PrintNo matter how you slice the Core, the language requirement is its largest component.
Columbia College students race through the major works of Western literature in two semesters. They return the next year to survey Western philosophy from Plato to Woolf. Science awkwardly claims a year and a half of their time. Neither music nor art even merits a full year. And physical education feels like an afterthought.
But foreign languages?
They demand a full four semesters of concerted effort. And when you factor in the relative point values of different Core requirements, the weight assigned to the foreign language requirement becomes even greater: many introductory language courses are worth up to five points, demanding, at least in theory, almost twice the amount of work and dedication than demanded by a perfunctory, three-point Science for Non-Scientists lecture. Alas, there is no Language for Non-Linguists.
Some Columbia College students are exempt from the requirement because of fluency in another language. Students in the School of Engineering and Applied Science are altogether exempt. It’s clear, nonethelss, that Columbia is serious about producing graduates who are multilingual.
On a campus where everyone argues over everything, an impassioned debate over the foreign language requirement is conspicuously absent. If many students open fire on Literature Humanities and Contemporary Civilization for being Eurocentric, if some complain about University Writing and Frontiers of Science for being boring, if the rationale for a Core Curriculum itself comes under question, then the language requirement deserves a good dose of Columbia skepticism and argument.
After all, there is much to be skeptical about, so much to argue over. Throughout the Sisyphean task of learning a language, how often do we consider why we are memorizing words and mastering sentence constructions? We may grumble about our choice of language in moments of frustration at 3:00 a.m., but how often do we genuinely second-guess our decisions?
Paralyzed by Choice
The existence of such a requirement brings to the forefront a looming decision: which languages do Columbia students choose to study?
For many of us, it’s not an easy choice. There is a troubling tension between what’s useful and what’s interesting, what’s timeless and what’s trendy, what’s easy and what’s daring.
Before even the choice is made, explains professor Stéphane Charitos, director of Columbia’s Language Resource Center, there is the problem of limited knowledge. While Columbia students may think they’re choose language based on preference, they may not have the necessary information to make a knowledgeable choice—that is, they may not know of the variety of language options Columbia offers. “Students naturally gravitate toward a [certain] language department because they don’t know any better,” he says. Choosing between Columbia’s 45 to 55 offered languages, the majority of which Charitos describes as “less-commonly-known,” is all too frequently not given the attention of, say, choosing a major.
Many of these “less-commonly-taught languages” find a home in the Language Resource Center. Tucked away in a corner of the School of International and Public Affairs, the LRC, founded in 1998 with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, was inaugurated as a way to promote language studies at Columbia. Currently, the LRC offers undergraduates opportunities to learn several less-commonly-taught languages, including Punjabi, Bengali, and Hausa.
“The LRC is a place where the languages are nurtured and grown,” he explains, describing it in a later correspondence as an “incubator” for languages. Vietnamese, for example, began as an LRC-sponsored language program, but as it grew and expanded, it was passed on to the East Asian languages and cultures department.
The entire world, though, seems to run on a few core languages. The United Nations has only six official languages, and the number of people who actually speak, say, Finnish, is negligible on a global scale. When this is the case, can anyone really blame students for choosing languages that actually have a significant place on the global stage?
In this way, the domain of choosing which language to study is a battleground of pedagogical philosophies, personal passions, and national interests. And it’s an important one. “This is not a decision you make on Monday and, two years later, you change to another language. You need to think through why you’re taking a language,” Charitos says. So how to decide?
For Mark Hay, a Columbia College sophomore, the choice to study Hindi-Urdu was as much a visceral choice as an intellectual one. “I’m an Indophile,” he says in an email interview. “I love the culture, the politics fascinate me, my religious tradition of choice originates from the region, and the holy texts I read and ascribe to are related in script and in spirit and in basic structure to this language.”
Hay’s mantra for how to choose a language is simple: “Follow your bliss. Find the culture and the poetry and the heritage that speaks to you and pursue it out of passion and pure love.”
In the October 2009 edition of Columbia Political Review, Hay wrote a biting attack on the increasing popularity of Mandarin and Arabic at Columbia and in the world, describing the trend as “silly.” He posed a question: “Is language study worth it—the hours in class stumbling through strange sounds, squiggly lines, the painful dialogues on your imaginary Chinese dating life and Arabic cooking habits—just to be momentarily fashionable?”
It seems that the response at Columbia has been a resounding “yes.” According to professor Lening Liu, director of Columbia’s Chinese Language Program, Columbia is at the fore of the rise of Mandarin. In 2002, there were around 200 people studying Chinese at Columbia. This year, there are between 480 to 490, he said, around 35 of whom are studying classical Chinese. That’s almost a 150 percent increase in under 10 years.
Professor Liu brushes aside criticisms of the possible transience of the popularity of studying Chinese. “These days it’s very hard to get anything done without China’s involvement or cooperation,” he says, referring to China’s role in international affairs.
