26, no. 3 (Spring 1995): 25-26
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Response to Christine Brown
Robert LaBouve, Texas State Department of Education
CHRISTINE Brown does a fine job of placing foreign languages in the schools in a broad context of education reform and has discussed well three aspects of systemic education reform—the Goals 2000: Educate America Act, standards, and school restructuring. She has clearly told us that the success of systemic education reform in languages in the schools is uncertain for many reasons and that language educators will have to be proactive to ensure reform. I have been invited to be provocative in my remarks, but thinking of the number of years I have invested in foreign language education, I will settle for somewhat provocative. Being a good Texan, I enjoy pondering. I hope that, if I have pondered well, I will build on some of the issues Brown raises.
To launch an essential educational and advocacy effort for languages in the schools, we must develop a rationale for foreign language study compelling enough to persuade powerbrokers to implement K-12 language curriculum universally. The uniqueness of American schools will not allow us to use European schools as our models as we often do. We cannot ignore and we should assess the continuing effect of English as the world language on the language curriculum of American schools. Can we develop and convincingly present such a rationale to decision makers? to colleagues? to parents?
Will the proposed foreign language standards suggest a monolithic K-12 curriculum? Will standards war against innovation and present extended language sequences as the only route to language competence? We must make room for experimentation in the schools, for example, intensive language programs, summer programs, developmental bilingual education, and so on. The use of technology as a delivery system for language education may quickly call into question a one-model solution to the language curriculum in our schools. What effect will high language standards have on the “different” student in today's schools? Students who bring a language other than English to school and students whom schools place in special education may find a one-model solution daunting.
While we focus on student performance, we may be ignoring what makes students wish to perform, to take pleasure in performing. I do not believe we can safely assume that students are going to line up for foreign language classes in breathless anticipation of becoming competent in another language. We simply must factor into the language curriculum equation a real understanding and caring for students and for what motivates them. As we create the ideal curriculum, I fear we are ignoring these considerations. I do not believe we can send all students away from high school competent in another language until we pay attention to unique characteristics of American students.
If we see foreign languages as part of a core curriculum for all students, then we should take the broadest possible view of languages in the school curriculum, including enhanced language skills, cultural knowledge, literacy, and problem solving. Language education is language education whether it adds Russian, Spanish, or Latin to the English-language communication skills of a student. We should stop segmenting language study into foreign languages and English.
I should now like to make some recommendations for the language profession that flow from my understanding of Brown's paper.
- Take advantage of the opportunity that the development of national K-12 foreign language standards gives us—carpe diem—to present persuasively to power brokers the rationale and goals of language study for American students.
- Develop a systematic national program to prepare a core of language educators as advocates and leaders for language education in the schools and continually update their expertise.
- Use the proposed K-12 national foreign language standards as a basis for K-16 articulation—horizontal and vertical—and encourage each state and each school district within a state to collaborate on a process for articulation with state university systems, individual institutions of higher education, and the business community.
- Promote bottom-up articulation through the proposed K-12 foreign language standards: Deliver to the door-step of the workplace or institution of higher education a citizen who is language competent in the fullest sense, that is, someone who has enhanced language communication skills, literacy, and the ability to solve problems. Challenge textbook publishers to create materials necessary for the expanded language curriculum.
- Renovate the preservice and inservice education of teachers in response to the proposed K-12 national foreign language standards.
- Resist the pressure in the schools to respond to college and university admission standards to see students as college-bound and non-college-bound by making exemplary language education available to all students. We must change the narrow definition of a good student as one who is preparing to enter a college. This idea of education as being simply precollegiate remains insidious and prevents many students from getting the sound, basic education they deserve and need before leaving high school.
While I realize that my recommendations deal mainly with the proposed national foreign language standards and that these recommendations are only one part of the systemic education reform Brown presents, I believe standards offer us a tangible document around which to guide the discussion of articulation in language education. As I suggest above, some aspects of the standards worry me, and other aspects worry others as well. I have great confidence, however, that the members of the standards task force will remain open to the field and that they will address issues of serious concern in future drafts.
© 1995 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
ADFL Bulletin 26, no. 3 (Spring 1995): 25-26 |
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