We Think We Are Evening in Paris, But We're Really Chanel

We Think We Are Evening in Pais, But We’re Really Chanel”

Gilbert A . Jarvis

ABSTRACT Concerned by an absence of satisfaction and pride in the profession, the author appeals for a careful examination of our educational values. Although not advocating abandonment of interest in the practical uses of language skills, he discusses with greater interest the nonlinguistic outcomes of foreign language study. Among these is the hypothesis that such study prepares a student for the phenomenon called ‘future shock,’ which in essence is a lack of familiar cues. Faced with this situation, the foreign language learner must learn adapting and coping skills that are applicable far beyond the classroom. H e also examines the hypothesis that foreign language learning is so rich in intellectual skills, cognitive operations, and thinking processes that a person must be different in- tellectually as a result of such study. Drawing on the work of educational psychologists, who today

see learning as being of multiple kinds, the con. clusion is drawn that foreign language learning is the richest discipline in involving, often si. multaneously, all these multiple varieties of learning. Since our discipline is content free, i.e., not bound to a specific area of knowledge or information, the teacher has great potential for achieving the goals of humanistic or affective education-helping the student discover his identity. In addition, since most students begin their study of foreign language at ‘ground zero,’ the teacher has the opportunity to give learners a feeling of accomplishment and enhanced self- concepts. Finally, the author hypothesizes that our subject area has the greatest potential for providing the learner with insights into the pro- cess of communication and ways to attain cross- cultural communication.

Gilbert A . Jarvis (Ph.D., Purdue University) is As- sociate Professor of Foreign Language Education at The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.

T H E OPPORTUNITY TO COMNUNI- CATE with colleagues in foreign language education is a source of great satisfaction to me. Yet, it is an absence of satisfaction and pride that concerns me most in our profession today. ‘Satisfaction’ is a humble word, a deceptive word, for in its shadows are the aspirations and feelings of all of us during

+ Revised version of keynote speech at the Annual Meeting of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, Denver, Colorado, 29 Novem- ber 1974.

each moment of our careers, if not our lives. In this era of significant progress in foreign language education I am troubled by the fact that there are some teachers who do not seem to feel satisfied in their work. They have negative self-concepts: they do not like what they are. I am concerned because I believe their negative feelings are unjustified. We contribute extraordinarily to the development of young people-and, therefore, to society-but we rarely think about our con- tribu tions.

In a sense, my very personal message is an appeal for a careful examination of our values. Society watchers tell us that our society is now examining its values. Even in education we see greater emphasis (and

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GILBERT A. JARVIS 105

legitimacy) being given to values-clarifica- tion strategies. Ironically, this emphasis be- came one of the clues to what I am postu- lating as a problem in the profession. As I watched a group of teachers practicing values-oriented techniques, I was struck by the observation that when they practiced the “I a m . . . ” procedure, they used every possible answer before one said, “I am a foreign language teacher.” This omission seemed symptomatic of a feeling among a growing number of foreign language teachers that their contribution is irrelevant to the mid-1970s. They look longingly at the ‘good old days,’ instead of ‘learningly.’ We should not have a need for consoling nos- talgia, not when we are on the brink of the greatest potential ever. But these educators look backward rather than forward. They are impatient; they seek instant support as well as results. The thought of planting trees under whose shade they shall not sit is no longer beautiful to them. At foreign language conferences they commiserate and try to top each other’s stories about the ignorance of guidance counselors they have known. They complain that we know so little about language learning, but they do not help us organize our ignorance, to sort what we know from what we do not know.

I am bothered because attitudes influence all we do and because of the incongruity with the optimism and excitement else- where in the profession. We teachers-who speak frequently about attitudes to our students-must recognize how negative attitudes can influence our profession. When doubt is created in any person’s mind, his initiative is thereby eliminated. T h e self- fulfilling prophecy becomes operative: we feel worthless and thereby become useless. The contrast with the positive feelings else- where in the profession may be particularly visible to me because of my having had the opportunity during the past few years to edit the ACTFL Reuiew of Foreign Lan- guage Education Series. I have sought to identify any thread that runs through the various successful projects that are de- scribed on those pages. That one thread

seems to me to be an intense belief by those involved in what they were doing. They thought their programs were excellent, and that probably helped to make them so.

