from David Maxwell (fwd)

[David J Birnbaum]

Dear SEELANGers,

David Maxwell sent Emily Tall a copy of a letter he has written to the
Chronicle in response to the recent article about language study at Drake
University. Emily was unable to post this successfully to SEELANGS and
forwarded it to me, and I am appending it to this note.

Sincerely,

David

---------- Forwarded Message ----------r
Date: Tuesday, March 13, 2001 11:30 AM +0000r
From: Emily Tall <mllemily at acsu.buffalo.edu>r
To: djbpitt at pitt.edur
Subject: [Fwd: letter]r

David, here is David Maxwell's letter to the chronicle. Emily

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I recognize that the following letter is quite long; given the furor that
The Chronicle's recent coverage of Drake's foreign language decisions has
catalyzed, and the personal attacks to which I have been subjected, I would
ask that you do your best to print it in its entirety, either as a letter
or as an op-ed elsewhere in The Chronicle.  I can only assume that The
Chronicle will be inundated with letters on this topic, and hope that I am
afforded this response.

many thanks

To the Editor:

I am not at all surprised by the vehemence of the responses to The
Chronicle's recent article, "A University Plans to Promote Languages by
Killing its Language Department: Russian professor-turned-president
eliminates all jobs in French, Spanish, and German." Indeed, The
Chronicle's incendiary headlines seem intended precisely to invoke an
emotional, rather than intellectual, response, and I managed to fuel the
flames with a few comments that, in retrospect and in print, read like
ill-considered wisecracks.  Were I still a full-time member of a foreign
language and literature department (which I was for eighteen years), and
did not read the article carefully--with all of the skills in understanding
subtexts that most of us develop as literature critics--I, too, would be
joining in the Colloquy in loud protest against Drake's seemingly draconian
measures, and criticizing (politely) its seemingly arrogant and ignorant
president.  I would like to think, however, that I would have done it with
civility and respect. For the past week, my e-mail inbox has looked like
the transcript of The Jerry Springer Show.   I have a scholar's commitment
to the value of debate, and a thick enough skin to not take disagreement
personally,  but I must admit to be truly astounded by the volume of
mean-spirited, self-indulgent, personal attacks that have been submitted to
the Colloquy; they do nothing to advance the debate, and they do everything
to embarrass the profession.

First, I would like to emphasize that Drake University did not "kill" its
language department; we removed it from artificial life support after years
of sustained attempts to bring it back to life.  Those who seem so ready to
criticize the University for this decision have indulged in a behavior that
they would not tolerate (I hope) in their students:  a failure to undertake
a close and nuanced reading of the text (The Chronicle article), a
willingness to leap to unsubstantiated conclusions (would real scholars
ever base their research on a single newspaper article?), and a failure to
demand more evidence before reaching a conclusion (I am astounded that many
people took the time to send me belligerent diatribes via e-mail,
condemning both the University and me personally, yet only three wrote to
say, "There must be more to this than meets the eye, because it doesn't
make sense to me. Can we discuss?")

As might be expected, it would be neither judicious nor appropriate for me
to go into great detail publicly regarding the situation that we faced in
foreign languages at Drake University; if nothing else, it would be
demeaning and unfair to the faculty affected by our decision.  I must limit
my comments on this issue to points that were made in the course of Faculty
Senate discussion, and that are therefore in the public domain. The
decision was based solely on quality; on the need to produce outcomes that
met our students' learning goals, and that were consistent with the goals
and mission of the University.  Allegations that the decision was driven in
any way by financial considerations are simply incorrect. It was not a
decision that I, as president, forced on anyone; thankfully, I have neither
the power nor the desire to do such things.  Rather, it was the result of a
lengthy, institution-wide review of all programs--a process that involved,
in one way or another, the vast majority of faculty and staff on the
campus.  The recommendation that we phase out on-campus language
instruction came from the faculty of Arts & Sciences, and forwarded with
support by the Provost and, ultimately, from an elected
faculty/staff/student Review and Priorities Advisory Committee.  While I am
responsible for accepting that recommendation (and for proposing the basic
design of what we might do next), the notion that this was forced down
anyone's throat by the president is entirely incorrect.

