It began with a long, prompting note from J. May that spoke in some detail of the value of intensive teacher-training, of the problem of grad students coming into the job market increasingly underprepared in one or other of the languages, of the dangers of further diffusing lang. prep. with a significantly broadened grad curriculum. He proposed, instead, a more "intentional and structured" course of study. The idea was picked up by M. Williams who offered a fuller version with some random commentary, some more random commentary, and a heretical idea. D. Hooley offered a slightly different take on the good ideas put forward by May and Williams.
At this point D. Grote jumped in with useful observations about the evolution of the field, arguing for the development and recognition of the legitimacy of an entirely new discipline, which will be more marketable and which will recognize the centrality of classical culture to western tradition. J. May responded with a request for specifics. How is such training possible? How, specifically, does one make language acquisition better/faster? How does one spend time with a Classical Humanities focus without damaging already fragile knowledge of Latin and Greek? The query was repeated by D. Mirhady, who further endorsed traditional emphasis on philology.
C. Pavur, also a member of the language pedagogy task force, answered at some length. For a ruthlessly edited summary, click here. Finally, D. Hooley made an attempt to represent ground shared by the participants with respect to this last cluster of contributions. An edited version is available.
We close with a makeshift listing of generally endorsed suggestions made by various of the group's members.
--Dan Hooley/Jim May