Word: meaning
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Stanley Baldwin: "In his way, you know, [he] was a great parliamentarian. I mean, he played on the House with very great skill. If there was anything awkward, he'd get up and talk about airy nothings. Nothing whatever to do with it. But he'd soothe the House...
...frenzied story about the purposeless destruction of a dog very real. Lowe's strength depends more on what he knows about people and customs in Jamaica, whom and which he treats softly and without awe in a swift telling. Heliczer's piece proves that irreverence and irrelevance sometime mean the same thing, and is in his usual adroit good humor...
...lessons of 1958 did not mean that 1959 will be all beer and skittles. Wintertime unemployment is a major problem; so is a wage-price inflation. But the year showed-and Canadians understood, as demonstrated by new highs for the Toronto stock market in 1958-that the U.S. has a strong, increasingly independent neighbor to the north, whose past growth is only a hint of its future promise...
...only reason for studying a language, Conant observed, is to achieve "something approaching a mastery. And by this I mean the ability to read with ease a foreign newspaper and discuss it intelligently with a native of the country in question . . . This degree of mastery . . . cannot be reached in two years." Conant's recommendations: the most able scholars-at least the top 15% of U.S. high school students-should take four years of one language. Further, they should be urged to elect three years of another language, with the assumption that they will continue study of the second language...
...language courses from high school curricula on the grounds that few students apply, and colleges, whose two-year language admission requirements give respectability to a brief, pointless period of study. "A two-year requirement is worse than none," said Conant. "If there is to be a requirement, it should mean mastery." He continued: "The lip service paid to foreign languages in the high school, is, I am afraid, a direct reflection of lip service paid in the colleges and universities. I strongly suspect that the proficiency in a foreign language that is often required for a bachelor's degree...