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The Bulletin editor's chair is a rewarding place to sit for someone who comes to it directly from long years spent standing in front of language and literature students. For classroom practitioners, whatever the specifics of their institutional and situational settings, there is a strong tug to focus on the microcosm: their own students, their own courses, or at most their own departmental or divisional units. Not many professional posts allow for—impose, in fact—a primary focus on the macrocosm: the nexus of forces at work on campuses—and, as well, in regional, national, and continental structures—to shape the reality of teachers' lives. The job of ADFL director and Bulletin editor is one of those uncommon posts.
I find the opportunity to concentrate on the macrocosm both gratifying and challenging. On the one hand, a well-spring of convictions, instincts, impulses concerning the why, the who, and the how of this business builds in most of us as the years of classroom work go by. Although we seek channels to expound on the general state of things, we rarely find them. How can one get a hearing for one's worldview even on the home campus, not to mention in the community or in the state and the nation?. The American public at large takes language learning with increasing seriousness, but who will actually listen to an individual language teacher? It is thus a pleasure to have a forum and an audience as I contemplate the wide world.
On the other hand, the same seasoning process that generates strong personal convictions also instills awareness of complications and complexity. Where is professional consensus when the most gifted and practiced among us hold firmly and honestly to conflicting views on elemental matters of our work? How can we and how will we know enough about the mysterious processes of language communication to chart and document our one best course? How can we teach in integrated fashion the myriad skills and techniques implied in acquiring a new spoken language, together with its written and other cultural manifestations? The American public at large takes language learning with increasing seriousness, but it does not know, nor does it wish to be told, the hard facts of the case. In this area, at least as much as in other areas of American education, the general interest in what teachers do and how they do it is a double-edged sword. It is thus sobering to have a public voice as I confront the wide world.
The times themselves conspire to reinforce both responses to having a long look at the macrocosm. It is certainly true that public attention, interest, and support are directed toward the foreign language field at this moment in ways and to a degree that astound survivors of the retreat from language requirements in the sixties and seventies. The MLA's latest round of survey activities bears out impressions of a move to increased enrollments in non-English-language courses in postsecondary institutions. 1 “More college students in the United States are studying foreign languages than ever before,” says a New York Times article reporting on the survey. It further relates what is perhaps of greater significance, that “for the first time since 1965 the percentage of students studying languages has increased markedly in relation to the percentage of students attending college…” (“Languages”). Parallel reporting of secondary enrollments by ACTFL confirms a trend toward increased aggregate totals and percentages, 2 and instances abound of states in all parts of the country boldly mandating sweeping new language-study requirements at various K-12 levels (see, e.g., Draper).
Below these healthy surface signs, however, the diagnosis is uncertain and the prognosis provisional. Increased emphasis on foreign language study on the part of school administrations and community and state boards is seldom matched by solid commitments to train more and better teachers. On the contrary, experienced teachers commonly voice concerns about poor planning and implementation of new program mandates and about the inadequate preparation and language proficiency of trainees (Draper 3–4). And the economic times are bad; greater outlays to support language education, should they come, will have to be carved from a smaller funding pie.
Reconsidering the view from this chair, I should perhaps locate it at the interface of two spaces: the point where macrocosm meets microcosm. Attending the 1991 Summer Seminars East and West brought sharply into focus for me ADFL's position at this interface, along with the great strengths of its member departments as personified in their administrative leaders. The liveliness of formal and informal exchanges in Mystic and Vancouver during June, the high level of knowledge and competence, the commitment and determination of participants inspired confidence. Surely such talent and spirit, if focused in agreement, can bridge the distance between the two cosmos. And there was agreement, remarkably strong and widely shared agreement, on a number of crucial topics. In the Fall 1991 Bulletin Dorothy James reports on the recommendation that won general approval from Seminar West participants at their final plenary session: to include “the theory and practice of teaching foreign language, literature, and culture as integral components of…graduate degrees” (James 2). 3 This proposition also found favor at Seminar East in the small-group discussions of graduate programs and undergraduate needs.