This background of concern has also led me to an hypothesis about one contributing factor: we focus nearly all our attention on the practical uses of language skills and thereby, I fear, overlook nonlanguage-skill outcomes, which, when combined with the practical, make us the most valuable area of the curriculum. No other area can offer as much learning that matters for the late twentieth century.. . and yet some of us doubt.

I am not advocating abandonment of interest in practical uses of language skills. We all know that many students have specific pragmatic reasons for learning a language (travel, career, etc.). I know that we no longer communicate across rivers with drums but rather through space at the speed of light. I know also that the matter of per- suasion is another domain: it is often difficult to convince anyone that he should learn any particular subject matter. We must all live with the perpetual dilemma of not knowing what we shall have wanted from our educations twenty years from now. I am advocating that we ourselves recognize all the outcomes of language study.

Use of the term ‘outcomes’ implies a dis- satisfaction with any conceptualization that relies only upon ‘goals,’ ‘objectives,’ or ‘rationales’ in a discussion of purposes. Goals or objectives, though they vary in terms of specificity or generality and in terms of for- mulae for stating them, are always aims. They are descriptions of learner behavior that we would like to see present at some time in the future (tomorrow, next week, next year). Rationales (e.g., “You’ll get a better job.” “It will help you when you travel.”) are attempts to justify the aims; they are statements of why or how the aims will benefit a person.

My conviction comes from looking beyond what we conventionally see as our aims and the reasons for these aims. Any aim for any reason whatsoever involves learning be-

106 We Think We Are Evening in Paris

yond that which is identified. We educators have been like the marksman who focuses solely upon how close the bullet comes to the center of a paper target. Does he hit the goal? He does not think about where the bullet goes or what happens after i t passes through the target. Likewise, in foreign language education there are many conse- quences or outcomes that have not been planned. Fortunately, in contrast to the effects of the bullet, they are very positive.

The nonlinguistic outcomes I want to dis- cuss are hypotheses on my part. T h e fact that we do have the potential to explore them should make us stand a little taller. . . and that is my goal. It would not distress me to discover that my hypotheses were invalid, if I prompted a search for new, valid outcomes. The outcomes postulated here are in a sense the ultimate reason for a humanistic education. They form the ideal of an edu- cated man who would create a different and better world, but they are much more specific. It is also possible that our thinking about these outcomes can be refined to the point where they can then be used for pub- lic-relations purposes.

As my first hypothesis, I believe foreign language stud$ prepares a student in the best manner that schools can for the phenomenon we have come to call ‘future shock.’ No other area of the curriculum can so readily prepare a student of the 1970’s to deal with it.

Future shock is a reality to everyone. All of us have recently been in situations where we have felt like strangers in a strange land, though we may have been in the same com- munities (or even homes) where we have spent many years. T h e changed social and technological environment in which we find ourselves is quite suddenly as strange as being in a distant and unknown culture. We pick up a newspaper to read of a graduate, student who taught her class in the nude as an expression of personal freedom. We read data showing how rapid changes in life styles may be associated with an increase of 50 percent in mental patients within a period of ten years.

We also experience future shock as a result of technological change. This past year when I bought a new car my experience was similar to that of many persons in the 1970’s. T h e salesman cautiously warned me about the complexity of the new seat-belt system. I assured him that I was not un- happy with a system that everyone had to use, and off my five-year-old son and I drove, Hut as we went to leave a service station after getting some gasoline, the red light flashed, the buz~er buzzed, and the car would not start. I unbuckled and re. buckled. . . still only noise and lights. For a minute or so (though it seemed like ten) I was a victim of a malfunctioning technological system: “Stand up, Mark. . . Sit d o w n . . . Buckle aga in . . . Unbuckle . . . Try again. . . I’ll do it .” All this time in the back of my mind was the image of how ab- surd this would all become when the station attendant came back to see why we were still sitting at the pumps.

An analysis of the blur and confusion of the phenomenon seems to me to lead di- rectly to foreign language education. (In- deed, the fact that future shock is a deriva- tive of culture shock should have a message for us.) When we examine future shock, we find that the essence of i t is a lack of familiar cues: the known and the comfortable are gone. We must cope rather abruptly with the unexpected, with change. If only a few cues are unfamiliar, we cope, but as the quantity increases, so does our problem.

