response to K. Krivinkova

[Benjamin Rifkin]

Re K. Krivinkova's Comments, Posted by David Galloway, Continuing the
Discussion of the Rutgers Job Posting

The previous writer's arguments are interesting and important for us all to
consider.  However, our first priority should be to do what we can to
increase UNDERGRADUATE enrollments in all the languages and cultures of
Central and Eastern Europe.  Once the undergraduate enrollments increase,
then and only then will we see an increase in the number of jobs for Slavic
Ph.D.s and the number of those jobs that are tenure track.  In the
meantime, institutions are likely to continue to try to make up budget
shortfalls the best way they can, by avoiding the hiring of tenure track
faculty whenever possible.  It is incumbent upon all of us to engage in
activities that will stimulate interest in the study of the languages and
cultures of Central and Eastern Europe as best we can:  as I tell our
graduate students at Wisconsin, the high school students who come to our
"Russia & East Europe Day" may not enroll at UW-Madison, but they may
enroll at some other institution and take Russian or Polish or another
language of the region.  And perhaps someone is conducting some similar
outreach activities at another institution that may affect the decision of
a student who ultimately enrolls at UW-Madison to study Russian or Polish
or another language of the region.

I agree with Dr. Krivinkova that being a native speaker of any language is
not sufficient qualification to teach it.  Indeed, I am a native speaker of
English but would be reluctant to teach English.  I have not been trained
to teach English and don't know how to present the difficult or challenging
features of the language that I myself acquired intuitively as a child.
For that very reason, I believe that we must all recognize the importance
of pedagogical training for all instructors of Slavic languages, whether
native speakers of a Slavic language or of English, precisely because such
training is one of the best ways for our profession to overcome the
enrollment crisis.  If the best teachers in a given college are the
teachers of Russian or Polish or Ukrainian or if the teachers of those
languages are among those known for excellent teaching on that campus, that
will help us attract students.  Word gets out.  I'm not suggesting that
having the best trained teachers will, by itself, solve the enrollment
crisis. People will continue to take Spanish and French and German for the
same reasons they are taking those languages now.  But we will do better at
attracting and maintaining enrollments with people who can teach well in a
North American classroom.  Native speakers of Slavic languages with
experience teaching Americans and/or American pedagogical training can
offer a great deal to our programs, but the fact that these individuals are
native speakers should not be sufficient qualification for hiring them to
teach.  I, too, am interested in hearing what the folks at Rutgers have to
say about the wording of their posting, as it is possible that a
typographical error resulted in the omission of the words "or native
fluency in Russian," resulting in a very different reading of the text
posted to this discussion list.


Ben Rifkin


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Benjamin Rifkin
Assistant Professor of Russian,
Coordinator of Russian-Language Instruction & Teacher Training
Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures
University of Wisconsin-Madison
1432 Van Hise Hall
1220 Linden Drive
Madison, WI  53706

e-mail:  brifkin at facstaff.wisc.edu
telephone:  608/262-1623, 608/262-3498
fax:  608/265-2814