Historian asks: Do PhD's in American history really need to know a foreign language?

... Neither the American Historical Association nor the Organization of American Historians keep tabs on which graduate programs make their Americanists pass a translation exam, but a quick search on the Web shows that it's a standard requirement at most schools. Some programs even require their Ph.D. candidates to demonstrate proficiency in two foreign languages. Why?

I asked the graduate directors at a handful of highly regarded departments, as well as a few senior professors that I know. By far the most frequent answer that I received—which one professor said was "obvious"—is that American historians should be able to read secondary materials, as well as primary sources, in languages other than English.

But this seems a flimsy rationale for upholding what is often an onerous requirement, particularly considering the current crisis in graduate education. The barriers to enter the professoriate have never been higher. About half of those who begin Ph.D. programs in the humanities will not finish, and graduate school takes longer to complete than ever before. A person can become a lawyer after three years of study, or a medical doctor after four, but nowadays the median time it takes to earn a doctoral degree in history is about nine years. Among those who do finish, only the most fortunate will land jobs that reward independent research. Most of the rest, if they choose to remain in academia, will become supremely overqualified contingent laborers. Their work lives will be devoted to teaching and grading.

Besides, if it's true that language requirements exist in order to ensure that graduates can read historical materials in languages other than English, then most departmental exams are an ineffectual farce. Typically, these exams give students an allotted amount of time (say, two hours) to translate a short passage (sometimes just a paragraph) with the help of a dictionary. But students who labor to decipher a short piece of foreign writing are unlikely to ever wade through an entire book or article in that language. In other words, graduate students routinely satisfy their language requirements without ever acquiring a practical skill. They still have not learned, in any meaningful or practical sense of the word, how to "read" another language. No wonder students tend to regard these exams as hoops to jump through, and nothing more....