--- Forwarded Message from Nina Garrett <[log in to unmask]> --- >Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 14:43:05 -0500 >To: Language Learning and Technology International Information Forum <[log in to unmask]> >From: Nina Garrett <[log in to unmask]> >Subject: Re: #5986.4 Alarming Development -- Entire Languages Program Axed >In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]> ------------------ I am distressed that so many of the postings to this and other lists on the topic of the Drake situation have taken the Chronicle article at face value. Surely all of us have had the experience of reading a newspaper or newsmagazine piece on some subject about which we happened to have inside information and been dismayed at the distorted and trivialized presentation of it? Why then are we so ready to ignore the possibility that there are factors not known to us in this case? I cannot believe that any university president much less one who has dedicated the major part of his professional life to foreign language education would take steps such as President Maxwell has taken without the most serious consideration of alternatives. Is it not possible that there is a subtext here? It's not unheard of for a department to be dysfunctional enough to require its being put into receivership; perhaps the situation is bad enough so that that wouldn't work. Perhaps Drake's students and the Drake curriculum as a whole do not emphasize the liberal-arts reasons for studying foreign languages; perhaps the language department has been unwilling to address the changing needs of the student body or the rest of the curriculum. Moreover, the Chronicle article was deliberately written/edited to be as sensational as possible, to provoke a knee-jerk response from its readers. I was interviewed on the telephone for 45 minutes by the reporter who wrote it; I expressed my conviction that there must be problems of the kind I surmise above, and gave my opinion on the strengths and weaknesses of the different components of Drake's proposal. I also sketched out the kind of research that I could see coming out of this proposal and its potential benefits to the profession. For example, I've always endorsed the study cited by Dan Davidson in the Chronicle article which showed that students who first get a solid grammatical foundation in the language at their home institution do better when they go abroad. But we do not have data on the question of whether students in properly designed instructional programs abroad can just as well get that solid foundation while they're also immersed in the language and culture. Drake also plans to address a problem that many institutions are becoming aware of, that they do too little to help students returning from study abroad to integrate their newly learned language into the rest of their curriculum. As for the online learning component, other universities have already substituted technology-based language learning for significant parts of elementary courses with far less creation of newly designed material, far less development of specifically tailored modules to fit in with a new curriculum, than is proposed at Drake. But all my comments, and the issues I raised (substantive ones, I believe), were completely left out of the article, obviously because I was taking a moderate and questioning stance rather than launching into outrage. Don't get me wrong: I'm as distressed as anyone else about a situation in which dissolving the department seems to be the only move, and I share many of the concerns expressed about the results of the alternatives that President Maxwell proposes to put into place. Of course it's better to have a department of foreign languages than not, for all the reasons adduced by other participants in these discussions. But I am not willing to get on a soapbox and say that at no university, under no circumstances, for no programmatic purposes, should a plan like Drake's be considered. I thank my lucky stars that I'm at a university where the liberal-arts mandate for foreign language study is warmly endorsed by nearly everyone, and where low enrollments are not the only factor in determining the success of a program. (Some 30-40 % of Yale's undergraduate courses have fewer than 10 students.) But Drake is not Yale, and there's no reason why it should even try to be. If the president, faculty, and board of trustees feel that the main goals for language learning at Drake are career-oriented and are willing to put serious thought into an innovative plan for helping students achieve those goals as well as possible, the least we can do as a profession is to suspend judgment until there is good evidence of the results. I confess that I wish that President Maxwell had couched his decision more in terms of Drake's specific problems and needs than as a reflection on foreign language education generally, because I do believe that there are many excellent postsecondary language programs. But in light of my insight into the Chronicle's editing of this story, I think it entirely likely that his remarks were quoted out of context in order to give the effect of maximum attack. As a field we deserve better from the Chronicle. Nina Garrett Director of Language Study Yale University P.O. Box 208349 New Haven, CT 06520-8349 Tel. (203) 432-8196 Fax. (203) 432-4485 [log in to unmask] http://www.yale.edu/cls/