Send'em here for a few months

[UDIM018%FRORS31.BITNET -x- at -x- OHSTVMA.ACS.OHIO-STATE.EDU]

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).