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IN 1989 the president of the American Association of Teachers of German (AATG), Renate Schulz, established a national task force to formulate recommendations on a promotion of minorities in German. The move reflected a growing urgency within higher education to increase minority recruitment and coincided with burgeoning efforts to promote diversity on campuses nationwide. The ATTG's initiative also served as a reminder to the profession at large that the goals of racial and ethnic tolerance are inherent in what we do. If foreign language teachers, practitioners of multiculturalism in the classroom every day, are not sensitive to and supportive of the concerns of minority groups in this country, who will be?
Like bilingualism and the “English only” movement, the promotion of diversity is a potentially charged issue, one fraught with complexities and far easier to proclaim than to realize. Schulz deserves plaudits for placing the issue at the top of the AATG's agenda. Now that the task force has completed its activities and made its final report to the association, it is appropriate to assess the significance of the initiative and to draw some tentative conclusions about the prospects for increased minority involvement in German studies. While the following remarks are intended in the first place to explain the rationale for the AATG initiative and to outline task force activity, I hope that they will have broader appeal as well. For what started out as a straightforward assignment—to devise strategies for making the study of German more attractive to American students from minority groups significantly underrepresented in the classroom—quickly took on complicated ramifications involving issues of cultural stereotype, racist ideology, and European politics. Though certainly colored by the specifically German aspects of the problem, the AATG's experience illustrates the social and cultural dynamics that come into play whenever mainstream and marginalized groups confront each other, he it in the context of French and Spanish colonialism, ethnic relationships on the Balkan peninsula, or Germany's treatment of its Turkish minority.
A note of explanation is in order at the outset, since the following remarks are colored by personal observations. As a new chair at a university that had itself recently launched a major initiative in support of diversity, I was particularly sympathetic to the AATG's resolve to confront this issue and was placed to accept Schulz's invitation to head the new task force. Despite certain misgivings about being the WASP of a committee concerned with minority affairs and composed almost entirely of minority group members, I assumed the responsibility with considerable optimism. This article records my experiences on the committee and shows how the realities of the situation tempered that initial optimism. I would stress that any lack of success suggested here can in no way be attributed to the members of the AATG minority task force or to Schulz's strong initiative. My trepidation about being a WASP turned out to be completely groundless, although more than one committee member, it turned out, had ample reason to be suspicious of a white, male representative of the German teaching establishment in the United States—because of disturbing encounters with discrimination they had suffered both as students and as faculty members in various German programs around the country. The patience, goodwill, and dedication to the cause of German studies shown by the seven members of the task force were truly exemplary. 1 I should add, finally, that the views expressed here are strictly my own and in no way constitute conclusions of the AATG.
By placing diversity at the top of her agenda, Schulz was responding to an urgent need. Good reasons existed for the German teaching profession in particular to face issues of ethnic diversity of multiculturalism in the classroom. For starters, anecdotal evidence suggested that the number of minority students and teachers involved in German studies in this country is exceedingly small. At the urging of the task force, questions about the ethnicity of teachers and students of German were included in the first nationwide AATG membership survey, which was conducted in 1992. The response confirmed the committee's expectations.
The survey was sent to 7,106 individuals, and 3,514 responses were returned, about 49% from teachers at the primary and secondary levels, and 35% from teachers at the postsecondary level. Of the teachers who responded to the question, “What is your racial background?” exactly 16, or 0.5%, reported that they were black, and 4, or 0.1%, reported that they were Hispanic. Other minority groups are similarly underrepresented: there were 10 American Indians, 9 Asians or Pacific Islanders, and 23 undifferentiated others. Of the 3,514 respondents to the AATG memberships survey, in other words, 98.2% were “of Caucasian (non-Hispanic) racial background,” a finding the survey report terms “disturbing.” 2
The 1990 census, which puts these statistics in at least partial perspective, records that 80% of the general population of the United States is white, 12% black, and 9% Hispanic. 3 In 1984, blacks made up 9.7% of the undergraduate population in the United States, Hispanics 4.7%. At the graduate level the figures were 5.3% and 2.5%, respectively (Huber 15). While these figures are distressing, AATG statistics indicate that the number of minority college graduates going into the German teaching profession is disproportionately low. In the fall of 1985, blacks and Hispanics accounted for 8.3% of all college and university faculty members in the United States (Huber 12)—this figure compares with 0.6% for German teachers at all instructional levels, according to the AATG statistics. Finally, the 1990 MLA membership survey reveals that of almost respondents (English and foreign language teachers at the postsecondary level), 6% are black or Hispanic (Franklin 4), again, compared with 0.6% of AATG survey respondents who reported that they are black or Hispanic.
