Lost in Translation

Some years ago, the Lord said, “Come, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.”

And with that, He laid the groundwork for one of Harvard’s most contentious requirements: learning a foreign language.

The language requirement has caused much debate over the school’s history, eventually coming to rest in its current form—two semesters of study with exemptions contingent on incoming test scores or bilingual backgrounds. While wise in principle, this requirement lacks purposed direction. We should rid ourselves of it and incorporate language into the General Education curriculum.

The language requirement dates to 1655, when President Charles Chauncy mandated that all students take a three-year program of Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, and Syriac. With a liberalizing trend in higher education and waning emphasis on the classical tongues, the requirement first evolved into a two-year program and then, after a 1968 faculty vote, into its existing form of one year.

No one doubts that learning a new language has substantial upsides. At its best it provides one with a new perspective, broadens one’s worldview, exposes one to new people, and gives one a fresh way of thinking. There are also numerous benefits of speaking more than English in these globalized times. Only 18 percent of Americans speak a second language as opposed to 53 percent of Europeans.

But what does requiring a year of study accomplish?

When the language requirement was shortened to a year in 1968, Professor Clifford C. Lamberg-Karlovsky commented, “I don't see that a one-year language exposure rule has any educational value. Even abolishing the requirement completely would have been better than this.” I disagree. One year of learning a new language has value. But if the rationale behind the requirement is to guarantee student proficiency, Harvard is falling short of its goal.

Two semesters is simply not enough exposure to a new language to ensure proficiency, especially for those starting at the beginner level. Many students will forget most—if not all—of a new language soon after completing the requirement if their experience is limited to two terms. As most students also know, receiving a passing grade on an SAT Subject Test or AP language test—which allows students to bypass the requirement—also does not prove proficiency.

Many students therefore take foreign language courses just to fill the requirement, failing to become proficient. Especially in the first two years when deciding a concentration, two semesters is a sizeable commitment to something for which you lack passion.

A better approach to language would be more truthful in its ambition; that is, exposure to language has academic value, just as chemistry, psychology, classics, and other traditional disciplines have. To be an educated citizen requires some language experience. This follows the same logic as the General Education requirements: Not everyone needs to be a math concentrator, but any educated person needs a rudimentary understanding of Empirical and Mathematical Reasoning.

A ninth Gen Ed, simply named Language, could include not only foreign language classes, but also linguistics, language-related anthropology, language philosophy and other courses. This would give even students with a strong aversion to learning syntax and semantics the opportunity to explore the complexities and benefits that language as a broader discipline has to offer. Those with a proclivity toward learning a foreign language in full could continue onward in hopes of fluency; others could choose a different path of study after the semester experience.

Just as with other Gen Eds, no one would be exempt from the requirement. Why? College-age language acquisition is a unique cognitive process—almost totally different from acquisition in the pre-puberty years. Processing involves different regions of the brain and neural pathways. And unlike the current requirement, the goal of this new Gen Ed would not be fluency. Instead, students would aim to increase the breadth of their mental and academic capacities.

We need to continue to learn language here at Harvard. The current requirement, however, lacks direction and coherent logic. Adapting language into a Gen Ed would give a more honest articulation of the academic goal. It would make things simpler—everyone needs to take language regardless of background. It would also be more palatable for those with strong foreign-language aversions.

Put simply, a shift from the current system to Gen Ed makes sense in any language.

James F. Kelleher Jr. ’17 is a Crimson editorial comper in Wigglesworth Hall.