The scene, a coffee table in the faculty lounge. Seated casually in postures perfected through years in academia are three obviously very full professors of English. The topic is A—the departmental meeting on promotions. One of the group is speaking earnestly. “But we've got to have another medievalist, Quincy. You admit that.” “Of course I admit it, Arthur,” replies a second, “but unless we promote Muddleton, we'll lose him, and where will we be in contemporary literature?” “Couldn't care less,” reflects the medieval scholar, but nods his head as if agreeing. “I hate to bring this up again, gentlemen,” interrupts the third, who by his well-thumbed appointment book and downcast expression is manifestly the chairman, “but we keep passing by Clerkson.”

As teachers of language and literature, you have all noticed that my title is even more ambiguous than most. Those of you who are amiably disposed may even have called it general, in the old style, rather than ambiguous, in the new. The word “rhetoric” has for a long time served for both the study of the art of persuasion and for the art itself; Aristotle's Rhetoric, upper-case, is still unsurpassed, but take away the capital letter and Aristotle's rhetoric is often very bad indeed, at least as we view it. In the second sense rhetoric has never had a real quantitative revival because it has always thrived; but in the first sense we seem to be in the midst of a revival of rhetoric unmatched in the twentieth century. Unfortunately, in spite of some very good work, there are signs that it may prove a very shoddy revival indeed, with no more lasting effect than the rhetorically-oriented “communications” movement of a decade ago, unless we take thought about what we are doing. Judging from some of the recent freshman texts I have seen, I would not be surprised to find in my box tomorrow when I return a new work entitled A Speller's Rhetoric.

Your Executive Secretary has asked me to discuss a particular aspect of our recent efforts involving the schools. The question, specifically, is why are scientists willing to spend large parts of their short lives outside their lovely ivory towers, trying to help the schools to help themselves. Surely it might be, but is not, only an excess of missionary zeal. Nor is it that science itself is getting too difficult or too precious, though sometimes we have our moments of depression, when we believe that science is moving away from the concerns of people. Of course, it is not. No, in our ivory towers it is still true that a molecule may not talk but it never talks back; moreover, its feelings are never hurt, and it never does one thing because you ask it to do another. Ask a molecule a sensible question, and you will get a sensible answer.

For a Peace Corps official to speak to the leading organization of teachers of foreign languages is somewhat analogous to a speech by Secretary McNamara to the assembled space manufacturers. We are certainly, at this point, the largest users of your product—if we correctly understand each other that your product is the modern man (or woman to be sure) trained in the use of a language other than his own. I realize that this is a narrow definition of the work you do, but I hope that in the time allotted to me I will be able to satisfy you that we in the Peace Corps, as you in the Foreign Language Section of the Modern Language Association, share a broader concern for the uses—past, present, and future—of language.

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.

When the Foreign Language Program of the Modern Language Association was five years old, in 1957, its Advisory and Liaison Committee drew up a plan for its second five years and prepared a request for a foundation grant to implement the plan. The proposal outlined five areas of major effort. There were activities designed to increase the quantity of language study, but these activities were to be more than an extension of prior promotional activities of the MLA Foreign Language Program. The intention was still to persuade educators, parents, and the general public of the value of language education and of the necessity for sequences of language study that could result in proficiency in the spoken and written language. But in addition to an “information and advisory campaign,” the MLA also proposed “effective demonstration programs.”

Our major activities this year, as in each of the past five years, have been undertaken either with foundation support or through contracts with the United States Office of Education under the National Defense Education Act. In February John Harmon became Director of the Materials Center, changing places with Glen Willbern, who became Director of Research. Under Mr. Willbern's direction and through a government contract we have just completed a survey of modern-foreign-language enrollments in junior and senior colleges as of the fall of 1963. We are currently negotiating several contracts through Title VI of the National Defense Education Act. The first is to gather statistics on offerings and enrollments in all foreign languages in public and non-public secondary schools. The second is to make a survey of current college enrollments in all foreign languages. Since gathering statistics on the classical languages is not a justifiable expenditure of national defense funds, the Modern Language Association will pay out of its own funds the proportion of the total cost needed to gather the facts on Latin and Greek in schools and colleges.

The modern Language Association, under contract with the U.S. Office of Education, has organized and supervised the evaluation of National Defense Language Institutes in the summers of 1963 and 1964 and during the 1963–64 academic year. A total of 45 evaluators (21 in 1963, 28 in 1964, some of them serving in both years) visited 132 institutes (all of the 82 institutes in the summer of 1963, the 4 academic-year institutes in 1963–64, and 46 of the 80 institutes in the summer of 1964).

I speak to you tonight as an ex-administrator attempting to remember some of the intellectual activities that came to his notice in earlier years at the Library of Congress and UNESCO, and which in the setting of the present time seem worthy of attention. It has seemed to me for a long time that mankind has been moving toward one-worldness in fact and to a lesser extent in spirit and in institutions. It has also seemed to me important to speed up the process of creating one world in spirit and of going the necessary distance to create institutions of a world-wide character to suppress the causes of war.