Here at Peculiar Manor, I have put in many fence posts. One outside the kitchen holds a rain gauge, another a bird feeder. After digging when I am bold or tired, or both, I place a post in the hole, declare it straight, and fill in the hole. I am usually wrong. It is rarely straight. When I get up from digging, stand back four or five yards, then look, I can obtain a straight post. These are rough posts, so a bubble-level does not work. It takes several trips to stand back and view the post to get it right.

The world is full of crooked posts. It is populated by people who do not stand back and view. The post-hole diggers and post planters are too prone to declare things straight and to go ahead to the next chore or next post. To some of us, this makes an ugly world. That is a real problem to us, but to others it causes real physical problems and inefficiencies.

Until I worked here I never knew why it was important to have straight fence posts. It is in part a matter of esthetics, but at least as important is strength of the fence, to increase the difficulty of it being pushed over. Ease of digging holds explains why some posts are straight, others leaning. They need to be straight to be sure that their supports fit, that wire net has appropriate attachment places, and that gates work. There seem to be reasons enough. Sometimes it is impossible to get a post to look straight.

Perhaps standing back is just common sense to most people. I elaborate to be sure we all understand and visualize a thing, a concept of rightness, a concept of viewing that thing, and the important concept of moving and looking at a thing from more than one place. I'm avoiding using "perspective," for that has too many connotations as well as denotations to be very useful. It is overly used.

All of this awareness and understanding is needed as I struggle through an argument that has besieged me in my academic career. I have always had too little time, too few supporters, too few people with a common positive experience, and probably (I hate to admit the possibility) an inadequately formulated argument. The question that I have felt needing answer is whether to require knowledge of foreign languages before a person obtains a doctor of philosophy (Ph.D.) degree. My counter question, one relevant to all people, whether seeking a Ph.D. or not, is: can a person be considered well educated without such knowledge?

Most critics of the PhD language requirement, which usually is to have competency in two foreign languages, such as French and Russian (which I selected), usually argue from practicality. They cite: (1) translators are available, (2) cost of learning and time required is excessive, (3) the probability of using a reference personally translated is low, and (4) there are automated translation aids in some fields.

Others argue from awful experiences in language laboratories and classes designed to "pass the exam." A young faculty, most of whom having just suffered such experience, is likely to oppose it for future candidates. A very young faculty, not having met the requirements, sees no reason(s) to impose such a requirement on these future students.

Why is it that some people in a store will say, "You just have to taste it!" about some food items? The item, whatever it is, looks good, smells good, has the proper brand name and packaging, but in some instant of enthusiasm it is being pushed at you with "... you ... have to try it!" The example is trivial but seeks to supply the insight that certain things cannot be communicated in words. "Do it like this," says the expert, words failing. Few will try to express love; some poets try. The most famous ones come closest. Trying to express why a person needs to master languages may be impossible. Only after mastery can the awareness be gained. That makes a priori arguments difficult or impossible. In a group of Ph.D.-holders in which all have not become aware of the major reasons for mastery, no community of scholars can exist. The commonality, the unifiers, are not present. The shared experiences and felt knowledge are the things which build community. The long, hard-won mastery of other languages is now missing.

When I approach a problem or attempt to build an argument, I usually ask "why is this needed?" and the answer is usually found as "benefits," and then I seek the objectives to which some type of benefit measures may be related. It is a general pattern; I do not think it at all personal or unique. As I view the languages argument, I seek objectives. The human mind is so complex I always find multiple objectives, never one so simplistic as to give only one answer to a question of "why?" I look for the surround, the set of objectives that wax and wane in brightness or importance.

To support the need for knowledge of several languages, such knowledge can usually result in:

1. Increased awareness of and sensitivity to problems of communication among people, not only between countries, but within a country.
2. Knowledge of the role of languages in shaping thought patterns, people's design and creative processes; how questions may be formed, and even how conceptual systems of entire groups may be formed.
3. Insights into how language shapes cultures, disciplines, national patterns of thought and action, and scientific development.
4. A feeling of unification with a world community of scholars, a feeling grounded in ability to share, communicate, and avoid risks.
5. Reduced provincialism in personal thought and action.
6. The feeling of personal confidence that comes with mastery of the difficult, long-established, and tested mark of the scholar and learned people.

These six objectives are difficult to discuss. They are usually admitted only a posteori. The easy ones to cite, the ones with surface-believability, are:

1. To improve mastery of English.
2. To gain an ability to translate foreign papers useful in preparing a dissertation.
3. To gain ability to participate in international scientific meetings.
4. To gain awareness of the scientific literature that exists in other languages, to hereby honor proprietary rights to intellectual work, and to gain some modesty and scientific conservatism from such awareness.
5. To gain ability to obtain information in a timely way from other countries on topics when funds or waiting-time for translations are not available (or confidence lacking in available translators).
6. To reduce the claims by foreign scientists about the arrogance of American scientists (i.e., that only readable, English-science is "good" science).

Two other reasons for requiring Ph.D. candidates to have language skills hardly bear mention, but perhaps they are more heavily weighted by some decision-makers and administrators than others. They are:

1. To provide a screening aid for employers, because by the passage of such a requirement, candidates demonstrate stamina, memory skill, and strong desire.
2. To "stake out territory" as in the sense of "if I did it, so can he or she." This is like a traditional initiation rite. Everyone does it - just because. It is a way of limiting candidates using a multi-functional filter. The nature of the filtering process is not specified, but it clearly happens.

I perceive that all or most of these objectives are operating at one time, but each is assigned different importance, quality of performance, risks of failure to achieve them, and different probabilities that substitutes can be found. Real differences in appreciation and importance can be sensed within a person at the end of a 5-hour language exam and the same one at the end of 5 years with time for reflection.

Several strategies have been followed in places where the language requirement could not be easily dropped. It has been made optional. Now it is rarely found in the sciences. The relaxation to "optional" prevents all of the objectives from being reached by the procedure that was once in place. It requires alternative techniques and designs to achieve those that are deemed good and necessary in the Ph.D.-holder, a graduate scholar, or learned person, from a school.

Poor language instruction has surely been a just claim, but not sufficient to deny the total list of objectives possible from a revised, enlightened language program for candidates for a Ph.D.