That students would study Chinese for its utility makes sense to him. “We realized the trend and we started early,” he boasts. Six years ago, with an eye toward the vocational advantages of Chinese proficiency, the Chinese department began to offer advanced students the chance to specialize in media Chinese, legal Chinese, or business Chinese. Working in conjunction with the Business, Law, and International Affairs schools, it developed curricula tailored to individual career needs, a decision in which Liu takes pride. He goes on to explain how Columbia was the first Ivy to offer Business Chinese, Legal Chinese and Media Chinese.
Such ebbs and flows in language preference are inevitable. Charitos explains that even if some view Arabic and Chinese as passing trends rather than global mainstays, China’s huge population or U.S. involvement in the Middle East aren’t going to change any time soon. “The trends in language learning are closely tied to U.S. foreign policy and economic policy. You can’t blame people for wanting to find a job in an area where there is growth.”
But even Charitos seems torn. Reflecting on his own background growing up in Europe, he recalls the opportunities he had to study French, English, and Greek. He will always have the chance to return to those countries and continue to study their languages, he explains. But will he have a chance to go to Nigeria to study Hausa? Unlikely. His advice to students, then, is straightforward: “Take the opportunity to study a language that [you] may never be exposed to again.” How to reconcile this with the pressures of finding a job, though, remains problematic.
And it doesn’t stop here. In addition to personal interest and economics, altruistic tendencies may come into play. “The younger generation wants to make a difference in the world. A lot of them are looking to do public service or abroad in NGOs. They want to work on the ground, helping people, working in sustainable development, renewable energy.” For these purposes, it is necessary to learn an uncommon language, Charitos explains. Until now people thought that knowing French was enough for humanitarian work in West Africa; however, only a specific, and usually wealthy group of West Africans speaks French. Charitos explains that to have access to the full range of diversity in a given part of West Africa, a student must speak a language like Wolof.
Nathan Bailey, a Columbia College sophomore studying Swahili, echoes Charitos’ remarks. “Yeah, a bunch of people in the world speak Hindi and Mandarin,” he acknowledges, “but if you’re not interested in doing business in India or living in China, but do see yourself doing humanitarian work in Brazil, take Portuguese. I think it should be more about personal interests and needs than what people think will be important languages to know in the future.”
The allure of a less-commonly-taught language seems to have long-lasting impact for those who learn them in college. “It’s been noticed that people who tend toward less commonly languages—it tends to become a lifelong experience. Studying one of these languages is not something you can do for two to four years. People tend to stay with it for the rest of their lives,” Charitos says.
Questioning the Requirement
It’s easy to forget about the immense resource investment demanded by language instruction. It is certainly a daunting task from a pedagogical standpoint: Columbia has seven major departments that are either in part or wholly devoted to teaching languages. And from a student’s point of view, learning a language has a troublingly high opportunity cost. Studying a language at Columbia means not studying something else. At a world-class university with some of the world’s leading researchers and intellectuals, does it make sense to spend one’s time reviewing German vocabulary and perfecting Spanish syntax when one could be exploring the latest scientific discovery with the latest Nobel laureate?
But viewing the reasons for language acquisition through the narrow lens of a college student’s packed schedule can overlook the broader implications of the language requirement. To look at the language requirement egocentrically, without placing it in the broader context of the world, can be dangerous. At least, that’s what Charitos suggests.
There are two ways to look at the process of language acquisition, Charitos explains. One is what he calls the “top-down,” which looks superciliously upon the notion that there is a need to learn a foreign language. The top-down learner assumes that “the world out there requires our knowledge, which we spread out in English, and it’s up to them to learn.” Charitos bemoans the prevalence of this mind-set in the United States. “This country in general doesn’t do a good job of preparing its citizens for becoming global citizens,” he says. “For various reasons, America is very monolingual, turned towards itself, [and] expects everyone to learn English.”
The other perspective, the one Charitos espouses, is “bottom-up.” The bottom-up learner begins with a posture of humility, thinking, “The rest of the world is a place that has something to teach us, and we have to learn their language to learn what they have to teach us.”
From this approach to language acquisition comes a range of benefits, according to Charitos. “The fact that you speak a number of languages allows you to see the world in different ways. It allows you, from an intellectual point of view, to put a critical distance between you and the object you are studying and look at it from a critical perspective. It allows you to cast a critical gaze on the object you’re analyzing—but also to cast a critical gaze on yourself. Being a speaker of another language makes you a better human being,” Charitos says.
Professor Liu, agrees, but he adds a scientific perspective to the benefits of learning a new language. “Learning a foreign language will have a positive impact on your overall life,” he explains. “When you know a foreign language, your cognitive structures will re-structure. Cognitively speaking, learning a foreign language is very beneficial.”
Charitos’ and Liu’s justification of language acquisition aligns with Columbia’s official rationale for the language requirement, as stated in the Course Bulletin: “The foreign language requirement forms part of Columbia College’s mission to prepare students to be tomorrow’s conscientious and informed citizens.”
