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  • Sterling KeynoteThe text of the Sterling Keynote Address given at the 2016 Annual ConventionOctober 6, 2016 Falala
  • Mimi Gladstein

Iturn on my radio as I drive to school in the morning, and what do I hear but a Public Service Announcement brought to us by the Department of the Navy? They want to communicate a word of advice to all Middle School students. Their message is: The future is STEM–Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. I pick up my newspaper and what do I read? One example is a recent article from USA Today headlined "White House pushes for early STEM." Pictured is President Obama listening to two young sisters explaining their science project. The article elaborates on the theme by reporting that some groups are pushing to teach science and technology to children as young as three or four. Watching the television news in Phoenix, I see a piece about the abysmal state of teacher salaries in the state of Arizona, some of the worst in the nation. The commentator remarks that students who graduate in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (and though he doesn't call it STEM, the message is clear) often get jobs at starting salaries higher than their teachers. It is everywhere –the radio, the newspaper, television. So what do I say to this push for STEM---the ubiquitous drumbeat of Stem–Stem –Stem. My response is (sing it) Fa la la la la, la,la,la,la. STEM may be important, but this country doesn't have the brightest future without FA LA LA. Fine Arts –Liberal Arts–Language Arts

Remember---You can't think outside the box if they put you in the box.

We here in the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association are training the teachers and citizens of the future with skills every bit as important if not more important than S T E M. Where shall I begin?

Maybe I should start with analyzing exactly what it is we are teaching. I don't know about you, but every course I teach, from the Neo Classical Satirists to Faulkner, Hemingway, and Steinbeck, is a course in critical thinking. Once upon a time, after a particularly heated discussion about an issue of interpretation, a student opined "We're entitled to our own opinions." At that [End Page 101] point, heretic that I am, I responded, "No, you are not." A gasp. I explained that in this class, you are only entitled to any opinion you can support with textual evidence. It didn't have to agree with my reading, but it had to have a rational basis, one supported by the text. Not by feeling or emotion. Textual evidence can, of course, provide a large number of differing opinions as any reader of the critics can attest. Would that our citizens and our leaders would reason from facts rather than emotion or political expediency.

Let me turn for a moment to an area with which I am less familiar but still passionate—the Language Arts, and by that I mean Languages and Linguistics. My dear Colleagues: we are a language-impoverished nation. In a shrinking global village most of our citizens are monolingual. Certainly the condition should be covered by the ADA–Americans with Disabilities Act. Shall we call it "linguistically challenged"? I always have to use here the example of my father. He had what in Europe was the equivalent of a high school education: Gymnasium. Yet, being schooled in Poland, he had to learn not only Polish, but also the languages of the countries that were likely to invade or conquer them. Thus, he was also taught German, Russian, and Ukraine. These four languages were augmented in "gymnasium" by Latin—requisite for all scholars. Then, being Jewish, he learned Hebrew and Yiddish. Subsequently, as the storm clouds of Fascism began to darken the European horizons, he and my mother took the most expedient way out of Poland and landed in Nicaragua. (As a sidelight, this explains my being multi-cultural all by myself—conceived in Poland; born in Nicaragua; raised in Texas—) Anyway, back to my parents—knowing no one nor the language, they quickly learned Spanish. It...

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