Befouled Language

The Administration recently held a town hall meeting in which they, instead of unveiling a comprehensive plan to move forward with foreign language education, demurred yet another semester on critical questions and slogged through an hour of ranting parents. The soap opera of the Masterman language curriculum continues with a new installment of Minding our Language. In the place of ideas, the administration brought forward issues: namely, language is unaffordable, unwanted, and inequitable.

Masterman’s language curriculum is undergoing a transition, albeit a rather unenthusiastic and spiritless one. In fact, if the Holy Spirit descended, and we began speaking in tongues, Masterman would still find a way to write those foreign languages off as being a budgetary waste. But nothing is ever done. When a problem arises, it is easiest to avoid it and let it fester and metastasize, and there are too many problems and too few solutions— and no money spent. The status quo remains that parents have high-budget wishes, but no outwardly apparent will to give; the administration, however, has closed-purse answers while seemingly sitting on a goldmine. In this vacuum of direction, the academic path is becoming loopy. Too many cooks spoil a kitchen, and the tug-of-war dicing up the mission statement and blending fact and fiction is brain-frying. Considering that our brains are our only asset here, it does the school no good to roil them. Somehow, the only two proposals are to spoil us rotten or let us become spoilt and rotten, and no one seems to remember that the real objective of Masterman is to teach and teach well. Masterman remains a public school with private school expectations, but the base expectation is still a decent, well-rounded education on top of the compulsory childcare. Confusion need not mean bland inaction, for, in the time that it is taking to stew over the language debacle, education and success are being jeopardized.

Masterman students, when applying to colleges, have the disadvantage of competing with private school and suburban students that have had the upper hand of a more robust curriculum. High-intensity colleges value diverse, broad curricula and proof that students are challenged. Reducing or eliminating an academic subject will not help students in their applications. Tying Masterman students’ hands in addition to this is even more ruinous. Diminishing a diverse and robust curriculum only further favors those who have had their education financially prioritized— and Masterman cannot even pull the budgetary excuse. We currently have four language teachers: three language positions filled by the school and a fourth provided at no cost by the district and thus an empty chair whose salary is unspent. If we have the budget for language, why do we withhold it? According to the administration, it now takes seven language teachers to competently do the work of four, and considering that we can only afford four, why have any language at all when you might as well use the money to look after the whole thousand-fold host of problems in this building? Therefore, if that 7/4 statistic is to be taken at face value, for the school to function, we must increase every department by 7/4 times the present amount of teachers. This means 1.5 more assistant principals, 3.75 more fifth grade teachers, 6 more English teachers, and 3 more gym teachers would need to be hired. How the administration concluded that seven teachers is the lowest number that averts the end of times is beyond me, but the Social Studies department has only six— I am fairly certain that Ms. Mac has a degree up her sleeve in some foreign language and would be glad to supplement the language department if the seven-teacher brigade, however unrealistic, becomes a reality.

In the vein of unwanted things, the administration has posited that foreign language classes are unwanted lodestones to which students are ruinously yoked. The statistic, as of 2021, was that ¼ of incoming 8th graders requested French and the rest opted for the lottery, which to the administration, suggests a regular and resolute aversion on the part of the ¾ towards the French language. According to Dr. Payne, if nobody (~50 people) wants French, then nobody needs to have it. I would like to happily counter this by positing that every scheduled class is not optional (even options!), save, to an extent, electives (like AP French!) and even they are from a small list (that is preordained!) Nobody wants the Presidential Physical Fitness Test, but it happens, and the world does not end. In fact, in the case of French, the world grows.

Having interviewed two eleventh-grade French classes last year, I can report that even the unhappiest people in the class were furious at the possibility of losing French. They enjoyed the universality—despite the irregular verbs and the ‘eu’ sound—the activities, and the breadth of learning. To be able to examine history through the lenses of languages that are spoken the world over is eye-opening and adds a deeper dimension to the task of language learning, though convenience seems to take precedence over depth. Depth has its obvious dangers, but far murkier are the hazards of shallow water.

As for the final contention, I cannot help but agree. Several years ago, I would not have, but now that Masterman is two separate schools, Middle and High, with an invisible wall in between them, language instruction is inequitable for high school admissions. But so is magnet education. In doing away with and watering down foreign language, you would have to strike out at the same hypocrisy that underwrites magnet schools— the desire for universal public education and the simultaneous desire for the prioritization of certain students’ educations. A magnet school in the city is merely a public school in the suburbs with leaks in the roof, and when a city school is allowed to sink academically, and a suburban school remains the same— that is inequitable. Language is a door-opener, and for a school accused of shutting its doors, does it do us any good to shut more?

As a school, we must prioritize the foreign language program and respect its instructors as we would with any other department instead of picking on the smallest office. We need not augment every department by 7/4, but we should at least reinforce the curriculum, not make it sallow and sad, and value the staff we have. Teachers are not just positions, and subjects are not just burdens— they are the keystones of education. They are the backs that schools are built off of, and when a school is already crumbling, it is inconceivable why a school would eliminate a teacher’s job, kick them out of their rooms, and then treat them like pond scum to be noiselessly brushed away. Teachers are also human beings, just as much as their students are, and it harms both to write them off. Philadelphia public school students are already let down by a world that regards their education as expendable; it does them no service to let them down again. We are dragging ourselves down with noncommittal words. Instead of vague figures of speech, we need figures committed to the future of a public education worth its cents. I need not speak sense into sensible people, but it is insensate to cut foreign language and then reserve the last word. No matter how tense the silence is, the real tense issue will still be an incorrect usage of the past and a neglected present. We do not demand our language education to be perfect, but instead unconditionally continuous. Let us hope for, in lieu of a simple future, a progressive present.