Language on the Periphery of the Academy?

Independent schools do talk about five core academic areas: science, history, mathematics, English and foreign language. Nevertheless, at least at my school, history and English are of paramount consideration. I'd like to know at what point veering away from the study of the Classics--Greek and Latin, foreign language, at their heart--happened. I suspect that it was around the end of the first World War. To what it may owe is still beyond me. In the end, what is expected of math and foreign language teachers is to assign a small battery of exercises able to be completed in approximately twenty minutes at the lower-level language acquisition course. In history and English, however, an hour of homework in each class is not uncommon. Of course these courses require reading, goes the old saw, and this takes longer. Foreign language learning is at its core reading-intensive and should "take (just as long)er," too. I cannot tell you the number of times my measly drills or practice worksheets fall to mighty English or history. Teachers essentially compete with one another for each student's finite pool of time, thinking, of course, that theirs is the more important (or even most important) discipline. This is a false and inefficient way to envision what is supposed to be a holistic curriculum, appropriate by each age group.

As I have stated in an earlier blog, independent school teachers fancy themselves masters of the house once the door closes. Even department chairs exercise relatively little authority over what is taught once the rubber hits the road. I have come to fear that 'independent' in the independent school moniker has come to mean 'lazy.' In public school systems that radically espouse the much-touted (and très en vogue) "backward design model," there is a coherence across grade levels: teachers meet as a grade level team to discuss how broad themes and specific modules (i.e., individual lessons) interweave and reinforce that year's goal, as defined by that grade level, etc. Creating coherence is hard work, head work, done by many, during and after regular school hours. If you're a teacher, you don't want this job. If you're an educator, you're thrilled by the prospects...and the possibilities for saving time and cementing once and for all learning about a singular concept. This is massive team work, openness and transparency--independent schools struggle with all three of these elements.

You may be asking, "What role can foreign language play in this kind of complementary curricular structure?" Since this is a structure in which literature written in English, history, science and math work in concert, foreign language is the perfect glue with which to bind the disciplines. No textbook in foreign language is assembled this way. They are so predictably thematic it's saddening. Honestly, if you've seen one, you've seen them all. You've taken foreign language? Your textbook was like this, too: "En el supermercado," "Las relaciones interpersonales," "Los pasatiempos," etc. Students and teachers alike tire of these fraudulent situational curricula. What we need is a course which enriches teaching centrifugal force or environmental science. A course which compliments Shakespeare with a little Lope, a little math with Mayan representational systems. What does this look like? It looks like Spanish and French and Chinese and other foreign language teachers are going back to school. Isn't this exciting? To get to be a student of Romeo and Juliet or basic trigonometry again? Foreign language teaching has always been in the forefront of innovation: we can continue the trend by working within the frustrations of the 24-hour student day, teach foreign language, and wow our colleagues when they say, "Why do my students know the vocabulary of revolutionary movements around the world?" Just smile, and say, "Spanish class is awesome, right?" They'll want more of what you got, and just maybe get them to come to some Spanish classes once in awhile and see where they can complement your teaching.

The best scenario, obviously, is a school whose leadership embraces--nay, exhorts--this kind of interplay among its teachers and complementary teaching tactics. We just have to be a little less "independent," a little less "lazy," and a lot more team-minded.