SCIENCE AND EDUCATION FOR NATIONAL DEFENSE

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1958

UNITED STATES SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON LABOR AND PUBLIC WELFARE,

Washington, D. C. The committee met at 10 a. m., pursuant to recess, in the Old Supreme Court Chamber of the Capitol, Senator Lister Hill (chairman) presiding.

Present: Senators Hill (presiding), Smith, and Allott.

Committee staff members present: Stewart E. McClure, chief clerk; Roy E. James, assistant chief clerk; John S. Forsythe, general counsel; William G. Reidy and Michael J. Bernstein, professional staff members.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will kindly come to order.

We have a very distinguished witness with us this morning, and I am going to ask my good friend, the ranking minority member of the committee and a former distinguished chairman of the committee, Senator Smith, to present our witness.

Senator SMITH. Mr. Chairman, I am very happy to introduce Dr. MacAllister because he is an expert in the teaching of foreign languages, which is a field of great importance to the subject of these hearings.

For the record I would like to make this statement about the witness:

DR. ARCHIBALD MAC ALLISTER

Dr. Archibald T. MacAllister, Jr., is director of language instruction in the department of modern languages and literatures at Princeton University and is an authority on the development of language teaching programs.

As a long-time member of the executive committee of the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languags, he has concentrated on the improvement of foreign-language teaching through the development of new teaching methods, course content, personnel training, and furtherance of a closer understanding and cooperation between the elementary school, high school, and college.

He was a member of the Conference Committee on Tests and Measurements which developed the listening comprehension tests recently adopted by the College Entrance Examination Board. He is a strong advocate of the introduction of language studies into the elementary grades, and he has served as a language consultant to numerous school systems.

A native of Hazleton, Pa., he received bachelor of arts and doctor of philosophy degrees from Yale University. He taught at Yale and Brown before he joined the Princeton faculty in 1940.

Mr. Chairman, I am most happy to introduce my good friend, Dr. MacAllister, and I know we are going to have a very fine statement from him with regard to the foreign language part of our program. The CHAIRMAN. Doctor, we are very happy to have a friend of Senator Smith here, and we are happy to welcome you. We will be glad to have you proceed in your own way, sir.

Dr. MACALLISTER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your very cordial welcome.

May I say just as an explanation in advance, that if I had had as much as 1 full day to prepare this statement, it might have been a little better.

STATEMENT OF ARCHIBALD T. MacALLISTER, DIRECTOR, LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION, DEPARTMENT OF MODERN LANGUAGES, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

Dr. MACALLISTER. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, it is a privilege and a pleasure to discuss with you the provisions for the development of instruction in modern foreign languages contained in the bills currently under study, to wit: S. 3163, introduced by Senator H. Alexander Smith, and S. 3187, introduced by yourself, Mr. Chairman.

The fact that a committee of the Senate should be considering the improvement and expansion of modern language teaching is a source of deep satisfaction to me as an educator and language teacher, and as a citizen concerned for the welfare of my country. It marks the reversal of what had seemed an irresistible process of erosion of the area of importance once occupied by language study in our schools and colleges; a process which has rendered the country with the greatest message unable to communicate this message effectively to the other peoples of the world.

EROSION OF LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION

For many of my 28 years in the profession I have watched while hostile forces whittled away alternately at the amount of foreign language taught in the schools and at the requirements for admission to and graduation from college.

Senator SMITH. May I interrupt you? What is the cause of that attack on the languages in the schools?

Dr. MACALLISTER. It would take a long time, Senator Smith, to even name the aspects, but I would be inclined to say primarily they are an exact subject and many fuzzy-headed people do not like exact subjects.

Senator SMITH. I did not want to interrupt you. I might bring that subject up again later when we get to questions.

Dr. MACALLISTER. Furthermore, I might add also, they tend to taint nationalistic thinking with internationalistic ideas, if that happens to be the way in which you look at it, the way many people have looked at it in our isolationist past.

DWINDLING LANGUAGE REQUIREMENTS

From 1925 to 1945 I have seen these requirements dwindle from a combined total of 9 or 10 years of 2 or 3 languages to the present level of 2 or 3 years of 1, or, often, none at all. In my own university (and I mean Princeton for I did not know my background was going to be read), certainly one of the oldest and proudest in the land, it is perfectly possible to receive an bachelor of arts degree in, for example, public and international affairs, without ever having studied a modern foreign language. In one of New York's best municipal colleges in the period from 1929 to 1949 the proportion of students taking all foreign languages fell from 24 percent to 10 percent.

(I might say, parenthetically, that this is a woman's college and that women are known to be more apt to study foreign languages.)

The most tragic case of a single language is German; in 1915 it was studied by 28 percent of the Nation's high-school students; today the figure is less than 1 percent. But there is one statistic which is even more eloquent. In 56 percent of our Nation's high schools it is impossible today for any student, no matter how gifted or eager, to learn a modern foreign language for the simple reason that none is included in the curriculum.

One of the aspects of the decline in language study which has been especially disturbing is the paradoxical fact that it was most rapid in the very decade following 1939 when our country was forced into an unprecedented position of world leadership.

The CHAIRMAN. That is the very time you would have thought there would have been a very great stimulation. Dr. MACALLISTER. Precisely.

