Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Some fifteen months have passed since I last reported directly to you on the progress of the Foreign Language Program at our unseasonable September meeting in Wisconsin. At that time I had been Director of the FL Program just one month, after five years as a staff member. Today I report again, although extraordinary circumstances have persuaded me to vacate the directorship, temporarily at least. I am called upon for an evaluation of the FL Program from its inception in 1952 to the present. Lest you think a post-mortem is implied, I hasten to state emphatically that the FL Program is a continuing and organic function of the MLA, indeed, of the entire profession of teachers of modern foreign languages, and, I venture to add, of all elements in American society with an interest in strengthening education.
Associate Secretary and Director of the FL Program, on leave of absence, serving as Assistant Chief, Language Development Section, U. S. Office of Education. Address delivered at the General Foreign Language Session of the annual MLA meeting, 29 Dec. 1958.