It is legitimate to ask whether education in general should be concerned with such matters. If we do see education’s role as one of responding to societal needs, we must answer affirmatively. Does this mean that courses in future shock are needed? No, I think they would fail; moreover, one area of the curriculum-foreign language education-already comes close to developing and improving this coping ability, and with only slight adaptation much more could be done. Our potential is largely due to the fact that future shock is not merely cognitive, but it is especially affective. One must experience i t in order to learn to cope with


it. Thus, an intellectualized course (or social studies unit) has limited potential. In foreign language learning, however, the student is in a very real sense stripped of familiar cues. Even what is most personally his-his way of thinking and speaking-is set aside. Instead of being gradual, change is telescoped into a direct encounter with the unfaniiliar (just as in future shock). Students in this situation must learn adapting and coping skills that are applicable far beyond tlie foreign language classroom. As a concrete example, I think of the teaching strategy in which the teacher arranges with a native speaker of the foreign language in the community to have students phone the native to obtain certain information. The information can be structured so that use of selected vocabulary or grammat- ical patterns is required. The procedure is useful primarily because it involves real communication practice. Consider, however, what the procedure becomes when we ask the student after he has made the call:

( I ) How he felt .IS lie dialed the number: (2) HOM he felt when the person said some

(3) M’hat he did to 50he that problem; (4) If there ‘ire other strategies that he might

thing he did not understand;

ha\ e used.

In this way lie has felt the experience; he has thought about it; he has talked it through; lie has a new understanding of it; in short, lie is a different person. Asking questions like these seems to me to make a dramatic difference in the activity. Without them I fear few persons would examine what they did and how they felt.

To speak in these relatively specific terms seem to have another advantage (at least if we feel we should communicate these ideas to persons outside foreign language education). To say, for example, that foreign language study helps develop the ideal of tlie Renaissance person might risk being anachronistically laugliable in the 1970’s. If we say that we hope to develop greater knowledgeability and sensitivity in people, no one will laugh, but they will likely feel

that the terms are vague. When, however, we cite specifics and show that feelings are examined, when we consider that sensitive people are aware of feelings (both in them- selves and in others), and when we can point out not only the problem solving involved but also how alternative solutions are examined, it is very clear that such strategies result in what anyone would call a more knowledgeable and sensi tive person.

Thus, the ability to cope and to understand one’s feelings in the face of the unfamiliar can be a powerful outcome of foreign language study. The potential has always been there, but too often we have made our students victims of the unfamiliar rather than beneficiaries.

A second valuable outcome of foreign language learning is its richness in the development of intellectual skills. Hopefully, we shall soon devote some energies to doc- umenting this outcome more fully. We all remember reading how the nineteenth-century faculty psychologists believed that the brain was a muscle to be strengthened by exercise. Latin was often cited as being particularly beneficial. We have all smiled and mused about the inaccuracy of this thinking. Ironically, I think the nineteenth-century psychologists may have been right-not that the brain is a muscle to be exercised- but that a subject area like foreign language learning is so rich in intellectual skills, cogni tive operations, or thinking processes (whatever we are to call the mental operations) that a person is different intellectual- ly as a result. He is a different thinker.

How dare I say such a thing? I admit that I do not have one particular piece of con- clusive evidence, but rather I am extrapo- lating from many diverse sources. There have been a few specific research efforts that have identified particular abilities resulting from foreign language study. Recently, Landry found evidence that FLES students scored significantly higher on tests of creativity (figural fluency and figural flexibility) than similar students who had not studied a foreign language. A specific intellectual skill seemed to have been developed.

108 We Think W e A1.e Euening in Paris

The intuitions of thousands of foreign language learners cannot be ignored. Most of us see ourselves as having benefited in diverse ways from language study, though we have probably never tried to measure those ways.

Even the work of psychologist David Krerli may be relevant. He found that rats raised in an enriched environment had physiologically ‘better’ brains in several ways. Ultimately, he determined that any activity involving spatial relations contrib- uted most to the brain development. Be- cause judging three-dimensional space is a very important ability for a rat, Krech con- jectured that there may be a species-specific training that enhances the brain. If so, i t is entirely plausible that this training would be in the area of language, where the hu- inan species has distinctive aptitude.

In my judgment, the most convincing support for this hypothesis derives from the fact that most educational psychologists today see learning as being of multiple kinds. N o single mechanism seems to explain all learning. This multiplicity occurs, for example, in the conceptualizations of Ausu- bel, GagnP, Guilford, and even i n Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. I see significance in the fact that whenever one applies any of these conceptualizations to learning in any of our existing ‘disciplines,’ one finds that foreign language learning seems richest in the multiple varieties. All the varieties of learning appear not only to be involved; they appear to be involved si- m ul taneousl y.