1955 REPORT BY FOREIGN SERVICE INSTITUTE

This situation and its consequences were well described in 1955 by Harold B. Hoskins, then Director of the Foreign Service Institute: One overriding handicap we as a nation are up against in the field of diplomacy is the scarcity of Americans who can express themselves adequately in languages other than English. Actually during the very decades when the United States was heading toward leadership in world affairs, the language emphasis and requirements in many of our schools were being lowered and the comparative number of pupils who were becoming proficient in various foreign languages was actually on the wane. In recent years a good many learned articles and books have been written advancing various reasons why this has occurred. A number of educators, aware of the gravity of this situation, are attempting to reverse the trend. The fact remains that at the present time we in the State Department and the Foreign Service have to live with the situation as it is. It has been impossible to find enough recruits, either at the beginning level or by lateral entry, with language qualifications made to order for the Foreign Service. Even among our present personnel there are many officers whose value to the Government would be considerably augmented were their skills in one or more foreign languages greater. Therefore, language training, always an important Institute function, must continue to retain a top place among our present-day priorities.

HOSTILITY, CONFUSION, AND BAD PEDAGOGY

Chief among the factors which produced this situation were the attacks of forces outside the profession to which I have referred. I must in fairness now say that they would not have been nearly so

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successful had it not been for confusion within the profession as to aims and methods plus a fair amount of plain bad pedagogy. Modern languages entered our schools and colleges in the wake of the classics, especially Latin, and it was inevitable that they should have inherited the methods and aims of the silent languages and their their textbooks should have been adaptations of those used in Latin. This was all the more natural since, as time went on, more and more classics teachers found themselves suddenly transformed by administrative fiat into teachers of French or German. Naturally they had for the most part no proficiency in these languages, but that was of little consequence to school authorities. Then for a while after World War I there was a brief flurry of interest in the spoken language. It did not last long because it was too demanding on the teachers and required more time than the curriculum allowed. In 1929 the profession gave up the struggle, and from then till the past decade almost all pupils trained in modern languages were taught to read only, with almost total disregard for the other and vital aspects of the language.

TODAY'S LANGUAGE TEACHERS UNPREPARED

I stress this point because of the inescapable fact that among the pupils so poorly trained were those who became and are today's language teachers. Now that the country has begun to awaken to its need for a different type of instruction involving real proficiency in all linguistic skills, we find that many, not to say most, of our language teachers, especially in the secondary schools, are simply not prepared to teach what they were not themselves taught. Lucky if they can read without having to translate, they cannot pronounce intelligibly, let alone converse.

As a result, our great immediate need is not for more students, much as we would like to see them, but for better teachers equipped to deal with the language as a living medium of expression. Obviously we cannot dismiss the present incumbents. Even if we could, or could utilize them in other ways, we would have very few competent persons to take their place.

The best practical solution to this urgent problem appears to be to retrain as quickly as possible all those who give promise of being able to acquire to some degree the skills they lack.

SUMMER INSTITUTES FOR LANGUAGE TEACHERS

For this purpose, summer institutes or workshops offer the best hope, and numbers of them have already been in operation in recent years with encouraging results. The biggest obstacle is financial; if grants can be made available to overcome this, much progress will be made.

At the same time that they are improving their command of the language, these teachers can, in the same intsitute, learn the new and improved techniques which are possible with their improved proficiency. Thus the present crisis can be met and the future product can be of higher quality. If we can change certification requirements to substitute proficiency tests for meaningless credit hours, the biggest step of all will have been taken for the long-range future.

In the light of the foregoing, let me examine S. 3163 and S. 3187 as they concern modern foreign languages. I wish to say first of all that I admire and appreciate the spirit behind both these proposals and the intelligent effort that has gone into each. S. 3187 is the more ambitious, more sweeping and costlier of the two, and I believe that it is the sincere intent of its framers to provide generously for modern languages.

STRESS ON LANGUAGES IN S. 3187

For example, it (1) includes these languages together with mathematics and science in provisions for facilities and equipment.

(2) Includes students of these languages as possible grantees of scholarships and loans.

(3) It includes them also in the work-study program.

(4) It provides that arrangements for summer institutes, and so forth, may includes these languages.

(5) It provides for consultants in such languages at the local secondary school level.

To summarize, S. 3187 permits modern foreign languages to share in the many benefits proposed, but it insures such participation in only one matter-teaching consultants.

I believe this last proposal has much merit, although I have not been able, naturally, in the time, to sample the opinion of teachers in the field. It should be modified in modern languages, however, to extend to the elementary school in districts where language programs exist on that level.

S. 3163, on the other hand, is less generous to modern languages in the matter of scholarships and the acquisition of facilities, from which they are in fact excluded, nor does it appear to provide for teaching consultants. I say "appear," for one of the major differences between the bills is that S. 3187 spells out in great detail a number of provisions which might easily be included in the intent of the more generally phrased S. 3163.

INSTITUTES PROVIDED IN S. 3163

However, the outstanding difference to me is that S. 3163 does make positive and unequivocal provision for meeting what I have referred to as the greatest single need in modern languages at this time by authorizing institutes specifically for the retraining and improvement of language teachers and methods.

It also insures research and studies in improved training and in methods of teaching these languages; these would unquestionably include what S. 3187 calls new educational media.

It also moves in a positive manner to meet the national need for instruction in rare modern languages, and it makes provision for foreign study. This is an important feature for all languages, as you can understand readily, which should be made possible in any provisions for student aid.

It should, I think, be possible for a man enjoying a scholarship under any bill which emerges from this committee to continue that scholarship for, let us say, the junior year abroad, in France or in Italy or in Spain if he is studying modern languages. That is the same as going into the laboratory if he is in science.

It further authorizes a National Advisory Committee specifically for foreign languages.