In his second year of teaching, the teaching fellow is placed in "full charge" of a section of an elementary language course--German, A, B, C, or D--though he is still given some guidance.
Stein considers this "teacher-preparation reduced to essentials" reduced because of heavy scholarly demands on the graduate students. He adds, however, that the demands of study must not be considered so great that teacher training is neglected completely. "We are not a teacher's college and we don't want to be, but we do believe that teaching fellows, as scholar-teachers, should receive training in both fields," he said. Schools have existed for years to train high school teachers, but there are none to train college teachers. "We are filling this gap," Stein noted.
It is his coordinator position which has enabled Stein to lead the German Department to its present distinction in teaching. One single tenured person in charge of all the language courses in a department provides the continuity and unity which are essential in the early stages of language instruction, he explains. The University has established Co-ordinator of Language Instruction positions in the Romance and Slavic Languages and Literatures also. The only other University in the country to have a comparable position is Columbia, Stein says.
The Romance Languages Department with Dwight LeM. Bolinger, professor of Romance Languages and Literature, as coordinator of language instruction has begun to follow, in the last two years, in the German Department's footsteps. Since the Romance Languages Department has not been as enthusiastic in the transition to oral-aural-methods as the German Department, experts think is will take about three more years before the former's teacher-training program begins to produce as well. But the two departments are now working together--Stein and Bolinger, as co-ordinators are co-operating on further developments in the training program.
Horace G. Lunt 2d '41, who serves both as chairman and as co-ordinator of language instruction in the Slavic Department, has developed no teacher-training course. The department has instead planned more meetings for teaching fellows next year in hopes of strengthening and co-ordinating the elementary teaching program.
The basic similarity between the German and Romance training programs is in the applied linguistics courses. Bolinger taught Romance Philology 201. "General Linguistics and the Romance Languages: Theory and Application," in its present form for the first time last Fall. The course is about one-third linguistics and two-thirds pedagogy, Bolinger said. Like the German course, it covers teaching techniques, the making of tests and drills, and analysis of textbooks.
In addition to criticism from about six visits a year from professors, teaching fellows in Romance Languages are now asked to make tape recordings of two of their classes, write criticisms and comparisons of the two, and sumbit their comparisons to the department. Field trips to secondary schools are also part of the curriculum of the training course, which in the past has been meeting two times a week. Next year the department will add special meetings on Fridays which will split up the class into two sections: Spanish-Italian, and French. This is intended to provide a chance for specific discussions of problems peculiar to the different languages.
In the Fall before they begin teaching the new teaching fellows attend a four-day orientation program, which includes demonstration classes, films on language and language teaching, explanations of how to cope with some of the special problems of Harvard's 'special breed" of students, and advice from observers of the previous year's teaching fellows, Bolinger said. This was the first year such an orientation program was adopted, and it was so successful that it will be continued, he added, with Kathleen O. Elliott, Dean of Radcliffe College, as the guest speaker.
Problems have arisen with Stein's teacher-training plan. A frequent criticism is that it denies teaching salaries to first-year graduate students; universities have traditionally used the sal- aries as a kind of scholarship for their graduate students. Stein thinks this could be avoided by spreading second and third year teaching money over the full three years of study.
In recognition of the special training programs in the German and Romance Language Departments, and as an incentive for student-teachers, the Harvard Graduate Society for Advanced Study and Research has developed a Travel Study Prize. Susan M. Rubin 4G, teaching fellow in Romance Languages, received this year's first prize of $750 for a summer of travel.
"We are very happy that the Graduate Society thinks so highly of our teaching fellows and that superb instruction in lower-level German courses is becoming legendary among the students," Stein said. "But in view of the fact that we give them only a minimum training program, it makes me shudder to think what teaching fellows are like in other departments," he added.
A more objective measure of the effectiveness of the new teaching program might be the inclusion of pedagogical as well as scholarly topics on Ph.D. general examinations, Stein suggested.
But J. Peterson Elder, Dean of the Graduate School, said that he was very impressed with the present teacher-training program. It's a dandy thing and it produces excellent teaching fellows," Elder said. He and Stein are both in favor of other Harvard departments and other universities following the Harvard German Department's lead to develop complete teaching fellow programs. A lot of students apparently are too