Thus, by extrapolation from many diverse sources, I have become convinced that one is, in a word, a better ’thinker’ as a result of studying: a foreign language-especially in comparison with other areas of the, curric-ulunn. Obviously, we must be more specific about what these intellectual skills are before we advertise language study as brain training.

Cognitive outcomes are not our only strength. Just as we are not born with cognitive skills, we are not born with attitudes. They too are learned, and this fact offers

unique potential for foreign language education.

T h e humanistic or affective education movement is drawing increasing attention today. Its goals, as articulated by Maslow, focus upon discovering one’s identity: what one’s real feelings, attitudes, desires, and traits are, and finding a life style that per- mits their expression. What am I uniquely, and how is i t that I am this way? What is my style? hly likes and dislikes? M y values? How am I similar to others? How am I different? In what direction do I seem to be heading? Does that make me happy? Every student can begin to answer these questions i n a foreign language class. I do not believe that any other area of the curriculum has greater potential for achieving these goals. We are content free; we are in no way bound to a specific area of knowledge or information. T o develop language skills the content can be anything, includ- ing who I am and what my values are. How can we not be proud of this extraordinary learning?

Our affective potential has another di- mension. Many talk of schools without failure, but few achieve it. Indeed, freedom from failure is usually precluded at the secondary or college levels unless a student has experienced a carefully sequenced mastery approach throughout elementary school. A secondary or college course nearly always requires the student to bring to the course certain skills, capabilities, and knowledge. Sometimes these prerequisites are an- nounced and known to all; sometimes they are unannounced and unknown to anyone. But in foreign language instruction there is potential for starting closer to the zero point. There need not be prerequisites. In other areas a student may be condemned to failure because of some skill or bit of knowledge that was missed in the fourth grade. T h e geometry instructor, for example, can scarcely avoid assuming the presence of many concepts. Unfortunately, we often fall into the same pattern and build i n prerequisites, but w e need not d o so.

Consider the extreme case of a high


school student who has been labeled ‘in- ferior,’ ‘defective,’ ‘substandard’ for ten or more years in a system that has at the same time iniprisoned him. We educators are usually unwilling to percei1.e our behavior in this way. We claim that we gave those grades to help the student, but really we were doing little more than summarizing perform- ance i n adjectives-after i t had occurred, and i t was too late to do anything about it. Our adjectives were often coded ‘A,’ ‘B,’ C,’ ‘I),’ or ‘F.’ The effects of this labeling upon the self-concepts of the individuals who were labeled negatively are frighten- ing. Each of us knows the pain of feeling inadequate for some task. It hurts, and it hurts a great deal. We struggle to repress it, to discount it, or to conipensate i n some way. What we do not know is the pain of feeling inadequate nearly all the time.

We 1iai;e the potential for breaking this pattern in foreign language education-the potential for improving the self-concepts of all children. The thought of guaranteeing students true access to success-the wonder- ful feeling of accomplishment-is singularly exciting to me. As a parent, I know that if a school were to ask me to select the highest edoc;itional prioriry for my child, I would have little difficulty choosing. I would say, “Give n i y child a good self-concept; make liini like himself.”

M y goal is demanding but attainable. We must identify:

(1) What :he learner himself brings to the in- htruction;

(2) I\’hat skills and knowledge are involved i n the realistic goals we established; and

( 3 ) What is to be done to bridge :he gap between the two.

Some schools utilize extraordinary means to Iielp a student to feel successful. Tele- \ ision arid the popular press have given wide \isibility to an Ohio school in which all students learn to ride a unicycle. T h e ra- tionale for the requirement is that every child will have learned something difficult of wliich he can feel proud. Surely, foreign language education has more potential than a unicycle.

1

Another outcome of foreign language learning that strikes me as crucial for late twentieth-century society has a slight resem- blance to an ‘old’ reason for language study. We have often told students that learning a foreign language helps in understanding and using English. T h e relationships between isolated vocabulary words in the two languages were often cited. I do not think we were wrong; instead, I think we were identifying only a miniscule tip of a much more important iceberg. Learning a foreign language results in many insights into cornrnunication-perhaps the most complex phenomenon that permeates nearly every moment of our lives. There can be no doubt about its importance. On a specific level, we are told that 50 percent of all job losses are not because of a lack of job skills but because of inability to communicate to subordinates and superordinates. O n a general level, we can remind ourselves that most of our lives are spent trying to share our thoughts and feelings with other people.

