And congrats to the Hall of Fame Inductees, as well
Today we are celebrating the 65th Anniversary of the Defense Language Institute. There will be a number of special things going on today, to include the inaugural induction ceremony to the DLI Hall of Fame. We have a bunch of special visitors coming out, including Secretary of the Army Francis Harvey. Rumor also has it that the Governator will be visiting, too, along with members of both the state legislature and the US Congress.
I can't even imagine how far we've come in training linguists in the past 65 years. I do know that we are leaps and bounds better at it now than we were just 14 years ago when I was a student. I remember talk of the old Korean Listening Course (it was done away with before I was a student), where we didn't teach the language so much as just taught people how to recognize specific parts of the military aspect of the language while listening. We were told that students of that course never really learned to read, write, or speak the language but instead just be able to translate what they heard. Even when I was a student, we realized that it was important to try and make functional linguists that could later adapt to the military role, instead of making military linguists that had no global skills. Our path to creating those linguists has just been refined and improved over the years.
So, Happy Birthday DLI and congratulations to the inductees -
Air Force Col. William Fife
Air Force Lt. Col. Rick Francona
Shigeya Kihara
Army Maj. Gen. Roland Lajoie
Air Force Maj. Gen. Doyle Larson
Hugh McFarlane
Army Col. David McNerney
Glenn Nordin
Former White House Chief of Staff and Congressman Leon Panetta
Whitney E. Reed
Please check out the article linked above to see their contributions.
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