A recent survey estimates that there are. today in the six New England states alone well over a million persons of French-Canadian descent, the overwhelming majority of whom understand and speak French natively. At a time when increased and improved knowledge of modern foreign languages is patently needed, this vast pool of native speakers and potential teachers of French constitutes an increasingly valuable linguistic resource. The Franco-American Institute held at Bowdoin College in the summer of 1961 under the terms of the National Defense Education Act sought to exploit more fully in the national interest this New England French resource. The Institute marked the first time in history that an ethnic group was accorded federal support in its struggle to preserve its linguistic heritage—a sharp divergence from official efforts at intensive Americanization following World War I. It was also the first concerted effort made in this country by language teachers of any nationality to come to grips in a realistic way with the problem of teaching the standard form of a language to a group of persons whose second language is non-standard. The central problem faced by the Institute was the unquestioned right of French-Canadian speech to be recognized as a respectable means of communication. All due respect was accorded to this linguistically-sound fact, but the Institute nevertheless took the position that the national interest demands the teaching of standard French in all U. S. schools today.

We all know that linguist has lately become a magic word. Men who used to be merely English or Spanish professors find that when they are called by this term they are welcomed almost as equals by ecologists and astrophysicists; and scientifically trained administrators on public platforms, anxious to show the breadth of their interests but not feeling quite up to coming out in favor of poetry, are happy to be able to bow in the direction of departments that once seemed hopeless. For the first time within living memory there is even a good deal of money and patronage available for language students—as long as they are labeled linguists.

I. Brief History of the Project: Since 1952, the Foreign Language Program of the Modern Language Association of America, responding to the national urgency with regard to foreign languages, has been engaged in a vigorous campaign aimed in large part at improving foreign-language teaching in our country.

In 1955, as one of its activities, the Steering Committee of the Foreign Language Program formulated the “Qualifications for Secondary School Teachers of Modern Foreign Languages,” a statement which was subsequently endorsed for publication by the MLA Executive Council, by the Modern Language Committee of the Secondary Education Board, by the Committee on the Language Program of the American Council of Learned Societies, and by the executive boards or councils of the following national and regional organizations: National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations, American Association of Teachers of French, American Association of Teachers of German, American Association of Teachers of Italian, American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages, Central States Modern Language Teachers Association, Middle States Association of Modern Language Teachers, New England Modern Language Association, Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, Northwest Conference on Foreign Language Teaching, Philological Association of the Pacific Coast, Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association, South Atlantic Modern Language Association, and South-Central Modern Language Association.