The AATG survey suggests that minority student participation in German is not any better. The survey asked teachers to report what percentage of the students to whom they were currently teaching German belonged to minority groups. Over half of the respondents (52%) reported that they were teaching no Hispanics whatsoever; 47% said they were teaching no blacks. An additional 43% estimated that less than 10% of their students were black; 39%, that less than 10% of their students were Hispanic. These figures suggest that about 90% of the German teachers in America face classes with few or no blacks or Hispanics. By way of comparison, in the fall of 1984, 25.3% of elementary and secondary students in the United States were black or Hispanic, a figure that is undoubtedly higher today (Huber 15).
With demographic trends predicting a continuing, dramatic rise in the percentage of minority group members in the United States—estimates are that in some states blacks, Hispanics, and Asians together will constitute a majority by the year 2000 and that minorities will constitute “more than half of the nation's population” by the year 2080 (Cortés 8)—minority participation (or non-participation) in German is unsettling indeed. The diversity index, developed by Phillip Meyer of USA today , is already 40% nationwide—meaning that there is a 40% chance that two randomly selected people are racially or ethnically different from each other. In New Mexico the index is 60%, in California 59%, and in New York 49% (Fissnetti 22).
The demographics suggest that if German does not do a better job of recruiting and retaining minority students, particularly at the secondary level, it will lose its audience. This prospect was certainly not the impetus for the charge to the AATG task force, but in a real sense, the survival of the profession is at stake.
Unfortunately, this news comes at a time when there is already fear in some quarters that the traditional field of Germanics is on the decline. In a recent book calling for reform of German studies, John Van Cleve and A. Leslie Willson state, “We who teach German language, literature, and culture at the colleges and universities of the United States find ourselves in a dire crisis” (1). Indeed, the authors conclude, on the basis of their interpretation of enrollment trends in foreign languages at the postsecondary level, that the profession is “sliding silently toward oblivion” (ix). German enrollments, they believe, are so anemic compared with enrollments in other languages, particularly Japanese and Spanish, that unless the level is restored to—as they put it—200,000 in 2002 (13), the field will die out.
Van Cleve and Wilson ascribe declining enrollments primarily to the unhealthy state of German departments and to methodological and curricular factors; these authors do not consider demographics at all and fail to note the connection between secondary and postsecondary German programs that is essential for the health of the profession. If anything, they miss the real threat, which would be a continued sharp decline in the number of high school German programs around the country.
Yet another demographic trend uncovered by the Census Bureau that bodes ill for the study of German is that between 1980 and 1990 the percentage of German speakers over five years old who used German at home declined by 3.7%. The use of Spanish in the home increased by over 50% during this period, Chinese by 97.7%, Japanese by 25%, and Vietnamese by 149.5% (Barringer A1). Vigorous German-American culture in parts of this country and the large number of Americans of German descent—more Americans once claimed German ancestry than any other national origin—have been prominent recruitment tools for German teachers; the strength of this argument appears to be on the wane.
There is a troublesome aspect to the constant comparison of foreign language enrollments in the United States. The latest MLA enrollment statistics show that there was an overall growth of 18% in foreign language registrations at United States institutions of higher education between 1986 and 1990 (Brod and Huber 6). As foreign language teachers, should we not view these figures with unrestrained joy? Does not any interpretation that sees German enrollments suffering because of competition from, say, Spanish and Japanese demean us? It is Van Cleve and Willson's premise that German must pursue its market share of foreign language students much more aggressively. The authors renew, for example, discussion of the old saw that German is a “hard” language and that counselors and advisors steer students away from it and in the direction of “easy” languages, notably Spanish (69–78). Not only does the remarkable growth in the study of Japanese suggest that American students by no means avoid “hard” languages, buy beyond that, is not this line of argumentation insidious? If students who previously studied no foreign language at all are being exposed to the Spanish language and to the cultures of Spanish-speaking countries, including that of our major ally and friend at our southern border, is that development not welcome? Any increase in this country's commitment to foreign language and area studies is to be embraced, and there are good reasons for wishing to see that the increases come in Spanish. Of course, they should also come in Chinese, Japanese, Swahili, Arabic, German, and a host of other languages.
