort. We must lift ourselves by our own bootstraps. No doubt the same confusion, squabbles and opposition in the new period of the global peace will arise. Nor will superintendents and principals come down from their high perch to beg us to teach languages again. We shall be told that the world needs producers and not linguists. Yet, how will dispose of our goods and services to the world if cannot communicate with people of other languages? Will technicians with no knowledge of foreign languages be able to communicate with foreigners? No, shall have to carry our message to the public, the parents and even the pupils themselves. These must demand the inclusion of the languages in the new educational curricula after the war. That foreign languages have been taught successfully in the Government programs will only affect us indirectly. We cannot hope to devote