From amahoney@perseus.tufts.edu Thu Feb 1 06:30:44 2001 Received: from mxu2.u.washington.edu (mxu2.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.9]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW00.12) with ESMTP id GAA36460 for ; Thu, 1 Feb 2001 06:30:43 -0800 Received: from tantalos.perseus.tufts.edu (IDENT:root@tantalos.perseus.tufts.edu [130.64.2.169]) by mxu2.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id GAA19691 for ; Thu, 1 Feb 2001 06:30:43 -0800 Received: from perseus.tufts.edu (IDENT:amahoney@pegasus.perseus.tufts.edu [130.64.2.187]) by tantalos.perseus.tufts.edu (8.9.3/8.8.7) with ESMTP id JAA26660 for ; Thu, 1 Feb 2001 09:30:39 -0500 Sender: amahoney@perseus.tufts.edu Message-ID: <3A79730E.81721550@perseus.tufts.edu> Date: Thu, 01 Feb 2001 09:30:39 -0500 From: Anne Mahoney X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.14-5.0 i686) X-Accept-Language: en, fr, de MIME-Version: 1.0 To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: Longinus O'er a Bottle References: <200102011347.IAA26286@ccat.sas.upenn.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "James J. O'Donnell" wrote: > > > For the past seven years I have at > > various times argued on this list that (a) Classics should include Hebrew > > and Sanskrit and (b) students should be required to master 2-3 foreign > > languages, as many in Western Europe do, so they can more intimately > > understand and enjoy other cultures, not just pipe in the chorus of > > theorists who demand instant "celebration" of all nonWestern--expecially > > oppressed cultures--without deep knowledge of them. Chris would I'm sure > > agree with this. > > > > Easy to agree with (a): for saying a version of that I had the honor of > being attacked by name in WKH? One agrees with (b) on condition that one > is prepared to pay some high cultural prices and that one believes that > educational goals are best met by managing and increasing requirements. "High cultural prices"? I'm not sure what this means. What do we lose by having students learn foreign languages, especially if they start young? Surely this is more valuable than time spent on ditsy computer classes (most people do not need to learn how to program, and most people don't need special instruction to learn to use common applications), or excessive amounts of science (most people don't need to spend years in the lab, either). When I was in elementary and middle school (K-8, ages 5-14), we all took a foreign language and learned to read music, as well as doing math, reading, phys. ed., and the other ordinary sorts of subjects. I started my first foreign language in grade 6 and my second in grade 9; my younger siblings got to start a couple of years earlier. I was (and remain) fluent in the first language by the time I finished high school, and was nearly as good in the second. Yet the technical side was not neglected -- this was the time of the "new math," which for mathematically talented students was a wonderful innovation. In other words, once upon a time it was possible to go through quite ordinary public schools and learn languages, literature, history, music, science, and mathematics. I'm not aware that we paid a "cultural price" for our language courses. What did I miss? Whether "managing and increasing requirements" is a good thing, however, I'm less certain. I used to think it was. --Anne Mahoney Perseus Project .