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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Forty years ago i realized dimly that in American schoolrooms it was quite respectable to study and try to learn a foreign language, but that the child who already knew one before he entered school was somehow at a disadvantage. This realization didn't come in that Louisiana town I later knew, where for many years the only person who couldn't speak French was the French teacher. It was in a New Mexico town where the teacher couldn't communicate with those Mexican people because she spoke “Castilian.” Today the situation hasn't changed much. In some ways it may be worse, simply because now we know better.
An address given at the General Meeting on the Foreign Language Program in New York, 29 December 1964.
1 Joshua A. Fishman et al., “Language Loyalty in the United States” (prepub. dittoed ed., Yeshiva Univ., 1964), Ch. ii, pp. 37–38. The estimates of the number of school-age children involved are found in “The Challenge of Our Bilingual Resources,” in Reports of the Working Committees, G. Reginald Bishop, Jr., ed., 1965 Northeast Conference Reports on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, obtainable from the Materials Center, Modern Language Association, 4 Washington Place, New York City 10003.
2 Hernandez v. Driscoll Consolidated Independent School District, Civ. No. 1384, S.D. Tex., 11 Jan. 1957, 2 Race Rel. L. Rep. 329 (1957). Cited in an unpublished staff paper by Julian Samora.
3 Foreign Affairs Manual Circular, Joint State-USIA Circular on Foreign Language Policy, dated 12 June 1964, p. 3, enunciating procedures to be followed in view of the determination that our schools and colleges do not develop oral foreign language competence in their students, states that: “In terms of need, it is clear that a large percentage of officers should develop proficiency in either French or Spanish since about half of all officers assigned to foreign language areas are serving where one of these two languages is spoken.”
4 U.S. Census of Population—1960, Final Report PC (2)-5B, Educational Attainment.
5 Edith Buxbaum, “The Role of a Second Language in the Formation of Ego and Superego,” Psychoanalytic Quarterly, xviii (1949), 279–289. Eduardo E. Krapf, “The Choice of Language in Polyglot Psychoanalysis,” Psychoanalytic Quarterly, xxiv(1955), 343–357. Ralph R. Greenson, “The Mother Tongue and the Mother,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis, xxxi (1950), 18–23. Erwin Stengel, “On Learning a New Language,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis, xx (1939), 471–479.
6 The Use of Vernacular Languages in Education, Monographs on Fundamental Education, viii (Paris: UNESCO, 1953), 11. H.H. Stern, ed., Foreign Languages in Primary Education: The Teaching of Foreign or Second Languages to Younger Children, Report on an International Meeting of Experts, 9–14 April 1962, International Studies in Education (Hamburg: UNESCO Institute for Education, 1963).
7 For a review, of scores of studies see J. Vernon Jensen, Bilingualism—Effects of Childhood Bilingualism, repr. from Elementary English, Feb. 1962, pp. 132–143; April 1962, pp. 358–366 (Champaign, Ill.: NCTE, 1962). Einar Haugen, Bilingualism in the Americas: A Bibliography and Research Guide, American Dialect Society Pub. No. 26 (University, Ala.: Univ. of Alabama Press, 1956).
8 Wallace Lambert and Elizabeth Peal, “The Relation of Bilingualism to Intelligence,” Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, Vol. lxxvi, No. 27 (Washington, D. C: American Psychological Assoc., 1962). See also Suzanne M. Kohut and Louis Leria, “A Comparative Study of Monolinguals and Bilinguals in a Verbal Task Performance,” Journal of Clinical Psychology (1961). (I have examined the latter article in manuscript only. ABG.)
9 G. Reginald Bishop, Jr., 1965 Northeast Conference Reports.
