Address by Commissioner of Education Earl James McGrath, Foreign Language Instruction in American Schools

FOREIGN LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION IN AMERICAN SCHOOLS* This conference has been called to consider ways and means to extend opportunity for the study of foreign languages in our school system. Some might question the need for a meeting of this type. They could observe that instruction in foreign languages has been available in most communities in the United States for a long time. Moreover, for many years there have been discussions of the values of foreign language study and its proper place in the total educational enterprise. It would be fitting, therefore, to ask whether a conference of this type can be justified because it differs from those which have gone before, and if so in what respects. This conference does differ in several important ways from earlier meetings concerned with the same subject. It is the first Nationwide conference on this topic bringing together persons of such diverse educational and lay interests. There are here today teachers of foreign languages in elementary schools; high schools, colleges and universities, school principals and superintendents, State educational officials, professors of education, psycholo- gists concerned with problems related to the learning of languages, persons in government and business involved in our relations with other countries, representatives of labor and veterans organizations, publishers and producers of teaching materials; the Parent Teachers Association, and still others who for a variety of reasons have a personal interest in the subject. Man.y of the groups represented here, perhaps all, have from time to time held meetings on some aspects of this matter, but they have never to my knowledge pooled their efforts in an enterprise of this kind. Indeed at times they have regrettably worked at cross purposes. It is significant that this meeting was neither inspired nor requested by any single group--not even the language teachers whose interest is obvious and justifiable. The first impetus resulted from a paper read at à meeting of the Central States Modern Language Teachers Association on May 3, 1952. The response to certain proposals made at that time indicated that literally thousands of citizens, educators and laymen alike, had already recognized the desirability of making instruction in foreign languages more generally available in our schools. A tremendous volume of correspondence from all sections of the country and editorials in many newspapers showed clearly that a conference of By Earl James McGrath, U. S. Commissioner of Education, Federal Security Agency, Washington, D. C., at the Conference on the Role of Foreign Languages in American Schools, Washington, D. C. January 15, 1953, 10:00 am EST. Published in part in The Bulletin, by the National Association of Secondary-School Principals, Washington, D.C.) ; published in part in Educational Trend, An Arthur C. Croft Publication--Issue No. 253.