Chris said....
Language requirements are still common in the humanities. I had to
do French for my philosophy PhD just a few years back. Sometime
after psychology decided that it was a "natural science" (and
therefore, I suppose, spoke the "language of nature") it dumped its
language requirements most places. (I can remember some students
attempting to argue that learning a computer programing "language"
should count. I think I lost that argument because I was so busy laughing.)
I had no Ph.D. level language requirement.
As an undergraduate I had no university-wide language requirement,
but my biology major (part of a psych-bio double) required a year of
something. I made exactly the same argument Chris is laughing about
- and lost.
Before Chris starts laughing again I would ask him what purpose such
a requirement serves?
If it is a passing wave to liberal education, fine - I can live with that.
But - if a few semesters of foreign language are somehow supposed to
be useful - well - I know for a fact that an equivalent number of
semesters in computer science have been of far greater use in my career.
-- Jim Dougan
P.S. There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, that Smitty Stevens
didn't think Harvard Ph.D. students knew enough German, so he would
sometimes give exams in German, without prior warning.
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