The perception that foreign languages are in competition with one another is unfortunate and can lead to efforts to promote or “market” one particular language over others. Such attempts at promoting German raise questions of propriety that extend to efforts at minority recruitment. For example, for the past five or six years the Goethe Institute New York has conducted a large-scale public relations campaign to increase awareness of and interest in German in American high schools. A considerable amount of money has been invested in such things as a nationwide Berlin quiz, a rock music contest, and a treasure hunt. Grand prizes have been trips to Germany and Austria, and thousands of tapes and T-shirts have been given away. The fall of 1993 contest is entitled Teen 93—Young People in Germany. 4 These campaigns were designed to stem the decline in German enrollments in American schools. Accompanied by considerable educational material for teachers, they have proved extremely popular, although there is no evidence that they have increased enrollments.
In the light of Germany's history of cultural and linguistic imperialism, is it appropriate for a cultural agency of the German government to intrude into American schools for the purpose of encouraging students to study German? And by extension, in the light of Germany's less than stellar record of tolerance for and acceptance of minorities, is it appropriate for the AATG to encourage members of minority groups to study German? This dilemma gave the work of the AATG minority task force a particular slant not evident in similar discussions at ACTFL or the MLA. How can we recruit members of minority groups to the study of German language, culture, and history, given the horrendous treatment of minority groups under Hitler? Unfortunately, this issue cannot be dismissed with the argument that the Third Reich was destroyed almost fifty years ago and that a new democratically trained and racially tolerant generation now inhabits Germany. As the ongoing flood of literature and commentary on Vergangenheitsbewältigung ‘coming to terms with the past’ in Germany attests, issues of German behavior toward minorities at that time have not faded. If anything, they are coming into increasingly clearer focus. For example, a recent book by Christopher Browning, Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland , records for the first time the remarkable and chilling story of how ordinary men became mass murderers under Hitler. Not long ago the journal die Unterrichtspraxis published an article called “Nazis zum Frühstück” (“Nazis for Breakfast”), which documents the frequency with which Germans today are still being confronted with their Nazi past in the media (Weber). The German government's desire to see some sort of the positive display about post-World War II developments in Germany as part of the Holocaust museum in Washington is but another reminder of how uncomfortable the country still is with its Nazi past.
Nor are racial discrimination and violence toward minorities things of the past. The number of attacks on foreigners in Germany has skyrocketed recently, and even an awareness that there are probably only around six thousand skinheads in Germany cannot lessen concern at what appears to be a widespread discriminatory attitude among Germans. Yes, Germany has one of the most liberal policies of political asylum in the world, and yes, hundreds of thousands of Germans have actively protested the violence against foreigners. Nevertheless, a group seeking specifically to attract members of minority groups to the study of German cannot ignore these problems. Foreign language enrollments in America are influenced by political events, as the precipitous decline of German enrollments in the United States during and after World War I and, more recently, declines in Chinese enrollments after events in Tiananmen Square vividly demonstrate. Whether or not the resurgence of neo-Nazi activity in Germany has had a negative effect on German study in the United States is not clear; at the very least, however, this activity would seem to have counteracted the largely positive images of Germany in this country immediately following reunification. If young Americans in general are influenced in their choice of a foreign language to study by the negative publicity surrounding German treatment of minorities, is not the problem exacerbated for minority students?
At its first meeting in November 1990, the AATG task force adopted a straightforward mission statement:
The American Association of Teachers of German affirms the diversity of our citizenry and the wealth of a multicultural, multilingual society. We espouse the importance of the obligation of providing increased access to and equity in all program offerings at all levels of education.
As a consequence of its responsibility to ensure the study of German by a diverse American population taught by a profession whose members themselves reflect the racial and ethnic composition of our nation, the AATG will develop and implement an appropriate action agenda for the next decade and beyond. (Peters et al. 97)
At subsequent meetings and at a national workshop hosted by the task force in the spring of 1992, strategies were discussed for increasing minority participation in German studies to reflect “the racial and ethnic composition of our nation.” There was general consensus that a concerted effort at consciousness-raising would have to predicate other efforts in order to draw attention to the severity of the problem and to sensitize the profession to the necessity of action. A series of local and regional workshops has been proposed, to be led by AATG consultants with experience in this area; workshops on diversity would complement the pedagogical workshops already being offered by the association.
