Call for response: Tipoff from Becky Kline RE: article in AMERICAN EDUCATOR

[McGinnis, Scott]

Good day again, all,

A follow-up to the e-mail of earlier this morning - with thanks to Jayne Abrate of AATF. Referring to the article (entitled "Curing Provincialism
Why We Educate the Way We Do: A Conversation with Jacques Barzun") might be of use in any letters your write to AMERICAN EDUCATOR - here's the relevant section of the interview:

Editor: What about foreign language? Its place in the curriculum has suffered in recent decades. Does knowing one give us a special window on the world? Should it be restored to its previous importance?

Barzun: A foreign language is very necessary. It, too, deprovincializes, because it presents the world from a different angle through the very fact that the vocabulary is different and deals with reality in its own peculiar way. The things that you can or can't say in a given language, what makes sense to the French or the Germans in contrast to what makes sense to us, are mind-opening. In addition, there is practical utility in mastering a particular language: it serves to give access to a whole literature, and possibly furthers one's career.

I'm in favor of teaching Latin, of course, but I think that battle has been lost permanently. It's too bad because it is a gateway to all the Romance languages, and even to German, by familiarizing the mind with declension and other features of grammar that, in English, are lost or hidden through usage. Quite apart from this aid to studying foreign languages, learning Latin makes reading and writing English easier. Latin roots explain the meaning of many English words, and Latin grammar shows the relations among words in a sentence so clearly that common blunders in English sentence construction quickly reveal themselves for correction.

Editor: Can you give me an example or two of ways in which a particular language is able to convey something that can't be similarly conveyed in another language? For example, it's often said that the Inuit language has many ways to say "snow," depending on whether it is icy or slushy, and so on. 

Barzun: I wasn't thinking so much of a finer discrimination among objects as I was the slant on ordinary things. For example, we in America understand perfectly well what we mean when we say a "glorious" morning. If you said that in France, people would be puzzled. Has a battle been won on the front? "Glorious" here can apply to the weather--in France, it cannot. Why is that? The very perception that there is a "why" (to which there is no answer) is an eye opener... What is foolish in one idiom is clear as day in another. The two languages have two ways of cutting up the experience of the world. 
Again, as another example, we "know" Mr. Jones and we "know" how to swim. Most often, European languages have two different words for acquaintance with and knowledge. On top of all this are the innumerable idioms that point to realities that one language or another ignores--which is why we borrow such terms as: belles-lettres, coup d'état, haute couture, fait accompli...



-----Original Message-----
From: Jayne Abrate [mailto:abrate at siu.edu] 
Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2002 11:21 AM
To: nectfl
Cc: Yu-Lan Lin; SOLMEIGHT; McGinnis, Scott; Frank Mulhern; Mike Ledgerwood; Diane Whitmore; Donald Reutershan; Jack Henderson; John Grandin; John Webb; Kathleen Steers; Marjorie Haley; Marjorie Hall Haley; Mikle Ledgerwood; Nancy Gadbois; Robert Terry; Sister Mary Helen Kashuba; Steve Levy; Thomas Conner; cavenags; Sue; Roberta Lavine; Marco Curnen; Marco Curnen; Sharon Wilkinson; John David Edwards; Nancy Zelasko; Nancy Rhodes; James Alatis; Elizabeth Welles; Donna Christian; Carol Klein; Marty Abbott; Dan Davidson; Janis Jensen; Nancy McKee; Patrick Raven; Phyllis Thompson; Helene Zimmer-Loew
Subject: Re: [Fwd: Latest volume of American Educator]

Dear Colleagues,

I would strongly urge you to read at least the introductory article by Jacques Barzun before writing your letter.  It is certainly disheartening that languages and, as the letter writer says, physical education were not highlighted as well, as they are as crucial to the core curriculum as any of the subjects mentioned.  However, in the interview with Barzun, the interviewer specifically ask a question about foreign languages and he speaks very strongly of their importance.    It is truly short-sighted that they didn't feature languages on an equal footing with the other topics.  

Jayne