Gianotti ’13: Yes
Once upon a time in the hazy realms of myth-history, all of mankind spoke one language and, migrating together, resolved to build a city. God saw their progress and was all like uh-oh, “They are one people and have one language, and nothing will be withheld from them which they purpose to do. ... Come, let us go down and confound their speech.”
This is the story of the Tower of Babel as told in the Book of Genesis, and it holds an important lesson for us. The power of communication is humanity’s greatest gift. It is the ability to communicate with one another that allows us to strive toward lofty heights.
Language is our tool of communication. Its colloquialisms are an organic expression of culture, custom and cognition. It gives us knowledge of and insight into foreign places and ways of thinking and provides a new, comparative perspective on our own backgrounds. It can even improve the ease and creativity of communication in our native cultures.
So why don’t we have a language requirement? You have to be fluent in English to study at Brown, and right now English is our lingua franca. Brown, by not requiring us to study another language, is promoting the misguided attitude of complacency held by too many in the English-speaking world.
Brown does us a disservice by not preparing us to exist in the diverse, global community in which we will all eventually have to exist as functioning, employed adults. Worse, Brown is not encouraging us to step outside of our comfort zones to communicate, interact and understand our fellow human beings.
Even America is far from monolingual. Life beyond College Hill demands knowledge of at least a second language. Our greatest opportunities and our greatest challenges present themselves on a global level — economically, intellectually and environmentally.
Language classes can be awkward and painful. But challenge builds character, and students should not be able to breeze through a college degree by studying solely those subjects in which they excel, especially at Brown. What are we here for if not to grow as individuals and become contributors and leaders of our communities? We cannot do that if we stay stuck in our comfort zones, afraid or unwilling to try something new and difficult.
The freedom of the open curriculum is a powerful tool in adventurous and ambitious hands. But it can also foster laziness. A language requirement would challenge us to expand our ways of thinking about and approaching the world. It would cultivate global citizens ready to use their subject matter expertise for any opportunity that may arise.
Claire Gianotti ’13 is still scarred by that one time freshman year she forgot to bring a poem to share with her Spanish class and instead gave an impromptu recitation of Damelo by Juanes. She can be contacted at claire_gianotti@brown.edu.
Powers ’15: No
The University’s fourth president, Francis Wayland, famously proposed in his 1850 report to the Corporation that “every student might study what he chose, all that he chose, and nothing but what he chose.” This visionary ambition — of a University that supported all manners of intellectualism — was finally realized with the enactment of the New Curriculum in 1969. The notion that Brown should have a language requirement is completely antithetical to both its history and academic mission. Furthermore, it is an underhanded insult to the intelligence of every student, even of those who voluntarily take language classes.
As one of the leading universities in the world, Brown accepts outstanding scholars from an extensive pool of domestic and international applicants. Many of these matriculants could have attended other top universities but chose Brown because of the Open Curriculum. To introduce a language requirement would undermine that which sets Brown — and, consequently, its students — apart. But this is not just a question of enrollment or free course slots. It’s a point fundamental to our beloved University’s character.
We have the rare privilege of being members of a diverse population comprising innumerable cultures, religions and political ideologies in a state of tolerant coexistence. It is a hallmark of Brown students to accept and celebrate our differences — recognizing that everyone has his or her own views, but that it is not his right to forcibly impose them upon others. We pride ourselves on our open-mindedness and understand that, through exposure to countless — and usually conflicting — perspectives, we render ourselves able to learn and mature as a community.
Most other eminent universities stipulate that their students take up to a year’s worth of “general education.” This demonstrates an ignorant dearth of respect by these administrations for their exceptional student bodies. It essentially tells them, “You are incapable of choosing your own educational path and we’ve decided that you need to be coerced for your own good.” Who is anyone to claim a superior understanding of someone else’s life goals and the means by which he or she must achieve them? We deserve better than that.
If you desire requirements — if you yearn to be treated as the intellectual equivalent of a child — then Brown is not the place for you. Perhaps Harvard would be more fitting. I take no issue with those who recognize their own academic immaturity, but this inadequacy should not be projected indiscriminately on those who do want to take advantage of the unique and highly coveted opportunity a Brown education affords. Such inability should not be accommodated and certainly not at the price of inhibiting genius.
Andrew Powers ’15 can be reached at andrew_powers@brown.edu
Gianotti's rebuttal:
My colleague employs in his defense the integrity of Brown’s Open Curriculum. This is the reason why many of us came to Brown. Thanks to our Brunonian forefathers we are free from the tyranny of core curricula. But what exactly does this freedom entail?
Brown is an institution of “higher” education. In the olden days, this meant a Brown graduate was one well-versed in Ancient Greek and Latin texts with a sprinkling of theology on top. The pioneers of the Open Curriculum rejected this notion of an education as the mastery of a defined set of scholarly subjects. So today a math concentrator may tell you he or she is free from the archaisms of the humanities. An anthropology concentrator may celebrate an escape from the horrors of chemistry. Leaving the high language of noble intellectualism aside, the Open Curriculum is freedom from wasting time on things we aren’t any good at and don’t find interesting. We pay a lot of money for access to the cerebral smorgasbord that is our course catalog — we should get to choose what we put on our plates.
The rejection of a patriarchal and elitist curriculum — N.B. I am a classics concentrator — articulated by Francis Wayland in 1850 is a reflection of the Brunonian tendency for innovation, introspection and adaptability. But the New Curriculum is not so new. This day and age may require a different interpretation of Brown’s mission as a university whose primary goal is to support the diverse and ambitious academic goals of its undergraduates. To hold on to our Open Curriculum for its own sake is no better than to insist on the superiority of an education dominated by the classics of Western civilization.
To truly achieve this open-minded community so eloquently described by my colleague is much more than a matter of rhetoric. Admittance into Brown is not equivalent to being declared perfect, already equipped with all the tools we need to flower into the geniuses we are. It is haughty and anti-Brunonian to think we need no guidance to fulfill our true potentials.
Powers' rebuttal:
My opponent’s conclusion is essentially based on a single premise — that the study of foreign language is necessary for success in post-undergraduate life. Yet the term “success” is context-dependent with respect to the individual in question. Communication is valuable, but certainly not imperative in such a “global” sense.
I’d like to illustrate this with a personal counterexample. A close friend of mine is double concentrating in computer science and applied mathematics–economics. Forcing him to take language classes would not further his success and would waste his time and intellect. Neither my opponent, nor any collegiate administration, can alter the utility derivable from these classes simply by decreeing what “success” means for him.
Moreover, there is a ridiculous claim entailed by my opponent’s argument, which is that language concentrators are more prepared for success after Brown than science concentrators who comprehensively eschew the study of foreign language. Obviously the blanket metric of success being used would not be income or employment opportunities. Otherwise the conclusion would be to mandate that students study science. If I had to invest in the future success of either my friend or an arbitrary language concentrator — who would, presumably, fulfill a hypothetical language requirement — I know where I’d put my money every time.
Of course, monetary value is not the only form of value, and my point here is not to denigrate the humanities as worthless pursuits of fancy. Rather, it’s to exemplify how naive it is to impose any requirements so universally, particularly at a school like Brown where individuals have such contrasting aspirations.
In fact, such a concept is so alien to the Brown student that it seems it is not even possible for one to advocate it consistently. Although my opponent’s column supports a more unified student population, she would “not [say] that we should have a community that instructs us on how to act — that would be much too restrictive for the Brown student and would never fit here.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.
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