University of Miami - Ibis Yearbook (Coral Gables, FL)

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MSS Ain ' t NI controversy es-en now raging over whether the foreign language requirement should be dropped is both saddening and illuminating, as it shows a lack of understanding on the part of the students as to what a ing another language aids one in un- derstanding the medium in which our thoughts are expressed. At the same rime, reading the literature of another culture in the language in which it was written not only in Stfutts one in the thought processes and heritage of another culture, but exposes the mind to thoughts. which, no matter how welt trans- lated into English, lose in the process something of their nuances. Refusal to attempt another language argues not merely a narrow mind but cul- tural chauvinism of the most brutal MM. In what will theoretically be the informed voter of a wealthy and powerful nation such an attitude is inexcusable. university is for. and an unwilling- ness or inability on the part of the faculty to explain it. A university is not. or at any rate should not be, a trade school, except nominally on the graduate level; its concern is not the teaching of marketable skills, nor of facts which when interlarded with everyday speech can pass for knowledge. The university is not even in any strict sense a teaching vehicle for actual knowledge, assum- ing such a thing exists; rather, it is a forum in which students learn, gen- erally at the college level and more particularly at the graduate level. the means or processes of thought. Some form of thought, of course, is present even in the most untutored mind, but it is impossible to make a rational or aincal analysis of any value in any subject unless the mind has been sharpened to it. To this end the leaching of facts is to some degree necessary, for without the know- ledge of what has gone before, of past mistakes and achievements, progress of any kind is impossible. facts are only useful, however, in- sofar as they supply a basis for analysis; the learning of facts is not an end in itself. In this context the teaching of foreign languages is not mere in- dulgence but outright necessity. Most foreign languages have con- tributed in some way to the de- velopment of our own; hence, learn.