In the particular case of foreign languages, the institution-wide Program
Review Initiative followed years of concerted attempts to reform and
reposition the program.  Faced with low and declining enrollments,
expressed dissatisfaction among students and other faculty, a devastating
external review, and a failure to respond both to offers of targeted
faculty development resources and finally to a mandate that the department
produce a feasible, credible strategic plan for its own renewal, the
University was left with little recourse.  As I indicated to The Chronicle
in an e-mail that was not quoted--or paraphrased--in the article, in ideal
circumstances, we would of course have preferred a different solution to
our dilemma.  But ideal circumstances are rarely encountered in higher
education, and sometimes drastic situations require a dramatic response.
The decision that we reached was not taken lightly; the minutes of the
Faculty Senate to which some have referred in the Colloquy do not show the
careful deliberations of a faculty advisory group within Arts & Sciences
(which rated the language program twenty-sixth in quality out of twenty-six
programs in Arts & Sciences) and the lengthy deliberations of the elected
Review and Priorities Advisory Committee.  Ultimately, all of us saw the
decision to phase out our on-campus language offerings as unfortunate,
frustrating, and painful.

Nonetheless, we are excited about the opportunities that our new approach
affords, and optimistic that it will provide significant and meaningful
learning opportunities for our students. My good friend (at least until
now) Prof. Heidi Byrnes has correctly pointed out to me an in email that a
real danger here is that other senior administrators will see our approach
as prescriptive, given my alleged (my term) credibility as the former
director of the National Foreign Language Center. However, ours is a
solution that we have chosen at Drake as a response to the particulars of
Drake's situation; it is not intended deliberately as a model for others,
nor do we intend it deliberately as an assault on the integrity and
competence of the foreign language profession.  I am entirely aware of the
potential shortcomings of this model (though I don't agree with all of the
alleged flaws pointed out in the Colloquy), and do not want to minimize
their importance; but they are vastly outweighed by the gravity of the
situation that we faced, and by what we believe to be the potential for
success of the new initiative.  We will do our best to exploit the
significant opportunities that this model affords, and to minimize the
impact of its flaws.  We will also continually monitor its effectiveness
and impact, and make the necessary adjustments accordingly.  I should note
that several of the alleged shortcomings of our approach identified in the
Colloquy strike me as straw men, erected for the purpose of self-righteous
posturing.  We are not tossing unprepared students into uncharted and
unstructured waters overseas, nor are we encouraging them to enroll in
other institutions' programs. We are forging partnerships with overseas
universities to design programs that specifically address the learning
needs and goals of our students: they will include carefully crafted
instructional programs, course content in culture (high culture and
behavioral), home stays, etc.  I have no idea where The Chronicle's phrase,
attributed to me, "can't shoot the breeze with a bank teller," came from;
our aspirations for our students in terms of linguistic and culture
knowledge and capability are far more meaningful than that: it is our hope
that they will develop a sufficient level of competence (which, in my
definition, requires both linguistic and cultural knowledge) to function
effectively in culture.  No one has said that culture is not important, and
no one has said that language and culture are not essential to liberal arts
education.  What we have said is that we are going to try to address these
essential subjects in a manner that is far more effective than what we have
been doing at this university. Finally, cost to the student is not an
issue, as some have alleged (calling this an elitist approach); these will
be exchange relationships in which there will be no change in cost (or
financial aid) for Drake students.

I would also like to clarify some of the impressions regarding my views on
language learning in the U.S. conveyed by The Chronicle.  While I do agree
that a U.S.-based classroom is not the place to "master" a foreign
language, I did not remember saying anything remotely resembling the fact
that I am "convinced that colleges in this country need classrooms at all."
I also did not say that I was an ineffective teacher. I did not rely on the
"grammar-translation" model; even I knew, then, that it wasn't a very
creative approach. Quite the contrary, my students became quite competent
in Russian language and culture--but I do feel that I could have been much
more effective had I been more knowledgeable about second language
acquisition and applied linguistics.  In that sense, I was typical of the
time; very few--if any--of my colleagues across the country in those days
had any formal training in language pedagogy, let alone applied
linguistics.  What I did say is that we were constrained by the model, a
one-size-fits all, 3-4 hours per week exposure to a foreign language in an
English-speaking environment--and that no one expected students to come out
of that model with communicative competence, unless they complemented it
with an immersion experience.

