The First World War had been over for two years. In the League of Nations atmosphere following its close, world scholarship had begun to mobilize. In 1918 the Modern Humanities Research Association had been founded. In 1919 the International Research Council, the International Astronomical Union, the International Chemistry Union, and the International Union of Academies had all been organized, and similar bodies were being founded each succeeding year. In these international bodies, American scholars were ill at ease. The war had convinced Great Britain and Europe of the material achievements of the United States, but American scholars, many of them trained abroad, felt keenly that their nation did not stand so high in the fields of international scholarship. One of the first actions of the MHRA had been to send representatives across the Atlantic to meet with MLA members, out of which discussion grew the MLA annual bibliography (1921), intended to display American literary and linguistic scholarship to European scholars. The American Council of Learned Societies, founded in 1919 to make possible American participation in the International Union of Academies, had immediately addressed itself to fostering American scholarly projects that would earn respect abroad.

The Forgotten Man in the Purdue undergraduate language program was, as in most such programs, the non-major. Required to “pass off” four semesters of a foreign language, he endured (and we endured him) for two years of grammar and translation, usually interlinear, of the classics. Meanwhile our attention was primarily devoted to the dwindling minority of majors and minors. But the forgotten man did not forget us. Every June, as seniors became graduates, there was an increase in the ranks of the more or less influential citizens who remembered without enthusiasm their deadening experience with a presumably living language. It seems likely that a considerable portion of American isolationism and apathy to the national need for foreign languages can be traced to this experience on the part of our former students.

It is Vitally important that teachers of modern foreign languages be adequately prepared for a task which more and more Americans are declaring essential to the national welfare. Though a majority of the language teachers in our schools are well trained, many have been poorly or inadequately prepared, often through no fault of their own. The undersigned therefore present this statement of what they consider the minimal, good, and superior qualifications of a secondary school teacher of a modern foreign language.

In the Spring of 1955, questionnaires were sent to one or more of the foreign language chairmen in each institution in the PMLA listing of department chairmen. Of 1,003 questionnaires sent to 953 institutions, 726 were filled in and returned by 678 institutions. The 277 chairmen in the other 275 institutions ignored or mislaid the original questionnaire and a duplicate reminder mailed in May. In assessing the summary of the returns, one should bear in mind the probability that many of these 275 chairmen laid aside the questionnaire because they had little to report. The returns may therefore present a somewhat rosy picture of foreign language teaching in American and Canadian colleges and universities in 1954–55.

The Accompanying table gives the most recent data obtainable on the extent to which foreign languages are offered and studied in public secondary schools in the United States. The last national survey was made by the U. S. Office of Education in 1948–49, and comparisons are made with the results of this survey to show the subsequent gain or loss in each state for which more recent figures could be obtained. For some states the data are incomplete because the state department of education does not know, and apparently does not care to find out, what the pupils in the high schools are currently studying. In seventeen states, the information existed only on reports filed by each high school, and it was assembled through the help of foreign language teachers who went to the state department of education and spent days tabulating the reports.

Eighteen department chairmen from seventeen universities met in five sessions at MLA headquarters on Saturday and Sunday, 26 and 27 March 1955, to discuss problems in the recruitment and preparation of college teachers of modern foreign languages. The universities represented had, during the past five years, awarded a total of more than 400 Ph.D. degrees in Germanic and Romance languages. Participants in the meeting are named on page 64 of this report.

In the spring of 1955, questionnaires (requesting information concerning modern foreign language offerings in 1955–56, foreign language entrance and degree requirements, and foreign language faculty) were sent to 281 undergraduate institutions accredited for teacher training.1All replied, but in some cases catalogues were consulted to supplement or clarify questionnaire data. For this survey the institutions were grouped into three homogeneous categories: (A) independent teachers colleges (108 four-year institutions whose names specify a teacher-training purpose and which are not constituents of a university2); (B) university schools of education (72 four-year institutions, variously designated as schools of education, colleges of education, or, rarely, teachers colleges, which are constituents of a community of colleges and professional schools); (C) other colleges accredited for teacher-training (101 four-year institutions which seem to emphasize a liberal arts or technical program, but also feature approved courses of study for teacher-candidates).

This is a third revision of statistics first published in the Supplement to the September 1953 number of PMLA. The original listing was based on institutions offering the B.A. degree and listed as accredited in the American Council on Education's American Universities and Colleges, 1952. The present revision includes institutions subsequently accredited and corrections in the original listing. All except those italicized have a foreign language requirement for all candidates for the B.A. degree. Those starred require foreign languages for all candidates for entrance.