Dr. MACALLISTER. And the parents always did it. It became a kind of social stigma. I shall never forget a remark made to me by a waitress in Paterson, some years ago. She said, "Study Italian?" She said, "My God; it is bad enough being one." SOURCES OF LANGUAGE INSTRUCTORS Senator ALLOTT. I realize that attitude. Is it not actually a great source of opportunity that we are overlooking? For example, the reverse of the situation, if I may use the name, is Congressman Sadlak, of Connecticut, who, although native-born, speaks Polish. People I have spoken with say he speaks Polish better than anybody they have ever seen. I guess he is the son of Polish parents, but born in this country. Certainly if that is true, out of all these thousands of thousands of people who have come to this country, if we were not so persnickety about methodology and methods of education, we could find people who could actually start putting to work the beginnings and the rudiments for teaching these languages. Dr. MACALLISTER. I agree. Senator ALLOTT. Would that be true? Dr. MACALLISTER. Under the proper supervision. Senator ALLOTT. Under the proper supervision and guidance. Dr. MACALLISTER. Yes. That has actually been done in a small way in some communities. Senator ALLOTT. Where? Dr. MACALLISTER. I do not have any figures at my command. It would be an infinitesimal sort of thing. Senator ALLOTT. I want to say this, Doctor. I like your statement very much. I think it is very thoughtful, and I think it very well expresses what the situation is. I am very concerned myself, and I am sure the committee is of a mind that sheer emphasis on science and mathematics is not going to answer our question. What we need is more emphasis on all of our education. Dr. MACALLISTER. I wish I had the chance to talk on that, sir. I have very strong views on the general philosophy. Senator ALLOTT. I am sure we agree pretty closely on that. Thank you very much. Dr. MACALLISTER. Thank you. PROVISION OF COLLEGE TEACHERS The CHAIRMAN. Doctor, I have just one question. You spoke about language graduate school work. Just what do you contemplate here, more training for your teachers in your graduate school work or for those who will teach teachers? Dr. MACALLISTER. What I had in mind was provision for college and university teachers principally. The CHAIRMAN. For college teachers? Dr. MACALLISTER. We need college teachers. The recent years when it was hard to get a job and find jobs for your candidates, those times are disappearing. We are now getting more calls for personnel than we can fill. At the same time, we are not able to attract to us the students for graduate training in modern foreign languages. I may say that we are not able to attract near the quality of the students we'd like. I would like to stress all the way through here that it is not merely money, it is not quantity; what we need is quality. The CHAIRMAN. You think, then, if we did provide fellowships for training language teachers, that would be a very fine thing? INSISTENCE ON QUALITY Dr. MACALLISTER. It certainly would. However, I want to say that it would be very essential that any of this money that went for training schoolteachers include a provision for vastly improved quality in subject matter. Our great trouble in the noncollege teacher today, or one of them, has been the eclipse of subject matter. You have to teach something. It is not enough to know how to teach in general. You have to know what you are going to teach. No 6 hours, no 12 hours, no 15 hours, is going to guarantee that you know the subject that you are supposed to teach. Senator ALLOTT. May I interrupt? I did not hear that. Will you make that statement again? Dr. MACALLISTER. There is nothing in a provision for 12 credit hours in a certain foreign language, or 6 hours, or 15 credit hours in the study of French or German or Spanish or Italian or Hungarian which guarantees that the result is going to have the proficiency required to teach. Senator ALLOTT. Or to talk, either one. Dr. MACALLISTER. I assume the ability to talk precedes the ability to teach to talk. Senator ALLOTT. I am not sure, from some of the teachers I have seen. INSUFFICIENT DURATION OF STUDY In that respect, curriculumwise, is not a great mistake being made in requiring 2 years, or 3 years, or 4 years of just any foreign language, that a person takes 1 year of French, 1 year of Spanish, and I year of Italian. He knows nothing about any one language. He comes out with nothing except that he has widened his vocabulary a little bit, maybe. He really has not gotten anything out of it, has he? Dr. MACALLISTER. No. Senator ALLOTT. Unless it is an exceptional student? Dr. MACALLISTER. Yes, you do have 1 student out of 1,000 or 10,000 or something of the sort. You occasionally meet them coming into Princeton with 1 year of modern language and they have really accomplished something. LANGUAGE COURSES FOR 3, 4, OR MORE YEARS The recommendation of a recent conference here in Washington 3 weeks ago on the academically talented pupil with regard to language was very explicit in that the 2-year pattern must go, if we are going to get anywhere in actual knowledge of a language. We should have 3, 4, or more years. Senator ALLOTT. I still have not got my idea across. Curriculumwise, when you set up requirements of any number of years of language, it should be consecutive study of the same language. Otherwise, it becomes meaningless. Dr. MACALLISTER. Yes. Senator ALLOTT. I wanted to bring that point out. LANGUAGE: THE KEY TO UNDERSTANDING Dr. MACALLISTER. May I add these remarks: I'd say first of all that travel is getting faster and faster. There is military service, increased foreign trade, and lots of plain tourist traveling. And even if a boy is going to live out his life on a farm or perhaps in a small town in the Middle West, I should say that is all the more reason he should get the nearest thing to foreign experience and that is real study of a foreign language. That way he will learn also the customs, the literature, the culture or way of life of the people involved. You simply cannot master another people's way of expressing themselves without getting to know what makes them tick a lot better than you could by reading a book about them in English. Besides that, you often get a new and valuable perspective on your own native country and its culture. VALUE OF LANGUAGE STUDY AS A DISCIPLINE One last thing I could mention, Mr. Chairman, but it has been used against us in the past, and that is value of foreign language study as a discipline. There is no doubt that this study calls for and creates habits of precise thinking and working, which is what I meant before when I referred to the opposition of fuzzy-headed people. And it is a large reason for the decline in language study. There is a sort of Gresham's