To some, these lofty arguments are inaccessible and inadequate. Ultimately, doesn’t education in general make you a better person? Wouldn’t an understanding of neuroscience or environmental science also make you a better student? And who’s to say it’s more important to spend time studying a language than understanding our DNA?
It’s a concern that Bailey has expressed. Bailey spent a year in Kenya before coming to college. There, he picked up some Swahili. When he came to Columbia, he considered taking up Spanish instead of continuing with Swahili. “But I knew that there were a ton of classes at Columbia that I wanted to take,” Bailey said, “and with Swahili, I would finish the language requirement sooner and be able to take more classes later.”
The Course Bulletin goes on to further justify the language requirement to skeptics like Bailey. It continues: “Knowledge of another’s language and literature is the most important way to begin to know a country and people.” And it proceeds to identify three main benefits of language study: “knowledge of another culture and its relationship to one’s own; a more sophisticated understanding of relationships between language, representations of meaning, and culture; and general advantages in thinking.”
“Language is the golden highway that leads you toward a culture,” Charitos says. “As we’re more and more living in a globalized society, I think intercultural skills and intercultural communications are becoming essential. I would say these are essential qualities that students need to get in order to be able to function in tomorrow’s world.”
“Language carries culture,” Liu echoes. But justifying language acquisition from a utilitarian perspective is inadequate for Liu. There is an emotional and patriotic significance to language. “When I read English translations of Tang poetry of Song ci [lyric poems],” he says, “I feel so sorry for someone if they have to enjoy Chinese poetry that way,” Liu says, explaining how much of the meaning and beauty of the original Chinese poetry is lost in translation.
Hay agrees. He argues, “Everyone should be proficient in another language, if not for the utility, then at least for the beauty of another culture.”
Unknowingly referring to Prof. Charitos’s top-down/bottom-up divide, Hay continues: “Even if you believe in the myth of the hegemony of America and the unstoppable spread of the English language, you can still find beauty in the sounds, structures, et cetera, of another language. I firmly believe that you can say things in other languages that you cannot say in English, can do things you cannot do in English.”
Is two the charm?
Even if one can reconcile competing interests and decide upon one or two out of 45 different languages to study, the language requirement brings up another problem: For how long should we study the language we have chosen? Harvard only requires two terms of language study, half of Columbia’s requirement. How proficent is just proficient enough?
“Two years is about right,” Charitos says, supporting Columbia’s requirement. “It’s very easy to take someone at a zero level and take them to an intermediate level. The difficulty is taking someone from an intermediate level and taking them to an advanced level,” he explains. So while the language student can make large strides in two years toward a general familiarity with the language, Charitos claims that after that point, the onus falls upon the student to take the initiative to pursue language study on his own, making the often-difficult and onerous steps toward full proficiency. As it stands, however, the two years are satisfactory to him.
Professor Liu says, “Nobody should be exempted from language learning at Columbia. If they came in with a certain proficiency, they should start two years on top of that. Foreign language learning should be a part of a student’s experience at Columbia, a part of their Columbia education. That’s my position.”
That’s how it works at Yale. Yale College students are required to study a language regardless of how well they speak when entering the university, though the requirement length varies depending on proficiency. Students with no background must take three terms of a language in their time at college, while those with advanced abilities only have to take one. Yale, then, provides an interesting counterpoint to Columbia: the minimum requirement is higher, whereas the maximum requirement is lower.
Still, the question of how many years to invest in a language also varies depending on the reasons for taking the language. For those with passing interest, two years may be adequate to sate their curiosity about certain languages. For others, though, two years of study may only whet their appetite. Moreover, according to Charitos, two years will probably not be nearly enough for those with professional aspirations related to their language study. Corporations and governments often seek those select few with highly advanced, highly specialized language skills, and attaining such heights of language requirement requires more sustained, more invested, and more concentrated effort.
The forces pushing back against those advocating more language study at Columbia are self-evident. As it stands, the Core is already a ponderous load on students’ schedules, even if it is one many are more than happy to carry. Much of that weight comes from the language requirement; adding to it will burden our time as well as the resources of the university. What’s more, adding to the language requirement means not adding to another requirement. As it stands, the Global Core and the science requirement are already criticized for being too perfunctory, and certainly their advocates would want a larger piece of the Core if the foreign language component expands.
As with any requirement, criticism comes from all sides. Still, Professor Liu says two years are better than nothing. “If someone can only commit two years,” Professor Liu says, “it’s still worthwhile to do that. Actually, by the end of the first year, you would learn all the major syntactic structure of Chinese and the most frequently used characters and words. But by the end of the second year, you can make an appointment with the doctor, you can purchase stuff, you can ask for directions, you can talk about most subjects.”
After two years’ acquaintance with diction and syntax, tones and pronunciations, connotations and nuances, every Columbia College student leaves Alma Mater with, at least in theory, the ability to “talk about most subjects” in a language other than their own. For Charitos, the utility of all of this is simple: “I applaud Columbia for having a language requirement. I think it’s doing a service to students.”