These moments of discovering consensus were heady and invigorating for all present. Another special moment came at the opening banquet in Vancouver when Mario Valdés, the MLA's 1991 president, delivered the forceful and personal address that you can read in this issue. In fact, his presence lent much to the tone and direction of our meetings and to their weight in people's minds. His active participation in formal and informal exchanges helped to confirm for me the importance of what we were doing in the eyes of ADFL's parent body, including those members on the English side of the modern language field.
Some further impressions of a first-year man add to the positive side of the prognosis. In my role as foreign language programs liaison, I have allocated a good part of the fall to meetings of elected and appointed committees at MLA headquarters: the ADFL Executive Committee, the MLA Advisory Committee on Foreign Languages and Literatures, the Executive Council, and the Committee on Academic Freedom and Professional Rights and Responsibilities. At this writing the first two events have already gone by and left vivid memories. I clearly recall the stimulation of coming together with committee members, sometimes for the first time, and of our extended discussions during each two-day gathering. The Executive Committee meeting renewed my feeling of standing at the interface as we outlined the 1992 ADFL Summer Seminars, those annual confrontations of the microcosm with the macrocosm. The Advisory Committee is a new entity in only its second year of operation. Its existence and the active support it receives from the MLA's Executive Director, Phyllis Franklin, speak most encouragingly for the association's determination to confront the foreign language and literature issues before us. I felt again the weight of the moment when we talked about possible new initiatives, such as MLA publishing projects for our fields and a national coalition of experts to discuss articulation across the levels of foreign language and literature study.
There is, then, talent in the decision-making and policy-implementation positions on the campuses, a pool of resourceful professionals who share the outlines of a vision. We also have strong support from our most important national association. Still, Summer Seminar participant groups do not embody the entirety of either the larger world of our profession or the smaller world of our personal labors. Though attendance at seminars rose significantly in 1991, attendees represent only a fraction of member ADFL chairs in any year, while department administrators themselves, by the very fact of their leadership role, are not fully representative of the total instructional force.
As matters go in the department and on campus, so will they necessarily go in the community, region, state, and nation. If preoccupation with our daily working lives continues to deflect large numbers of us from concerted action taken as a profession, then we can easily lose the vision glimpsed beyond today's news articles and survey results touting enrollment gains—the vision of foreign language and literature education advancing into a continuing era of growth fostered through cooperative effort, resulting in articulated instruction across institutions and through ages and stages of learning and informed by the best of classroom practice and structured research. If we don't deliver this time as a profession, the public confidence and expectations born in the eighties, the national faith in the importance of foreign languages and in our ability to teach them, will not easily be renewed at another time, in the climate of scarce resources and consumer scrutiny that we can expect.
Taking a final look from the catbird seat in my first editorial installment, I perceive that this moment—despite the dangers—is ripe with possibilities and rich with resources for success. The prospect here is exciting, displaying as it does the universe of talents, energy, and dedication distributed among colleagues in the ADFL, from headquarters staffers to member readers, and the contemplation of it is agreeable indeed. I'll be grateful for any thoughts you might offer to sharpen my view and for your support as we get on with the work ahead.
1 Richard Bred and Bettina Huber will present an extended analysis of the 1990 MLA survey results in the Bulletin's Spring 1992 issue.
2 See Dandonoli for 1985 figures; results of ACTFL's 1990 survey will appear in 1992.
3 At its September 1991 meeting the ADFL Executive Committee moved to present this resolution to the general MLA membership through the Newsletter. It also moved to pursue other actions taken at Seminar West; these will be reported in future issues of the Bulletin.
Dandonoli, Patricia. “Report on Foreign Language Enrollment in Public Secondary Schools, Fall 1985.” Foreign Language Annals 20 (1987): 457–70.
Draper, Jamie L. Dreams, Realities and Nightmares: The Present and Future of Foreign Language Education in the United States. Washington: Joint Natl. Committee for Languages, 1991.
James, Dorothy. “From the Editor.” ADFL Bulletin 23.1 (1991): 1–3. [Show Article]
“Languages Becoming Hot Subject in Colleges.” New York Times 25 Sept. 1991: B6.
© 1992 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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