teaching third gradeers Russian

[Olga Yokoyama]

To continue on Stephen Blackwell's ideas:

The ideas are terrific, just the kind we need now, before the field
becomes obsolete. I wonder if there are any ways to promote them further,
beyond the relatively incidental response of this network. One thing to
do would be to bring this up at the AATSEEL business meeting in Chicago.
Another thing would be to have a special AATSEEL committee take it up. I
was recently asked by Jane Harris to chair the AD Hoc COmmittee on
Professional Issues (tentative name) which may be an appropriate place
to take this up. The committee is in the process of defining its scope,
but I will run it by the members to see if there is a structured way it
could handle the matter. It does seem to me that, while economy is
clearly of critical importance, as Robert Mathiesen has pointed out,
there is also the factor of culture. American culture has generally been
monolingual, and given that, it's natural that when things get harder
"frills" like foreign lgs and lits are cut. Changing culture is of
course a monumental task, but do we, American Slavists, really feel it's
not worth trying? And if we do try, then it's insufficient to change just
the "high" culture of literary gourmets, the popular culture must change
at least to the extent European popular culture is open to foreign lgs.
There is no better place to start then than in ES, and since the recent
trend is, in fact, to introduce foreign lgs at grade school level, the
opportunity should not be lost. Needless to say, this wouldl be just one
of the areas to try to improve. (this question of popular culture
reminded me of my Harvard Extension student from last year, who took my
Russian fairy tales course and several months after the course wrote to
me consulting about an idea to produce a comic book version of Russian
tales with illustrations by her husband, a professional pop artist; this
would be another way to reach the kids and to lessen the alienness of
Slavic culture/names/plots/values etc on a level accessible to them;
kaplja kamen' tochit - speaking of folklore).
I do hope Stephen's Blackwell's ideas about ES Russian contaminate more
of us.
 Olga Yokoyama