T h e contribution of foreign language study (as opposed to the study of English, Speech, or Communications) results from the fact that in our native language communication so totally surrounds us that we cannot see it. We are too close in much the same way that a person may not be able to distinguish the pattern in a carpet while standing on it, but upon going into the next room and looking back the pattern emerges clearly.

We do not tune in to many insights that occur in our classrooms. Some we dismiss because they are so elementary-but each is an experience that shapes the learner. There is significance, for example, in the total fascination and astonishment on the face of the student exclaiming, “Wow, do you mean they don’t call Germany, ‘Ger- many,’ in France, and in Germany they hale even a different name!” Many of the more profound insights go far beyond the how-language-works aspects of communication. A student may discover, for example, that he communicates not merely out of

110 We T h i n k W e A1.e Euening in Paris

need but that much of his communication is motivated by a drive for the satisfaction communication gives him. This satisfaction that we all get from communicating is most apparent when we do it in a new communication vehicle.

An extension of communication is cross- cultural communication. One small but important topic of this vast area relates to three words, which if truly understood and appreciated, would result in a different and better world. Those words are, “Diversity is beautiful.” Tragically, they remain mere words for far too many people, though each of us is reminded of those words every day. Television comniercials tell us, “There is no one like you”; discussions even with our own children (or parents) dramatically car- ry the same message. Foreign language study can assist in helping the student both to deal with diversity and to value it. Lan- guage study brings diversity into the student’s life no matter how sheltered that life may have been. To function fully in our society each person must learn to deal with diversity, and if he does so by seeing i t as enriching life rather than being a nuisance to society, the quality of American life is improved. Cross-cultural understanding becomes then for me an acceptance, respect- ing, and valuing of differences -whether they are between you and the person clos- est to you or between you and someone half- way around the world. It is insight into the different realities and expectations that each of us carries around in our heads-insight that comes best from learning about differences in their most vivid form, differences between speakers of different languages.

Charles Brown, a communications spe- cialist, in a profound opening chapter to, Volume 6 of the ACTFL Reuiew writes in a similar vein:

To s tudy another language i n which people live out their lives and to study the literature that has expresaed their dreams and the limits of their possibilities is a way by contrast to introduce t h e student to himself, as a stranger,

and thus to sharpen his perception of himself and the human condition.

How can any of us doubt the value of foreign language study when we offer so much . . . more, as I have said, than any other area of the curriculum.

Lastly, if one looks at general educational goals, a close affinity to foreign language education is again evident. A year ago when members of Phi Delta Kappa were asked to rank general educational goals, their five highest were:

(1) Develop skills in reading, writing, speaking, and listening;

(2) Develop pride i n work and a feeling of self-worth;

(3) Develop good character and self-respect; (4) Develop a desire for learning, now and in

the future; ( 5 ) Learn to respect and get along with peo

ple with whom we work and live.

Compare us with other disciplines. Is there any other area that contributes more to achieving what this ranking identified as the principal goals of education?

When we consider the progress and excitement in so many parts of the profession, when we consider the value of nonlinguistic outcomes, when we add the wealth of all the practical uses of language skills, I cannot understand why any of us would see ourselves as a frill or at best an interesting adjunct to the ‘real’ curriculum. Such feelings of inadequacy, of low self-esteem, must change, or they will become a self-fulfilling prophecy that will destroy us. . . . And there is so much reason for optimism.

References

Brown, Charles T. “Communication and the Foreign Language Teacher,” 5-35 in Gilbert A. Jarvis, ed., The Challenge of Communication. ACTFL Re- view of Foreign Language Education, Volume 6. Skokie, 111.: National Textbook Co., 1974.

Krech, David. “Psychoneurobiochemeducation.” Phi Delta Kappan, 50 (1969), 370-75.

Landry, Richard G. “The Enhancement of Figural Creativity Through Second Language Learning a t the Elementary School Level.” Foreign Language Annals, 7 (1973), 111-15.

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We Think We Are Evening in Paris, But We're Really Chanel