FIPSE Conference Overview, (Continued)
A Change Agents and Change Agencies in Language Education
April 27, 2001
Washington, D.C.

Language is a symbolic guide to culture. -Edward Sapir

In the kingdom of the blind, which is far more observant than we imagine, the one-eyed man is not king. He is an outsider. -Edwin Geertz

The American Council of Teachers of Russian, often called ACTR, has worked for more than 25 years as a self-conscious change agent within the Russian field in the U.S., moved in large part by a sense of impatience among many of its members with the state of teaching in the field and character and pace of work of the traditional AAT- in our field with its annual conference, standard journal, and even more standard and dreary newsletter.

Within the ranks of Russian teachers and scholars was an interest, not to say an obvious need, in acquiring the norms and understanding the contexts of the primary spoken language of what was 25 years ago as the Soviet Union: then as now, the fifth most widely spoken language in the world after Chinese, English, Hindi, and Spanish. This particular language opened the door for collaboration with Russophone scholars in a range of research areas and led to the development of several successive generations of collaborative textbooks for Americans at all levels (K - 16 and beyond), texts that were authentic rather than brainspun, and reflective of the current norms of language and culture. Russian made possible attendance at symposia and conferences with Russianists from around the world, and ultimately brought access to major Russian universities and institutes, libraries, archives, and field work possibilities for research and training for our faculties and students.

From the point of view of educational reform: the Russian field in America in the 1970's was a prime target, even though few outside or inside the field recognized it. Like the other less commonly taught languages represented in this room, we in the Russian field lacked up-to-date descriptions of contemporary Russian, just as we needed access to a culture, which, due to Cold War constraints largely or completely off limits to our profession. Clearly, the old AAT- had no incentive to take on this challenge, nor, for that matter, were American universities, then or now, inclined to throw their considerable resources and prestige behind the support of a particular academic field. This wasn't their job either.

Twenty-Five year later the field of Russian in the U.S. faces a very different set of challenges: we have language materials, a recently minted K-12/ soon to be K-16 set of outcomes-based performance standards, teacher standards, and a robust array of technologically-supported basic, intermediate, and advanced learning materials, some of it reflecting the new standards, a comprehensive program of in-country immersion learning options which has now become a central part of our programming for training at the advanced level, teacher training, and developing research base, and even one doctoral program in Russian and SLA.

But our learner cohorts are more diffuse than at any time since the mid-1970's and their demands for specialized and customized learning objects in Russian unprecedented. To cite but one example, the discourse of Russian commerce is known by almost no one in the field today, and would have remained undescribed, were it not for a team of Russian scholars at Moscow State University, one of whom is with us today in the MAPRIAL delegation. Yet it is this language that American businesses and international managers seek to acquire through their studies of Russian, which today may more likely to be a sidebar to their work in an American business school or MBA program, than the familiar step along the way to a graduate degree in linguistics and literature of my own generation.

The challenge today for the Russian field in North America is greater still: our faculties speak and teach the language better than they did in the 1970's and their understanding of Russian cultural norms is generally much more nuanced and refined that was the case of those who taught them 25 years ago. But the faculty are uncomfortable with the notion of teaching business Russian, or Russian for architects, or Russian for international development. The problem being is serious: enrollments are low: when a student approaches are programs for training, we're both pleased and apprehensive: pleased at their interest, apprehensive about what it is they actually will want to do. And we really never know what the next student walking into the departmental office is going to want, but the chances are pretty great that it will, sadly, not be 19th century lyric poetry, which many of us are entirely and completely prepared to teach!