robert@blake.acs.washington.edu (Gedankenleere) (03/22/89)
I did not read all articles under this FLR heading. I responded mereyly to one part of somebody's posting who claimed that foreign language learning did just this. It is NOT enough to go and talk to people who have taken foreign language courses to support such contentions!! We can't form social policy and course requirements based on such an UNSCIENTIFICALLY UNSOUND SURVERY!! It is too easy find yourself being convinced that the actual state of affairs is just what you were prepared to believe to begin with. Your contentions may be merely biased opions!! We do not know, in the absence of emprical, experimental data, done with perhaps double blind experiments, that learning a foreign language itself is EVEN a factor in the purported ehnhaced learning of the native language (for many of us here, English). Maybe the motiviations of those around such students are responsible, maybe the general academic atmosphere, maybe there is NOT a SIGNIFICANT correllation at all!! You seem to be in engineering, you know how much hard work and research MUST go into answering questions of this nature, questions that involve some slippery aspect of human nature or culture, questions which often are heavily saddeled with a great deal of emotional bias and cultural perceptions. Well, perhaps, engineering may not be the background required for you to appreciate this issue, it's more in the nature of statistical methods used by people in psychology, anthropology, sociobiology, sociology, biology, medical research, biostatistics, etc, etc.. In referance to the dry lecture bit, I was referring to the ethnic-type studies. To max its benefits, I feel it should be heavily particpatory--something which challenges the student and forces him/her to confront the cultures he/she is studying head on, instead of the dry lectures which, because students may fail to appreciate the relavance of the courses to themselves or to their immediate interests, cause them to merely go through the course, robot-like, without gaining anything significant from the experience other than having memorized soon-to-be forgotten details. This then is a far, far more effecient means to the cultural benefits that is claimed for foreign language study. It is a matter of economy, priorities, time, and money: there is TOO much that needs to be learned, and this situation will only get worse as the knowledge explosion continues! If foreign language study do not really serve enough of a useful purpose, then there are many more subjects that we need to address that can (and I feel ), should replace it. Nevertheless, I beleive it is worthwhile to offer it as electives for those whose interests, and goals are such that they feel they can benefit from such studies, but not as requirements unless those who are making these extravagant, unsupported claims can back it up with hard data (hopefully setup to be as unbiased as possible). The claims that these FLR are actually usefull to the scientific professional, I beleive are also overinflated! I do not question that they can, under particular circumstances actually "come in handy". What I question is whether it is worthwhile to spend as much as 3-4 years of college study + the (often) 2 or more high school years in one language to even BEGIN to gain the kind of mastery where it would be possible to get the kind of benefits claimed!! And then, when you realize that very, very few scientific or mathematical professionals ACTUALLY use even a modicum of whatever feeble foreign languages they may have acquired in their previous trainings, and just HOW REALLY ILLITERATE THEY ARE IN THESE FOREIGN languages NOW, you begin to wonder just why you had to spend 2 years of high school and 1-3 years (or more) of college learning this stuff!!! Then you really begin to shake your head when you find out that a great deal of scientific/math, engineering research literature are ACTUALLY writtten in ENGLISH, EVEN OVERSEAS (and most of the remainder that are not are REGULARLY, SYSTEMATICALLY, AND QUITE ACCURATELY translated into ENGLISH). This is because ENGLISH has become, for better or worse, really a WORLD language. Many countries use ENGLISH as a second official language and it has literally began to take roots in these countries and become almost as (not quite, except in a few cases) native as the original language, spawing curious dialects, and colloquoalisms (sp), that are just now beginning to be appreciated as full ENGLISH dialects IN THEIR OWN RIGHT!! The claimed cultural links, I believe, are mere myths that were invented by the humanities people and most of us have been duped into swallowing it whole without critcal scrutiny because they have wrapped it up in beguiling tinsels of a social agenda that a lot of us believe in. Americans who only speak English should learn other languages AS THE NEED REQUIRES!! If we begin to get more interational tourists, then those people in the industry should learn foreign language AS A REQUIREMENT, but what good would it do for others!! Cultural understanding and tolerance can be, as I said above, best be satisfied, to a much deeper extent, when we force ourselves, (perhaps in a class situation as proposed above) to confront our prejudices and find out and understand the prejudices which people from other cultures hold of us. We need a participatory type course, ideally one where we are put into PERSONAL contact with people of other cultures, where we can actively discuss our differeces and commonalities. Christ! I can't write like this. they want me to get off the system to replace some damned disk!!
