Being well into my 70s I am, like many, inclined to nostalgia.
In Rome for the first time last year, I sat by the Tiber and recalled myself as a third-former learning Latin for the first time. It became my passion for several years. Amore discendi vivere discimus was the school motto: Through love of learning we learn to live. Not a bad guiding thought for young girls.
That carried me through to Sapere aude at the University of Otago: Dare to know! In the light of the proposed changes to the way the university now wishes to present itself, I wonder how many future students will have that as their mantra in life.
The passion for Latin led me to focus on languages at school and university. Latin as a basis made learning German easy, which in turn led to success and a masters degree in that subject.
I was fostered both at school and university by teachers who ably imparted their love for their subject.
Even back in the 1960s the numbers of those who chose to study foreign languages were small, so we were privileged by a degree of intimacy in our learning environment, extended by many extra-curricular activities; singing, camps, an annual German play performance etc.
But we were nevertheless challenged by the expectations of us in the breadth and depth of the reading required. Germany in particular, through the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Goethe Institute has always been very supportive of the teaching of German. For numbers of students that led to study in Germany, inevitably a life-changing experience that often determined future careers.
Eventually my love of both teaching and German brought me back to the University of Otago and the then Department of German, where I spent the next 30 years trying to continue the tradition and educational values established by Professor Eric Herd in the 1950s, while adapting to changing trends in language learning and curriculum.
The students were, of course, the catalyst in those changes, as they prepared themselves for the world and working life ahead of them.
Gone were the days when teaching was the only career option. Many opted to do double degrees, one that might be a path to a job, and one which allowed them to follow their passion, in our case, German. They were often the best students of their cohort and teaching them was a great pleasure.
While honing their language skills, often through life experience while on exchange in Germany, their exposure to the best of German literature past and present in their course work deepened their understanding of the social and political history of Germany and Austria. Through their reading they were confronted with complexities of human experience beyond their immediate ken. They matured as people. Discussion, secondary reading and researched writing developed their critical, reasoning and communication skills.
That is the aim of all humanities subjects, indeed, but our students acquired in addition the understanding of a second culture and language in depth. Over the years they have shown themselves to be eminently employable, indeed have shone in a wide range of fields.
I am enormously proud of our products wherever I meet them or hear of them. So I am very sad that the opportunities afforded me are going to be denied to future students of German.
But I am also angry.
In the background to our teaching there was always the bottom line of the university to be considered. Since the retirement of Professor Herd languages have been subjected to frequent reviews and restructuring. Those have led progressively to loss of autonomy, loss of staff and reduction in offerings, beginning with the cancellation of German’s very successful Honours programme.
Decision-making management seldom had much understanding of what is required for students to achieve real competence in a language. Consequently, languages, because of their relatively small numbers, have faced a constant struggle for survival and had to argue to retain the quality of the degrees being offered.
It is a battle that for German has now been lost.
Nostalgia arises from sadness over the loss of something valuable. I feel that strongly. But in my case it includes anger.
I am angry at the loss of a discipline to which I was proud to contribute, which saw many very fine graduates and which added to the standing of the University of Otago nationally and internationally.
I am angry that with this decision the university is taking a further step to undermine languages and with that will add further to the weakening of the Division of Humanities that has been under way for at least two decades now in all the ongoing restructurings.
■Alyth Grant taught German language and literature at the University of Otago for 30 years, 10 years of which she was head of German, at a time when languages had no professorial leadership.