law in curriculums; "soft" subjects will drive "hard" subjects out of circulation, especially if there is a permissive philosophy prevailing. The CHAIRMAN. If there are no further questions, we want to thank you for coming down and being with us this morning and making this very able and challenging and informative statement. Thank you very much. Dr. MACALLISTER. Thank you very much. It has been a pleasure. Senator SMITH. Mr. Chairman, I have to go to the Foreign Relations Committee. I am sorry I have to leave. That is no reflection on the remaining witnesses. The CHAIRMAN. We understand the situation fully, but we are sorry to see you go. Before you leave, may I say we have the pleasure of having with us this morning the fifth-grade class of the Ben Murch Public School here in the District of Columbia. Miss Rich is the teacher of the class. She is, of course, with her class. Accompanying the class is the very lovely, charming wife of our distinguished majority leader in the Senate, Mrs. Lyndon Johnson. I believe the little lady with the red dress is little Miss Johnson. We are delighted to have all of you here this morning with us. Senator SMITH. I am very glad to join in welcoming this group before I leave. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Kenneth W. Mildenberger, will you come around, please, sir? Mr. Mildenberger, you are the director, I believe, of the foreignlanguage program of the Modern Language Association of America. Mr. MILDENBERGER. Yes. The CHAIRMAN. You have headquarters in New York? Mr. MILDENBERGER. Yes, sir. The CHAIRMAN. We are happy to have you here, sir, and we would be delighted to have you proceed in your own way. STATEMENT OF KENNETH W. MILDENBERGER, DIRECTOR, THE FOREIGN-LANGUAGE PROGRAM, MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIA TION Mr. MILDENBERGER. I thank you for this opportunity to discuss with you the problem of Federal aid, specifically for modern foreign language education. The Modern Language Association is the largest and one of the oldest of American learned societies in the field of the humanities, and it exists for the purpose of advancing literary and linguistic studies in the modern languages, including English. The Modern Language Association's foreign-language program is a special study of the role that modern foreign languages should play in American life. Now in its sixth year, this program has been supported by grants from the Rockefeller Foundation. I have been a full-time staff member of this program since its inception, and director since last summer. Senator ALLOTT. Would you mind telling me what is the nature of your membership, of whom it is composed? Mr. MILDENBERGER. Yes, sir. We have somewhere between 9,000 and 10,000 members, and the great majority are college and university teachers of English and modern foreign languages. Senator ALLOTT. Thank you very much. UNITING A PROFESSION Mr. MILDENBERGER. The activity of this far-ranging study has united a once scattered and splintered profession, created a national network of communication with language teachers at all levels of education, accumulated a considerable body of pertinent data on the present situation and foreseeable needs, awakened many language teachers to the desirability of new objectives and new methods, and, perhaps most significant, achieved a professional consensus on policies and criteria for more effective language education in the national interest. Mr. Chairman, I should like to submit for the record of this hearing a copy of the policy statements of our foreign-language program as exhibits of policies and practices which we believe should be encouraged in foreign-language teaching. The CHAIRMAN. We will be happy to have it, and it will appear at the close of your remarks. (See p. 742.) Mr. MILDENBERGER. Thank you, sir. However, the major work of reshaping and strengthening language education is still ahead. MOST EFFECTIVE USE OF FEDERAL AID The foreign language teaching profession is pleased that both of the education bills under consideration, S. 3163 and S. 3187, contain provisions for language education. Please let me emphasize that neither of the two bills seems to permit a society such as the Modern Language Association to apply for any of the funds to be provided. So I am here solely to offer information, to comment on the bills, and to suggest, in the light of our Modern Language Association investigation, the most effective use of Federal aid in improving, in the national interest, the status of modern foreign-language education. In this connection, I see three major problems which face us, and I should like to discuss these problems as background to my recommendations concerning the two education bills. ATTITUDE OF PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION First, there is the historical attitude of American professional education toward the modern foreign languages. As I am sure you know, during the past 3 or 4 decades the trend in American education, especially public education, has been away from content courses and toward a curriculum centered upon student interest in the here and now, upon courses with everyday practical value. I call attention to this trend not for the purpose of criticism; I merely comment on a factual situation which perhaps still reflects to a degree the disinterest in learning that prevails in considerable segments of American society, and which also reflects the democratic efforts of American education to find some common denominators for schooling all of the children of all of the people. In this situation the modern foreign languages, as well as English literature, mathematics, chemistry, and physics, have suffered. The point is that a whole generation of educational administrators and theorists has been instilled with skepticism concerning the place of modern foreign languages, not to mention other content courses, in the school curriculum. Alert professional educators are now revising their views. EDUCATING THE TALENTED PUPIL As a specimen of new thinking I call to the attention of this committee a recent report entitled "Educating the Academically Talented Secondary School Pupil in Modern Languages," which issued from an invitational conference on the problem of the academically talented pupil sponsored by the NEA and chaired by Dr. James B. Conant. Mr. Chairman, I should like to submit as my second and concluding material to be put into the record, a copy of that report on foreign languages for academically talented children, since, I believe, it presents very desirable practices looking to the future in foreign-language education. The CHAIRMAN. When was this report made, Mr. Mildenberger? Mr. MILDENBERGER. This was issued from a conference held February 6,7, and 8 this year in Washington. The CHAIRMAN. We are happy to have it. (See p. 747.) |