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Dear Fellow SFSU Academic Senators,

This is an information item.

Attached please find the letter of protest that the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures sent by email to Dr. Robert Snyder, Chair of the Academic Affairs Committee, CSU Academic Senate, on February 8, 2002.

At the last SFSU Academic Senate meeting, we heard Bob Cherney's report of the recent meeting of the CSU Academic Senate. Among the items that he reported on, there was the CSU Academic Senate's pending resolution (currently in the first reading and to be placed on the agenda again at the next meeting in early March) to remove first-term foreign language courses from GE Breadth requirements. The text of the proposed resolution reads: "the Academic Senate of the California State University urges the Course Review Subcommittee to exclude all first-term language courses other than English (i.e., beginning or first semester/quarter, college-level courses) from consideration for fulfillment of the CSU General Education Breadth requirements for Area C2: Humanities." The resolution provides the following rationale: "Currently, GE Breadth does not exclude first-term courses in language for its Area C2:Humanities review. Both GE Breadth and IGETC have the same course review criterion that the language course must contain a substantive CULTURAL COMPONENT beyond solely the acquisition of language skills. The IGETC excludes all first-term courses in language and reviews ONLY the second-term courses, or more advanced courses. Very few first-term CCC language courses are approved by the Course Review Subcommittee. ...."

In short, the resolution alleges that first-term language courses do not contain "a substantive cultural component" and urges their exclusion from GE C2.

Our department's letter rebuts such an uninformed assumption and emphasizes that the national "Standards for Foreign Language Learning" specifically require that students in foreign language classes (regardless of the level) "gain knowledge and understanding of other cultures." The same standards apply, of course, to courses offered at community colleges as well as those offered at CSU campuses.

As our department in our letter cautioned the fact that the CSU-Foreign Language Council had not even been consulted, the CSU-FLC has since been brought into the discussion electronically. However the CSU-FLC will not have a chance to review this important matter at its next meeting scheduled for April 20, 2002, if the CSU Academic Senate puts this item on its agenda at its March 6-7 meeting. The California Community Colleges Foreign Language Council, whose next meeting will also be held on April 20, will equally loses the opportunity to fully discuss this issue among their constituents.

I urge our campus representatives to the CSU Academic Senate, Bob, Jan and Eunice, to strongly advocate the postponement of ANY discussion of this resolution until it gathers full information and possible implications from both the CSU-FLC and the CCCFLC.

Midori McKeon, Chair

Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures

and Academic Senator

San Francisco State University

(415) 338-7413