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Salient. Victoria University of Wellington Students' Newspaper. Volume 31, Number 18. July 30, 1968

Language requirement defended!

Language requirement defended!

Sir—I disagree entirely with the sentiment of our editorial concering the language requirement. Surely no one but a fool believes that "to be able to read a language other than.your own is essential to a "respectably educated" person," And surely the idea of a "rounded education' is meanings anyway when university studies are undertaken in five faculties and many selfconsciously autonomous departments within faculties.

In my experience, people who bitch about the language requirement haven't got it and .are having difficulty getting it. I haven't got it and am finding it difficult to get. But I don't think that the difficulty of the thing, unless it presents a super-human task (it doesn't), is a sufficient argument against retention of the requirement. Most people can it if they do some work.

I would not agree that the requirement, once satisfied, represents "a sketchy knowledge of the vocabulary of an obscure language." In the first place, French, German, Greek, Italian, Latin, Maori and Russian are not "obscure languages"-at least not in a relative sense - and surely it is up to the student whether his knowledge is "sketchy" and confined to the vocabulary? Such a student may pass the examination, but I doubt it. Mr. Peter Blizzard tells me that students doing doctoral work in American universities are almost invariably required to produce evidence of some proficiency in a second language.

I think the language requirement is invaluable in that it offers the student a unique reorientation with the fundamental material with which he deals: his own langauge. And while the language departments may defend the requirement on grounds that its abolition threatens their viability. oppose it because it would be a step in the wrong direction. We need to have more langaugcs taught here, as part of a progression to a wider degree, in which the idea of a 'rounded education" might really take on some meaning.

In Canada, Arts and Science students sit compusory courses in each other's faculties. The courses are elementary, and specifically designed to give a broad grounding in some central Subjects of the other faculty. In Britain students sit a large number of papers in the first year of their Arts degree and then specialise. These degree designs manage to achieve the essential characteristic of a good degree-specialisation within the context of a general education. The opposing forces of generalisation and specialisation are hard to reconcile. We haven't done it here. But you're going in the wrong direction, Mr Logan.

Yours faithfully,

David Harcourt.