REPOR TRESU M E S ED 013 010 46 FL 000 50? THE TEACHING OF ITALIAN IN THE UNITEDSTATES, A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY. BY- FUCILLA, JOSEPHG. AMERICAN ASSN. OFTEACHERS OF ITALIAN REPORT NUMBER BR...5.-12711 PUB DATE CONTRACT OEC.5...44-334 EORS PRICE 10.41.25 Mt-S12.09 302P. DESCRIPTORS-. *HISTORICALREVIEWS, *ITALIAN:*LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION, *LANGUAGE ENROLLMENT, *UNITED STATESHISTORY, COLLEGE LANGUAGE PROGRAMS, FLES PROGRAMS,PRIVATE SCHOOLS, PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS,SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING, SECONDARY SCHOOLS,SPECIAL PROGRAMS, STUDYABROAD, THIS STUDY IS DESIGNEDTO GIVE A WELL- ROUNDEDAND CONTINUOUS HISTORY OFTHE TEACHING OF ITALIANIN THE UNITED STATES. AFTER PRESENTING A BRIEF PICTURE OFEARLY BRITISH INTEREST IN ITALY AND ITALIAN, THEREPORT TRACES THE CONSEQUENT DEVELOPMENTOF THE STUDY OFITALIAN IN THE STATES FROM THE COLONIAL PERIOD TO THE PRESENTDAY. AREAS DISCUSSED IN OUTLINING THIS HISTORICALDEVELOPMENT ARE (1, LANGUAGE KNOWLEDGE AND STUDYDURING THE COLONIALPERIOD, (2) PRIVATE INSTRUCTION FROM1775 TO 1861, 13) THE19TH CENTURY ITALOPHILIA OF THE AMERICAN INTELLECTUALELITE, AND (4) THE STUDY CF ITALIAN IN ACADEMIES FROM1820 TO 1850. MORE THOROUGH DESCRIPTIONS OF ITALIAN STUDYAT THE ELEMENTARY AND PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL LEVELS AND IN THECOLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES INCLUDE LISTS Of SCHOOLS ORINSTITUTIONS WHERE STUDENTS HAVE BEEN REGISTERED IN ITALIANCOURSES. AMONG THE ITEMS THAT CONCLUDE THE DOCUMENT AREACCOUNTS Of FOUR PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS FOR ITALIANTEACHERS, Too SPECIAL COURSES IN THE LANGUAGE, AND OPPORTUNITIESFOR STUDY IN ITALY. THIS DOCUMENT IS AVAILABLE FOR$4.00' FROM PROFESSOR JOSEPH LAGGINIs SECRETARY - TREASURER OFTHE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF TEACHERS OF ITALIAN, RUTGERSUNIVERSITY, NEW ORUNSWICki N.J. 049030CAW el TEACHING OF ITALIAN IN THE U1441TED STATES A DOCIM,ENTARY HISTORY By JOSEPH G. FUCILIA AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF TEACHERS OF ITALIAN NEW BRUNSWICK, NEW JERSEY 1967 TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface . Chapter I. The English Background . 8 IL Informal Knowledge of Italian and Study of the Language in the Private Schools during the Colonial Period. 19 III. Private Teachers from 1775 to 1861 . sft IV. ItalophiliaoftheAmericanIntellectualEliteduringthe Nineteenth Century . V. Italian in the Colleges and Universities. 77 VI. The Study of Italian in the Academies (1810186o). 194 VII. The Study of Italian in the Public Schools and the Grades i. High Schools . 2_ g2 A. Elementary Schools(including private and religious schools) . 'rg,- VIII. Miscellanea 1. The American Association of Teachers of Italian. *88 a. The Italian Teachers Association . 267 3. The Modern Language Association . *8g 4. The National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations . 191 5. Italian in the Schools of Music . *93 6. Special NonCredit Courses . *94 7. Commercial Language Schools . *95 8. The Study of Italian in Italy. 297 PREFACE The first of the histories ofmodern languages in thiscountry is Professor Charles HartHandschin's The Teaching of Modern Languages in the UnitedStates, whichwas published by the U.S. Bureau of Education(Washington, D.C., 1913). It isa brief but original piece ofresearch whichconcentrates on French and German, saysvery little about Spanish andeven less about Italian. In other words, thetitleis a misnomer. Amore appropriate name for the studyshould have been A Historyof the Teaching of Frenchand German. Itwas followed by Professor E.W. Bagster-Collins'History of Modern Language Teaching in the United States(New York, 1930), which avowedly draws a good deal from Handschinbut extends the discussion to 1930. As might be expected, in it,too, what can be learned about Italian is slight. Muchmore informative is the 63-page Historical Section (i77g-1934)sin Bruno Rose Ili's Italian Yesterday and Today (Boston,1935). On the colleges he gives adequate details for Columbia,New York University, Harvard, Brown, Bowdoin, Yale, Santa Clara,but is sketchy and lacunose as to other institutions of higher learning. Thoughquite a few of the dates on theyear 'of the introduction of the language in a given college are in need of rectification, ProfessorRoselli has been able to establish thecorrect date for the majority of those he lists. It is his most importantcontribution to his book. He barely dwells upon the study ofItalian in the early secondary schools and as to theirrecent history gives us littlemore than can be learned from the Reports of the ItalianTeachers' Association. What he hasto say on the teaching of elementary Italian in the religiousschoolsisbrief but useful. The educational material in GiovanniSchiavo's Four Centuries of Italian American History (NewYork, 1954) has been helpful for some details on schools establishedby Italian immigrants. Among the studies on the teaching ofItalian during the late eighteenth and the first half ofthe nineteenth centurya number of fine contributions havebeen made by Professor 5 Emilio Goggio and Professor Howard R.Marraro, of which I have availed myself in several sections ofthis monograph. The Annual Reports of the Italian Teachers'Association have been Invaluable for the period betweenigss and 1938. Other materials that have been utilizedare MO al Licles by Prof.Miche- le D.; Filippa cm Italianat the University of California, Professor Goggio'sarticle on theUniversity of Toronto, Professor Herbert H. Golden's sketch ofLa scuola italiana di Middlebury, Professor J. ChesleyMathews' data onsome of the notable American writers whohave studied Italian, Mrs. Pimirillo's manuscript noteson the history of Italian at the University of California andsome news notes that have appeared in Italica from time to time. Though these studies andcomments deserve our warm appreciation they, ofcourse, could not if pieced together result in a well-rounded and continuoushistory of the teaching of Italian in the United States. Thisis what I have attempted to do and it explains why I havegone to primary sources of information for the great bulk ofmy subject matter. I have done a very substantialamount of personal investigation, but in view of the extensive geographicaland chronologicalrange of my study, I have hadto call upon numerous individuals for assistancea veritable legion of.college archivists, curators, registrars, librarians and reference librariansin college, state, citylibraries and historicalsocieties.Most of them have responded graciouslyto my requests,sometimesrepeated requests, for data. Among my colleagues Paul F. Bosco,Joseph M.Carriere,SalvatoreCastiglione, FlorindoCerreta,Mrs. Catherine Feucht, Anthony Gisolfi, EmilioGuerra, Robert A. Hall, Jr., Nancy Jo Harrison, NicolaeIliescu, A.B. Masella, RobertMelzi,ElizabethNissen,JosephineBrunoPane, Angelina Pietrangeli, Olga Ragusa,Cecilia Ross and Aldo Scaglione have given precious time searchingfor information ontheschoolswithwhichtheyareconnected,and in severalcases on the educational institutions in the cities and states in which they reside. Specialthanks are due to my wife, Reba Ann, for herassistance in reading the proofs and in typingmy manuscript in its various drafts and in its final 6 .111111111111.111.11010110.M.wwwil form, and to Miss Marjorie Carpenter, inter-library loan librarian at Northwestern University, for theunfailing solicitude with which she handled my numerous requests for loans of books, theses and microfilms. The critics that have read my manuscript have been Vincent Cioffari, A. Michael De Luca, Emilio Goggio, Herbert H. Golden, Archibald T. MacAllister, Howard R. Marraro, Antonio Pace and Joseph Rossi. Their suggestions have beenextremely worth while and where feasible a number of them have been incorporated into this study. They and all the other collaborators deserve their share of credit and my gratitude in helping to mould my history in the form in which it is here presented. Finally, by means of the huge mosaic of facts that I have put together, I hope that I haveconvinced even the most skeptical that, as a modern foreign language, the studyof Italian has had a very honorable place in the educationalhistory of our country, a place whichlovers of Italian culture can view with considerable satisfaction.* JOSEPH G. FUCILLA Northwestern University * Note: This history is the result of a decision made atthe Annual Business Meeting of the American Association of Teachers of Italianin Dec. 1963 during the presidency of Professor Alfred Iacuzzi.The project was submitted to and and approved by Professor Donald D. Walsh,Director of the MLA Foreign Language Program. The research reported herein was performed pursuant to a contract with the United States Department of Health, Education, andWelfare, Office of Education, under provisions of Title VI, Public Law85-864, as amended, Section Sat. 7 CHAFFER I THE ENGLISHBACKGROUND Since Chaucer there hasalways been a strong proItalian tradition in England. Thisnaturally re-appeared inthe old Anglo-American Colonies andcontinued to conditionthe responses of the cultivated Americanpublic throughouta considerable part of the nineteenthcentury. Starting with the period of theRenaissance,letusseebriefly whatthis background was. It is generally concededthat from the standpointof its impact on society Castiglione'sCortegiano (150) isone of the greatest books ever written. TheItalian uomo di virtu,the French honnete homme,the English gentleman andthe Spanish caballero, all of themare patterned after the ideal courtier meticulously described in it.In chapter XXVII of BookII Castiglione advises the courtierto acquire the knowledge of different languages, ° especiallySpanish and French,* thetwo