Task force member Beverly Harris-Schenz gave a model workshop in which the engaged participants in a series of activities designed to drive home the concept of otherness. German teachers generally used to dealing with homogenous groups of students in their classes may need to develop increased sensitivity to the problems of the minority learner. Harris-Schenz asked individuals in the group to recall times in their lives when they felt betrayed, silenced, threatened, or otherwise marginalized within a group. She told the tale of the X s and O s—that is, the problem of the poor O in a world of X s. She showed of a clip from Rainer Werner Fassbinder's film, Ali, Fear Eats the Soul —the story of a young Moroccan who speaks only broken German trying to shop and being confronted by an intolerant shopkeeper—and pointed out the myriad cultural barriers facing the protagonist in that one brief episode.
Throughout the deliberations of the task force, high-lighting the Turkish presence in Germany emerged as a primary vehicle for adding diversity to the German curriculum. The growing body of Turkish German-language literature, for example, has been proposed as the basis for a fourth-semester German language course (Veteto-Conrad). Most of that literature deals in an at times touching, at times shocking way with the severe difficulties Turks living in Germany have had, as the titles of several popular anthologies indicate: Als Fremder in Deutschland (“As a Stranger in Germany”), In zwei Sprachen leben (“Living in Two Languages”), Kalte Heimat (“Cold Homeland”), Sie haben mich zu einem Ausländer gemacht (“They Turned Me into a Foreigner”), or Wir sind doch nict vom Mond! (“We're Not from the Moon After All!”).
The task force recommends that not only German-Turkish but also Afro-German voices be heard in American German classes. The image of Africa in German literature, culture, and current life has become a viable topic for study, thanks in part to the influential anthology Farbe bekennen (“Showing Your Colors”), which chronicles the significant presence of Afro-German women in Germany and includes numerous moving autobiographical selections (Oguntoye, Opitz, and Schultz). The task force is in accord with the recommendation made in a recent survey of student attitudes toward foreign language study at historically and predominantly black institutions that “the Black experience in foreign language culture should be given more attention …” (Davis and Markham 236). The texts are often grim, however; the stories of the discrimination that blacks, particularly black women, have suffered in Germany do not make for pleasant reading.
The strategy at work here would seem to make eminent sense: for minority students to feel any sort of affinity with Germans and German life and culture, it is necessary to break down the stereotype of the blond, blue-eyed German and to highlight the significant minority presence in Germany. It should also be possible to stimulate American minority students' interest in German by drawing their attention to the role and influence of minority figures in German history and culture, as do Reinhold Grimm, in a recent article about two African saints in medieval Germany, and Leroy Hopkins, with his suggestions for expanding the canon in the direction of Afro-German studies. Our textbooks, too, ought to depict minorities in the readings and pictures on their pages—it has been shown that such depictions have appeared only recently (Veteto-Conrad 149–50). The beginning German-language video series Lernexpress produced by the BBC has been greeted with considerable enthusiasm in this country precisely because it does present among its cast of high school-age characters a number of Germans belonging to minority groups. The young people seem to be generally happy, successful in school, and well-integrated into German society.
While the strategy makes sense, will it work, and is it an honest strategy? Most Americans who have lived in Germany have witnessed the discrimination that members of minority groups suffer there. Even casual tourists have seen the ugly graffiti, and now a great many Americans have seen television images of the brutal attacks in Hoyerswerda, Mölln, and Solingen, where five Turks were killed, apparently as the result of arson committed by youths in neo-Nazi dress. If we are honest, the story of minorities in Germany is not a pretty one; it is also historically and socially complex, as a recent article in the New Yorker entitled “Neo-Nazis: A Chaos in the Head” makes abundantly clear (Kramer). If we simply show that there are, in fact, members of minority groups present throughout Germany and leave it at that—that Kreuzberg in Berlin, for example, is the second largest Turkish city in the world—are we not being misleading? And it is certainly possible still to spend a vacation in Germany without ever interacting with any minority group members whatsoever. The tactic of attracting minority students and teachers by trying to dispel the myth that only blond, blue-eyed Germans live in Germany is, it seems to me, fraught with pitfalls.
