It's the end of exam week, which means that Intermediate Spanish students here at Liberal Arts College USA are rejoicing that they have fulfilled their requirement and will never, ever have to take another foreign language course again. Their professors are rejoicing as well, grateful that, for now at least, we work at an institution of higher ed that still places a value on making one or another of those languages a bit less foreign.
Language programs have been significantly pruned back by universities suffering reduced federal and state funding, the most prominent example being SUNY Albany, where several tenured and tenure-track professors in the French, Italian and Classics departments were unceremoniously dismissed. Students majoring in these disciplines, meanwhile, were invited to complete their degrees at other SUNY campuses, but SUNY Albany discontinued the majors in those languages arguing that this decision affected only a handful of students. Universities and colleges around the U.S. have made similar decisions with regard to their language programs, or moved introductory and intermediate courses on-line to pare spending. This is a grave mistake.
There is simply no substitute for the time students spend in the classroom speaking an unfamiliar tongue. Language is so profoundly bound up in our sense of who we are and of the world that surrounds us that it is almost impossible for us to make sense of things without it. Here's an example: in English, we have a single word for what we generally consider an irreducible concept: corner. Yet in Spanish, the word rincónrefers to the intersection of walls where a parent banishes a naughty child's nose, while esquina denotes the edge of your sheet of paper, or the place where the sidewalk in front of your house meets the cross-street.
There. I have just slightly changed your perception of reality.
What's more, for all that English possesses enough synonyms to keep Roget publishing thesauruses until kingdom come, this simple example shows that the English language is lacking when it comes to some pretty basic distinctions. How else can we account for the fact that we love strawberries, our puppy dogs, our siblings, our friends and our spouses with the same verb? In fact, although many of us are fortunate enough to form at least a provisional understanding of the concept of love over the course of our lifetimes, "I love you" is still one of the most ambiguous statements one can make in English.
I would need the Matrix - or at very least a team of neuropsychologists and a lab full of fancy equipment - to know whether a mind that distinguishes between rincones and esquinas organizes spatial relationships fundamentally differently from how my mind does; and, if so, how this translates itself into differences in what's considered appropriate personal distance in social situations or how to build a city. But I am nearly certain that my internal map of the world is different from that of native Spanish-speakers as a consequence of spending the first twenty or so years of my life never having thought about such a distinction. Contact with other languages reshapes our perception of reality, and of the reality that is available to us to perceive. Perhaps this explains why so many students have such a visceral dread of language classes, and interpret the university's second language proficiency requirement as a perverse act of abject torture - such learning is inherently uncomfortable because it strikes so close to the heart of what makes us who we are.
Most educators are agreed that requiring students to take at least a couple of courses in the humanities - in anthropology, sociology, history, philosophy - is fundamental to providing them a broad understanding of the world they inhabit. These classes ask students to think about, read about, discuss, analyze, and legitimize different ways of interpreting the world. However, they are no substitute for language classes, as language courses require students not only to consider other perspectives, but for a moment to embody them. The practice of speaking the world through another's tongue compels students to practice empathy - a skill that grows ever more urgent in a shrinking world.
No comments:
Post a Comment