--- 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 ------------------ 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