As Director of the National Foreign Language Center, I had the opportunity
to interact, in one way or another, with hundreds of language programs,
language faculty, and college/university administrators around the country.
While I do not pretend to ultimate wisdom and knowledge, I do have some
idea of what's going on.  So allow me, if you would, to make my views
perfectly clear:  I know that there are extremely competent foreign
language teachers throughout the United States who are doing wonderful,
creative things with up-to-date, effective materials--I have met and
observed many of them. I know that there are thousands of language teachers
out there working very hard, and very effectively, to serve their students
well. Of course I know that many things have changed since I was a
full-time language and literature teacher--more sophisticated pedagogy
informed by research, the application of technology, better training of
language teachers, and so on.  I also know that there also exist extremely
incompetent, unimaginative, and ineffective foreign language teachers who
are not only failing to meet students' learning goals, but destroying any
interest the student might have in learning a language.  I have met and
observed them too, in numbers and in places that I find disturbing--and not
twenty years ago, but in the last three or four. I have observed first-hand
the "grammar hell" that one submission described in classrooms at elite
private colleges, top public institutions, and many other schools. I don't
think it's the norm, but it's also not hard to find.  I recognize that some
of my comments, as reported in The Chronicle, may convey an uncharitable
view of the profession as a whole; where my remarks were ill-considered and
intemperate, I sincerely apologize--where they were quoted out of context
or paraphrased inaccurately, I am as frustrated as anyone in reading them.
Any criticism that I have made, in The Chronicle and elsewhere, has not
been direct criticism of individuals (exercising the restraint that seems
to have escaped many of the participants in the Colloquy), but of a system
that--in spite of the best efforts of many--seems to be failing us.  And
that is the issue about which I would have hoped The Chronicle's coverage
would have sparked a debate, a discourse that might have helped all of us
address the difficult problems that we are facing on many of the nation's
campuses.

Let me provide just a few bits of evidence for my contention that the
system is failing to serve us well:

*We are the only country in the developed world that puts the burden of
foreign language learning on the post-secondary system.

*There is virtually no effective articulation among levels of the education
system.

*Only 8% of the nation?s undergraduates are enrolled in foreign language
study.

*The average persistence time of the students who do study a foreign
language is 2-3 semesters, hardly enough time for most students to acquire
usable competence.

*Fewer than 15% of the pitifully small number of students studying any
foreign language are studying any of the less commonly-taught languages
that are so critical to the nation's interest (and to a truly global
education), and very few of those who do stick with it long enough to
achieve anything remotely resembling mastery

*Most colleges and universities offer only a one-size-fits-all language
learning track for its students, regardless of their learning goals and
backgrounds, i.e., whether they are studying language for general education
(or liberal education) purposes, to achieve communicative competence, to
prepare for graduate school in the field, or to acquire formal knowledge
and/or literacy in the language of their own family; I simply do not
believe that a single class--or sequence of classes--can address all of
these goals with equal effectiveness

*The National Foreign Language Center (NFLC) and the Association of
American Colleges and Universities (AACU), with funding from the Henry Luce
Foundation, conducted a three-year Language Mission Project with sixteen
colleges and universities seeking to refocus and revitalizing language
education;  one hundred and ten four-year colleges and universities applied
for participation, and the application process required a detailed
explanation of their dissatisfaction with current practice on their
campuses.

*Similarly, the NFLC and AACU conducted four national workshops entitled,
"The Crisis in Foreign Language Learning in Higher Education," which
collectively attracted senior academic officer/faculty teams from nearly
one quarter (well over 200) of all the four-year institutions in the
country! We learned from our interactions with the institutional teams that
there is a significant and pervasive level of dissatisfaction and
frustration with the language programs on hundreds of the nation's campuses.

I do hope that this response in some measure serves to clarify Drake's
situation and plans, as well as my views on the state of foreign language
learning in the United States.  I will be delighted if Drake's action, and
The Chronicle's coverage, serve to catalyze an ongoing discourse on some of
the issues that I have raised above, and on other critical concerns that I
know others will introduce.  We all owe it to ourselves--and to the
profession (of which I am still proudly a member)--to demonstrate that we
are capable of a discourse that is more meaningful,  more useful, and more
civil than much of what has taken place in the past week.

David Maxwell
President, Drake University


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