- I just left a contingent position at a midwestern university where there was no hope for a tenure track position in French. This is an institution where international business students don't have to have proficiency in a second language, where the admissions director, staff and the student tour groups who work for them regularly disparage the language courses and faculty who teach them, where Spanish majors are encouraged to study abroad in Ecuador where they take courses in English and live in English-speaking host families. If French leaders pass this law they will effectively confirm what the narrow-minded, ethnocentric faculty and staff at that university have been saying all along: there's no need to know a second language because everyone in the world speaks English.
- There's an assumption at work here too: aking classes like engineering, science or business in French is too difficult for international students. Therefore, to attract those students courses should be taught in English. First, are courses in the STEM fields inherently more difficult than in other fields, like the humanities? I would strenuously argue that they are not. The discourse surrounding K-12 and higher education has created an image of them as more difficult (and also more valuable and important, but that will have to be the topic of a separate post...). Learning anything is a second language is going to be a challenge. I would bet there are hundreds of thousands of individuals living in the U.S. who do their daily work in a second or third language. I've personally been treated by medical doctors for whom English is not their first language. I had the pleasure of teaching and mentoring a recent graduate who double majored in French and biology, who speaks Spanish and English bilingually because her family is originally from Mexico.
- In that vein: France wants to attract international students from emerging countries like Korea and Brazil. Presumably those students struggle in courses in French because French is not their first language. English probably isn't their first language either! They are already surmounting a challenge by studying in any second language. Is the real problem that in countries like Korea and Brazil French is not as popular as English? There's the issue that needs to be addressed. While the U.S. historically played an important global economic role many believe that role is diminishing. Why not work to promote French education and related globally important industries (aerospace technology, pharmaceuticals, nuclear energy) to thereby promote its language?
- I wonder why, as a source in the article suggests, the French aren't doing more to recruit students from francophone countries? One likely reason is that many countries are underdeveloped (like Haiti), or are entrenched in significant political turmoil (like Côte d'Ivoire). I wonder if there is a demand from more affluent francophone regions such as Switzerland and Quebec...Also, is there an assumption that students from an African or Caribbean country won't have the intellect or potential to thrive in the French university system? Is there a degree of truth to that assumption, given how impoverished an tumultuous some of them are, making scolarité very, very difficult.
Saturday, May 25, 2013
French University Decision Poses Potential Threat to French Language Teaching in the U.S.
A story on NPR today has me extremely rattled. Leaders in the Assemblée Nationale are considering allowing university courses in France to be taught in English in order to attract more international students for whom taking courses in French is prohibitive. The implications are significant.