quiroz@cs.rochester.edu (Cesar Quiroz) (03/22/89)
In <1277@blake.acs.washington.edu>, robert@blake.acs.washington.edu (Gedankenleere) wrote: | ... | It is too easy find yourself being convinced that the actual state | of affairs is just what you were prepared to believe to begin | with. ... | | ... And then, when you realize that very, very few scientific or | mathematical professionals ACTUALLY use even a modicum of whatever | feeble foreign languages they may have acquired in their previous | trainings, and just HOW REALLY ILLITERATE THEY ARE IN THESE | FOREIGN languages NOW, ... ACTUALLY? REALLY? In the context of your impassioned plea for carefully controlled scientific studies, I suppose you will be willing to back up your uppercasing with a reference, right? I side with you in one respect: more requirements are just so much more overhead. If you are serious (and classes don't get in your way too often), you will likely find both motivation and time to expand your horizons beyond your technical expertise. That may take you to study other languages, sure. We can separate the two issues (the original context was FLRs for PhD students): 1- Is learning `many' languages useful to future PhDs? 2- Should this learning be required? My preference is for `yes' and `no'. OOPS. What is this doing in comp.arch anyway? I am redirecting follow-ups to sci.research, for lack of a better fit. -- Cesar Augusto Quiroz Gonzalez Department of Computer Science University of Rochester Rochester, NY 14627
alderson@Jessica.stanford.edu (Rich Alderson) (03/22/89)
I think that everyone who is arguing this particular thread has missed the point of foreign language requirements in graduate degree programs. It is not that the student will "understand some other culture better." It is not that someone has decided that the student has nothing better to do with the time than try to cram yet another unrelated bit of knowledge into an already crowded brain. The long years of study of a foreign language as an object of study do NOT provide any greater understanding of the culture for which it is the means of communication. That is provided by reading, IN THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE, the great works of literature in that language. (It is even further enhanced by reading the trashy novels in that language, but that's a different topic.) The point of a foreign language requirement in graduate degree programs is that there ARE papers written in other languages than one's own. Translations may be well and good for the day to day worker who is willing to accept what someone else may say is the intent of the article. However, for the researcher --and that, after all, is what is SUPPOSED (vide infra) to be coming out of graduate degree programs--someone else's word is really NOT good enough. It has been claimed that those in other countries are writing in English. In some fields, that is likely to be true. However, that does not mean that ALL interesting research is in English. To take an example from my own background, the primary language for publications on the historical and comparative grammar of the Indo-European languages is German. This is so much the case that people with whom I studied WROTE in German, although I was studying at an American university. In another field: Much has been made, over the last hundred years, of Freud's concepts of "ego," "superego," and "id," nice Latin terms which English-speak- ing translators thought would be more acceptable to their readers that direct translations of Freud's rather folksy "das Ich," "das Uberich," and "das Es." What's wrong with "the I," the "over-I," and "the It"? They don't sound "scientific." But a researcher who doesn't read German can't pick up on the difference in connotation between the originals and the usual English/Latin translations. This has gone on long enough in comp.arch. I am directing follow-ups to soc.misc. A warning about that: I don't read that group, and won't start. Any flames will be directed to /dev/null. I DO read comp.edu... The note you were directed to above: Back in the good old days--an ominous beginning--it was considered sufficient to have a Bachelor's degree in your field in order to teach at the college or even university level. It was expected that teachers would go on to get advanced degrees, but that teaching was their primary job, and it could be years before they got as far as a doctorate. Such researchers were rewarded with MODEST increases in status and remuneration. Today, many with Bachelor's degrees are hardly better educated than high school graduates of the time to which I hark back; graduate students are getting the education that was theirs by right when they decided to go to college. Enough. These are of course my opinions, as most people these days don't want them, and think it shameful that I hold them. Rich Alderson
loving@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Mike Loving) (03/22/89)
In article <1277@blake.acs.washington.edu> robert@blake.acs.washington.edu (Gedankenleere) writes: > >. . . an UNSCIENTIFICALLY UNSOUND SURVERY!! > What does this mean? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mike Loving loving@lanai.cs.ucla.edu . . . {hplabs,ucbvax,uunet}!cs.ucla.edu!loving -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
vestal@klemmer.SRC.Honeywell.COM (Steve Vestal) (03/22/89)
>In article <22101@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> loving@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Mike Loving) writes: > In article <1277@blake.acs.washington.edu> robert@blake.acs.washington.edu (Gedankenleere) writes: > >. . . an UNSCIENTIFICALLY UNSOUND SURVERY!! > What does this mean? That's what the rabble does. We professionals do *scientifically* unsound work, also variously called a SWAG, guestimate, or conjecture (depending on the audience).