Among the task force recommendations is the production and distribution of a diversity poster. The idea is to display the message “German is for everybody,” accompanied by photographs of minority students and teachers in the classroom and abroad. Some research suggests that blacks, for example, have not traditionally been drawn to the study of German; German ranks only “a distant third” after Spanish and French as a four-year degree at historically and predominantly black institutions (Davis and Markham 230). But there is absolutely no reason minority students cannot learn the language just as easily—or not—as nonminority students. And in fact the task force discovered several exceptional German programs in Washington, Detroit, Cincinnati, and elsewhere with classes composed mostly of nonwhite students. The Mount Washington German Magnet School in Kansas City, Missouri, is a striking example of ethnically mixed groups of students successfully learning German together. In fact, the photographs in the Mount Washington School annual showing ethnically mixed classes of students and teachers are exactly what the task force had in mind for its diversity poster.
Wherever minorities are well-represented in German classes, it is thanks to the all-out effort of one or more teachers or administrators who are committed to this cause and who work hard to see it realized. Whether at the Mount Washington Magnet School, the Black Child and Family Institute in Lansing, the German programs at Martin Luther King High School in Detroit, or Jefferson Junior High in Washington, dedicated people stand behind the effort. One of the most promising tactics for promoting minority interest in German may be the task force recommendation that the AATG prominently feature such diverse programs in its newsletter and promote the initiators as workshop leaders to spread the word of their success.
Another recommendation is the creation and dissemination of what the task force calls a diversity kit, a packet of printed materials some aimed specifically at a minority audience, that present a wide array of arguments on behalf of German studies. Here again the idea makes good sense: if we argue that a knowledge of German is a beneficial career tool, that it gives students an edge in the job market, then we certainly need to get this same message across to minority students. Thus, for example, the kit highlights comments by Stephen Trachtenberg that “for the U.S. today, multiculturalism is synonymous with national survival … our ability to reach minorities and to help them become skilled and productive contributors to the economy will determine our success or failure in the international marketplace” (611) and by Gregory Simpkins, who argues that African Americans need to be cognizant of the European Community and what it means for their jobs: “Is the company I work for considering relocating operations in Europe? How can I protect myself from a sudden jog loss? Should I learn a foreign language to make myself more marketable in a relocated U.S. office?” (114).
The irony behind this attack is that for years German programs prided themselves on being elite. We—so the thinking was—got the “good” students, the ones who wanted to distinguish themselves from the majority studying Spanish; we got the future scientists, engineers, and more recently the international business managers. We, in fact, prided ourselves that German was “harder” than the Romance languages. Thus, for example, Henry H. Remak writes in a volume called German Studies in the United States:
On top of it, German is known as a tough language. Nor does it benefit from the cultural prestige of French or the geographical proximity of Spanish. So our task is, in some respects, more difficult, although we must in fairness acknowledge that, in others, it is easier, because German, with its “tough” reputation and the presence of a lot of science students in our classes, tends to attract better students than Spanish, and because the German “way of life” is much more congenial to many Americans, young and old, than French or Spanish or Russian civilization. (111)
Before German can be entirely successful in promoting pluralism and diversity it may have to shed this elitist image somewhat—an image that Van Cleve and Willson in their book ascribe at least in part to the domination of college-level German programs by native Germans out of touch with campus life. According to Van Cleve and Willson, 39% of faculty members currently teaching in German departments at American colleges and universities are European-born (87). It should be noted that the ivory-tower syndrome is by no means confined to European-born academicians, and it is certainly a misleading generalization to conclude that all non-American Germanists are indifferent to outreach activity.
There are many good reasons for American students of all racial and ethnic backgrounds to learn German. Before these reasons become readily apparent, however, particularly to groups that have traditionally not gravitated toward German language and culture, some rather far-reaching reforms are needed at all levels of German instruction. Quick fixes will not work. Despite the efforts of many well-meaning teachers, Germany is still a distant country for most Americans, and thinking about Germany tends still be dominated by two conflicting stereotypical images: beer, lederhosen, and cuckoo clocks on the one hand and swastikas, SS troops, and concentration camps on the other. The Goethe Institute public relations campaign mentioned above, aimed as it is particularly at high school social studies classes, is laudatory in this respect: it attempts to convey an accurate, non-stereotyped image of Germany to young people. But this campaign ought to be led by American teachers who are willing to modify their approach to teaching German, perhaps even radically. The complexities of German history, the fate of minorities in Germany and of minority Germans in Eastern Europe, and the efforts of many Germans to come to grips with their country's past—these themes must be injected into the curriculum at all levels. I must confess to a certain uneasiness when I saw photographs of a successful inner-city German program showing black boys and girls wearing lederhosen and dirndls and dancing the polka.
