[Buddha-l] American Mahayana/British Theravada?

[Stefan Detrez]

>
>
> I think this trend of Americans specializing in American Buddhism will
> catch on for two reasons: 1) Americans, as a rule, have almost no real
> interest in any culture except their own, and 2) most Americans have
> such poor training in languages (including English) that they lack the
> intellectual equipment to study Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese, Tibetan,
> Tokharian, Mongolian, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese texts. So if they
> want to study Buddhism they read Alan Ginsberg, Ken Wilber and Elizabeth
> Claire Prophet. (At my university, undergraduates are required to take
> only ONE SEMESTER of a foreign language. And for most of them, this will
> be their first exposure to a foreign language. Can you believe it? What
> do you think the odds are for getting an American student who has never
> studied any foreign language before the age of 18 up to speed in
> classical Sanskrit or Pali or Tibetan?)


The fact that they get exposed to a foreign language for only one semester
is both amazing and appalling. It depends, of course, in what faculty you
are. Here in Leuven, Belgium, professors in my department (Slavonic Studies)
took it for granted that you'll be reading secondary literature in English,
French and German. Primary literature and some course weres in Russian and
Polish /themselves/.
Of course, I'm not assuming you have to learn Tokharian in Tokharian as
teaching language or Sanskrit in Sanskrit, but here in Belgium is a new type
of pedagogy which demands that you be plunged in a language bath from day
one.
But then again, I'm amazed from the general quality of works American
universities have produced in the buddhological sphere, so for me it's bizar
to imagine that monolinguistic American students will be deciphering
Karoshti inscriptions wherever they occur.

I wonder if you can compare the level of polyglottism of foreign (i.e.
non-American) students to that of American students.

Stefan
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