I thoroughly enjoyed the articles approach to interdisciplinality. Many of the points harken back to the discussion we had on teaching culture. It is easy to see how these interdisciplinary courses can be applied to more than simply culture. This reminds me of one of the French professors at my undergraduate course who actually rarely taught a full-fledged French class. She was also a professor of Film, Gender Studies and Women's Studies. Her diversified interests and specializations allowed her to offer extremely interesting and thought provoking courses that weren't tailor to any specific major at the university. Within these courses there was always the possibility for readings in French for the French majors and the same could be done for students with other language specializations.
At the top of page 8 the article states that we must, "Establish language requirements (or levels of competence) for undergraduate students majoring in fields such as international studies, history, anthropology, music, art history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and linguistics..." This seemed odd to me, because I simply assumed that all of these fields would already have requirements such as these established. In talking to some of my friends who majored in Music Education at UT, I was shocked to find out that the department had done away with the foreign language requirement. In a field such as music where you run into foreign language even in a piece of music it seems absurd that there is no established requirement for a foreign language.
To contrast the example I just gave above, legislation was recently passed in Tennessee requiring all high school graduates to have at least a one year or two-semester sequence of a foreign language in order to receive a diploma. I believe that this is a step in the right direction and is inline with what the Ad Hoc Committee proposes on page 8 of the article. Are any of you aware of the foreign language requirements in other states? Are there still places where it is not required at all?
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It's wonderful that some states are now requiring language courses to graduate. I'd imagine (I hope, anyway) that that's going to be the trend, but I know that it's not the case in South Dakota. Of course, we're not known for having a great education system, and it's difficult to attract language teachers when there's no real job security and when teachers are paid so little to begin with. Anyway, language is grouped in with computer science, and higher level math and science classes, and students just need to pick two, so while language can fulfill a requirement, it's not really necessary (unless you want to get a post-graduation scholarship, I think).
ReplyDeleteIn Minnesota, there's no state requirement that I know of.
We have to remember that, with education budgets being extremely tight, language and music classes are often the first targets for cuts, so requirements for language proficiency could be seen as costly for some. And, unfortunately, high school language teachers aren't always qualified to teach a language. I've heard of people getting shuffled into a language teaching position simply because nobody else would do it. Also, my cousin got a job teaching Spanish with a bachelor's degree, beating out the superintendent's wife, who had a master's. I don't doubt my cousin's abilities, but I have to imagine that the school saw a higher price tag on the other candidate and hired my cousin simply to save money, and I think that's a fairly standard practice (at least in SD).
So, unfortunately, making changes at the K-12 level is an incredibly messy business. Again, I think we can have our best influence by reaching out to those getting their degrees in K-12 education and public administration. If they don't see the value in foreign language education in general, there's no hope. Is anyone familiar with these kinds of programs and what their language requirements might be, or what discussions they have to have concerning foreign language education?
Kelly, you are so right! At the high school level, I think most schools are happy to have teachers at the BA level rather than the MA or PhD level. I agree with you that this can be a really damaging practice. I also think that there is the perception that people who have MAs or PhDs in a language are not specialized for teaching and, as such, aren't a good fit for high schools. I think this is totally untrue. While such instructors may not always be warm and fuzzy enough for high school administrators' taste, they can be wonderful teachers at this level. I went to a private high school where there was a much higher proportion of teachers with advanced degrees and I really did notice a difference as compared with the public schools I had attended until then. For me, this seems to confirm that the real issue there is money. A private school has more money to spend on teachers and so, isn't afraid to pay for more advanced credentials. All of the French teachers I had in high school held at least an MA.
ReplyDeleteTo answer one of Eric's questions, I know that in Nevada (also known for poor educational practices) high school students are beginning to be required to have language to graduate. I think they've even set the requirement at two years.
Also in response to Eric's original post, I agree that professors with multiple teaching and research interests are so much more enriching! In many smaller programs this is the norm since not enough full-time appointments are available to fully staff them. It was the case at my undergraduate institution where FL professors often taught civilization courses (optimistically entitled Core Humanities) or film courses or what they call Capstone courses (upper-division courses with a writing component open to most majors). My professors also contributed to smaller emerging programs like Holocaust and Peace Studies.
I'm sad to report, however, that most of the tenured, non Spanish FL faculty was voted out only yesterday to cut back on costs (German major and minor and Italian Studies minor eliminated). This is an example of a school with language requirements for nearly every degree that has nonetheless chosen to liquidate two major European languages at all but the most basic levels. So I guess it's a good thing most of the professors have other appointments.