From chemistry-request@ccl.net Wed Jun 10 06:57:58 1992 Date: 10 Jun 92 10:52:22 EDT From: UDIM018%FRORS31.BITNET@OHSTVMA.ACS.OHIO-STATE.EDU Subject: Send'em here for a few months To: chemistry@ccl.net Status: R E. M. EVLETH Dynamique des Interactions Moleculaires Universite Pierre et Marie Curie 4 Place Jussieu, Tour 22, Paris 75005 (1) 44 27 42 08 UDIM018 at FRORS31 Dear all: As for substituting fortran for German, French, Spanish, Japanese or whatever spoken language I thought that bad idea was given up long ago in graduate education in the USA. I known that learning a language for exam purposes is a bore (many things are in this life). It would be a lot more useful if the NSF had scholarships to send students to a country in which they have has no choice but to speak and read while studying. European students are mindful of the fact they "must" learn English to get ahead, and better two foreign languages than one. That sense of "mustness" has never permeated the US educational system, nor the sense that one is not really educated unless one speaks a (or several) foreign languages. The reason is that the United States is geographically isolated. Breaking that lingustic isolation should have a priority higher that substituting fortran for whatever. So send your students abroad. We send them to the USA. In the late 60s, at UCSC, I voted for such a substitution and I was wrong. Is there no progress? E. Evleth (Paris).