My son is currently in the liberal arts college of the state university. The thing he is struggling with most is the foreign language requirement. While I understand the genesis of this requirement several decades ago. I wonder whether it still as useful with the translation technologies we now have (e.g. Google Translate). He is having to spend time that might be better used on other classes like philosophy and psychology which will help him consider the existential depth and meaning, which is what he really wants to do.
Hey Tony, thanks so much for that comment. Yeah, I am sympathetic with your son’s situation (I am horrible at languages and genuinely struggled with them through college and graduate school - despite eventually passing the competency requirements in German, French, and Danish). That said, I think that there are two ways of looking at this - and I find them both deeply compelling. On the one hand, your point is well taken, languages are, in a significant sense, a skill and so unless you go pretty far in the study of other languages it can seem like it is just a hoop-jumping requirement that doesn’t actually contribute to the sort of existential goals I have outlined as the ultimate purpose of college. That seems right to me. On the other hand, as Heidegger says, “Language is the house of being” and as Derrida notes, “we must make language tremble” - both are pointing out that language is about meaning-making and appreciating the contingency of what we so often take for granted as absolute. So, learning that the world could “mean” differently in different languages is an unbelievably important realization that is very hard to grasp outside of the actual study of vocabulary, semantics, and syntax in other languages. On this interpretation, studying languages is perhaps one of the most existentially potent things one can do in college. In the end, again, I think both of these views are really sensible and so I am torn about it. I tend to think that part of the problem is that on the instrumentalist pre-professional value set of so many universities, the students are not asked to reflect on the philosophical weight of what language actual is/does. As a result, they end up being presented with just another “hoop” or “skill” that “looks good on the resume” rather than being asked to wrestle with who they are and how we make sense of it in the languages that we use to narrate our experience and ourselves. So, tell your kid that I am so sorry (and my worst grades were all in French courses!), but that it is also one of the best opportunities they will ever have to wrestle with the fact that their “world” is not nearly as stable as they might think (and the different words we use to stabilize it often betray the shaky foundations). Not sure that will help come exam time, but I do think it matters.
Thanks for this response. Very helpful! As a Derrida fan, your reminder about language and meaning-making hit deep. It's also good to know there are others that struggle with languages as well. It's interesting that your worst grades were French and that's the language he's struggling with. (Ironically his twin sister took to French as if she was born in France.) I'll share this response with him, hopefully he'll find some encouragement in your experience.
Amen. Our society has a soul-crushingly impoverished understanding of ‘worth’, and a liberal-arts education — a leading forth into the arts of liberty, to phrase it literally — is critical for calling that understanding into question.
I wonder if we don't keep shouting about this will humanity survive.
My son is currently in the liberal arts college of the state university. The thing he is struggling with most is the foreign language requirement. While I understand the genesis of this requirement several decades ago. I wonder whether it still as useful with the translation technologies we now have (e.g. Google Translate). He is having to spend time that might be better used on other classes like philosophy and psychology which will help him consider the existential depth and meaning, which is what he really wants to do.
Hey Tony, thanks so much for that comment. Yeah, I am sympathetic with your son’s situation (I am horrible at languages and genuinely struggled with them through college and graduate school - despite eventually passing the competency requirements in German, French, and Danish). That said, I think that there are two ways of looking at this - and I find them both deeply compelling. On the one hand, your point is well taken, languages are, in a significant sense, a skill and so unless you go pretty far in the study of other languages it can seem like it is just a hoop-jumping requirement that doesn’t actually contribute to the sort of existential goals I have outlined as the ultimate purpose of college. That seems right to me. On the other hand, as Heidegger says, “Language is the house of being” and as Derrida notes, “we must make language tremble” - both are pointing out that language is about meaning-making and appreciating the contingency of what we so often take for granted as absolute. So, learning that the world could “mean” differently in different languages is an unbelievably important realization that is very hard to grasp outside of the actual study of vocabulary, semantics, and syntax in other languages. On this interpretation, studying languages is perhaps one of the most existentially potent things one can do in college. In the end, again, I think both of these views are really sensible and so I am torn about it. I tend to think that part of the problem is that on the instrumentalist pre-professional value set of so many universities, the students are not asked to reflect on the philosophical weight of what language actual is/does. As a result, they end up being presented with just another “hoop” or “skill” that “looks good on the resume” rather than being asked to wrestle with who they are and how we make sense of it in the languages that we use to narrate our experience and ourselves. So, tell your kid that I am so sorry (and my worst grades were all in French courses!), but that it is also one of the best opportunities they will ever have to wrestle with the fact that their “world” is not nearly as stable as they might think (and the different words we use to stabilize it often betray the shaky foundations). Not sure that will help come exam time, but I do think it matters.
Thanks for this response. Very helpful! As a Derrida fan, your reminder about language and meaning-making hit deep. It's also good to know there are others that struggle with languages as well. It's interesting that your worst grades were French and that's the language he's struggling with. (Ironically his twin sister took to French as if she was born in France.) I'll share this response with him, hopefully he'll find some encouragement in your experience.
Amen. Our society has a soul-crushingly impoverished understanding of ‘worth’, and a liberal-arts education — a leading forth into the arts of liberty, to phrase it literally — is critical for calling that understanding into question.
Amen.