Language Lip Service

From an educator not given to easy alarm crying, the U.S. this week got stern reproof for a widespread educational failure. Said longtime (1933-53) Harvard President James B. Conant: more than a year's close study of U.S. high schools has left him much less concerned with programs in mathematics and science than with a "most distressing situation" in the teaching of foreign languages. Conant's bluntly-worded report: "In school after school only two years of any language were offered ... I submit that to study a language for two years, even two languages for two years each, is a waste of time."

Even academically talented students, said Conant, "come away from such a brief exposure with very little residue" --and there are "too many unqualified students in these courses" who should never be there to begin with." Result: "State and national statistics on how many students are enrolled in language courses are meaningless. This point cannot be stressed heavily enough."

The only reason for studying a language, Conant observed, is to achieve "something approaching a mastery. And by this I mean the ability to read with ease a foreign newspaper and discuss it intelligently with a native of the country in question . . . This degree of mastery . . . cannot be reached in two years." Conant's recommendations: the most able scholars--at least the top 15% of U.S. high school students--should take four years of one language. Further, they should be urged to elect three years of another language, with the assumption that they will continue study of the second language in college.

Partly responsible for U.S. language lacks, Conant charged, are two sorts of offenders: school boards which justify omission of third-and fourth-year language courses from high school curricula on the grounds that few students apply, and colleges, whose two-year language admission requirements give respectability to a brief, pointless period of study. "A two-year requirement is worse than none," said Conant. "If there is to be a requirement, it should mean mastery." He continued: "The lip service paid to foreign languages in the high school, is, I am afraid, a direct reflection of lip service paid in the colleges and universities. I strongly suspect that the proficiency in a foreign language that is often required for a bachelor's degree --indeed, for a doctor's degree--is the product of perfunctory timeserving in a minimum number of courses."

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