enrollments again

[Francoise Rosset]

May I respectfully suggest one more choice of "answer" to Prof. Samsonov's
questionnaire question #3:

- Russian is taught in far fewer high schools now.
(And I don't mean that no schools teach it, or teach it poorly, au contraire;
but so many schools have dropped it, if they ever had it).

Here at Wheaton, out of an entering class of 460, TWO, (yes, 2) students
had ever studied any Russian. An excruciatingly vast majority had taken
either Spanish and/or French, usually because those were the only langs
offered, and I'm talking in the ostensibly intellectually progressive
NorthEast (!).
For years we have had to remind faculty advisors, with varying degrees
of success, to not advise *automatically* the same language the student
had in high school. I have absolutely nothing against French or Spanish,
but I do get tired swimming against the tide every fall.
-FR



Francoise Rosset                          phone:  (508) 286-3696
Department of Russian                     fax:    (508) 286-3640
Wheaton College                           e-mail: frosset at wheatonma.edu
Norton, Massachusetts 02766

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