Polka dancing, Oktoberfests, and carnival parties are certainly part of Germany's rich cultural tradition and belong in the American classroom, too, as long as students know that these activities represent only part of the total picture. There is no reason that high school classes cannot initiate honest and open discussion of Germany's treatment of minorities, in fact current events in Europe precipitated by the demise of Communism in the East lend themselves well to introduction of the complex situation of ethnic minorities in that part of the world. It is unfortunate, but perhaps the grim television reports from Bosnia-Herzogovina lend a degree of urgency to what might otherwise be an extremely foreign and incomprehensible story for Americans. Europe is not and never has been a melting plot; racial, ethnic, and religious intolerance reach levels of intensity that are incomprehensible in the light of even the worst examples of intolerance in the United States today; the wholesale displacement of peoples within the narrow geographic confines of the continent creates severe societal pressures.
A minority recruitment and retention effort that will be successful in the long run must involve the development of a balanced presentation of Germany that confronts awkward questions head-on and explains modern Germany—and the advantages of learning the German language today—in historical and social contexts. Will such an approach work with minority students in the United States? I am not sure. I was extremely impressed, however, when twenty-five high school classes visited Michigan State University in the winter of 1993 to view an exhibition on the White Rose resistance movement under Hitler; most students showed in their written responses sincere and mature interest in this period of German history. Admiration for the moral courage of the student resisters was balanced by naive but pertinent questioning about the Nazi period and how it could have happened.
At the college level, too, stronger signals from German departments to potential minority students that we are seeking not to avoid problematic areas but to confront them and to integrate them into a balanced curriculum would, I think, help. Andreas Lixl-Purcell argues for the inclusion of ore memoir literature from the Nazi period at the advanced intermediate level of German study as part of an overall commitment on the part of German departments to support the developing field of Holocaust studies. With the advent of Deutsche Welle German television and other technological advances, there is no reason that current events, including ongoing debates in Germany about asylum seekers, neo-Nazi violence, and the presence of minorities in Germany, cannot be part of the curriculum from the outset of a student's study of German.
The first and most important recommendation of the AATG task force to the executive board was that the minority task force become one of the association's standing committees and that it continue to pursue ways to make the study of German attractive to a diverse student body of young Americans. 5 This recruitment will require considerable sensitivity, tact, and commitment over the long haul, just at a time when the financial burdens on education at every level are leading to budget cuts that tend to affect foreign language programs disproportionately, with German often most vulnerable, simply because the classes are smaller than those in Spanish and French—another curiosity of foreign language education in this country. This budget crisis presents another dilemma of course: the urgency of preserving endangered German programs underscores the need for minority recruitment, yet minority recruitment should not be viewed simply as a means for attaining this end.
That I personally am less than sanguine about the prospects for success in this endeavor should be apparent from these remarks. It is important, however, that we are completely clear about our goals, which I would summarize as follows: to make German readily available to middle school and high school students, as well as to college students, as a viable subject of study on par with as many other languages as possible; to propagate an honest, open, and up-to-date image of the country and its peoples, including its minority groups; to incorporate into the curriculum an understanding of Germany's past as a foundation for the presentation of its vital role in the contemporary world of diplomacy, culture, politics, and economics; and, finally, to ensure that an accurate perception of Germany is available to all young people in the United States and that all racial and ethnic groups have access to the study of German. What ultimately does give me hope that this ideal might be realized is the knowledge that there are many extraordinary sensitive and committed teachers of German in the field—at all levels—and that the enthusiasm and motivation of these teachers can be infectious. The AATG must do its best to capitalize on this most important asset. 6
The authors is Professor of German and Chair of the Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages at Michigan State University. This article is based on his presentation at ADFL Seminar West, 3–5 June 1993, in Omaha, Nebraska.
1 For a complete listing of the task force members, see Die Unterrichtspraxis 25.2 (1992): 185–86.
2 For full results of the membership survey, see Schulz.
3 The “white” designation includes a majority of Hispanic residents, who belong to different races; hence the percentages total more than 100 (Fissnetti 20).
4 Further information about the contests can be obtained from the Goethe House New York, 1014 5th Ave., New York, NY 10028.
5 A complete listing of the recommendations of the AATG task force can be found in Die Unterrichtspraxis 26.1 (1993):97–98.
6 This article is based on my experience as the editor of a special issue of Die Unterrichtspraxis, Focus on Diversity (25.2 [Fall 1992]), and on my work with the AATG committee for the recruitment and retention of minority group members in German.
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© 1994 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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