--- Forwarded Message from TennesseeBob Peckham <[log in to unmask]> ---

>In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 11:54:00 -0600
>To: Language Learning and Technology International Information Forum               <[log in to unmask]>
>From: TennesseeBob Peckham <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: #5986 Alarming Development -- Entire Languages Program Axed

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I have known about the plans for a while, through articles in the Des
Moines paper (online).  The president's foolishness will come back to haunt
him like a chili lunch, and I dare say that classroom instruction will find
its way back within 3 years (if not less).  You cannot bring a mass of
people to language acquisition this way.

This being said, I do not think we have seen the last language department
being put out on the street.  Leaving aside all of the masked purely
budgetary reasons and the fact that this president was a bit of a flop as a
Russian student. I think there are some serious issues for all of us here.

1) We need to label what we are doing and do as we have labeled.  If we
bill ourselves as a language department, we need to teach language.  If
culture and literature are of help in doing so, then we include them.  If
not then we do not.  You should take a look at the French course list for
Drake

http://www.drake.edu/artsci/languages/French/Links/f-course.htm

It reflects what an outsider would interpret as a marked interest in
literature, where a place is set for literary considerations at just about
every table.  There are no French for  the professions courses, except for
teachers.  Some of the literature and gender studies courses reflect an
interest in theoretical concerns.  Joe and Jill Six-pack would be hard put
to interpret what is behind phrases such as "construction of the body" in
120. FRENCH WOMEN WRITERS.  Drake has produced some well-known college
professors.  If this is their mission, then according to what is trend in
litcrit, etc., they are on target.  If this is not their mission... I
refrain from comment.

We should thank Samantha Earp for the reference, and we should remember
that Duke University can long afford to be a bastion of theory and highly
literary activities.  Most of the rest of us cannot.

TBob

Robert D. Peckham, PhD
Director, the Globe-Gate Project
Director, the Muriel Tomlinson Language Resource Center
Department of Modern Foreign Languages
Univ. of Tennessee-Martin
http://globegate.org/french/globe.html