Former graduates work in every sector of business and industry. Some have been drawn to the diplomatic and intelligence communities, and still others have served in the Armed Services. In the last 10 years, students of Russian have had a unique opportunity to use their skills in many joint ventures in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. In many ways, Glastonbury is an average community. Conversations with townspeople and qualitative research with students and graduates indicate that the single greatest ingredient for maintaining the supportive attitude about the language program is that students who graduate from the program are able to use their language knowledge in later life.
Success breeds success.
The momentum to maintain the language program and expand it has come from a community whose children and grandchildren have returned to Glastonbury, talking about the tremendous preparation they had in the program to think, read, write, and speak in another language. It isn't as simple as the airline magazines would have one believe. Just by playing a tape recorder under the bed at night, one is not going to miraculously absorb Serbo-Croatian or even French. The United States Foreign Service and Department of State have 25 years of research on the length of time it takes Americans to become proficient in another language. Students graduating from schools where they do have the opportunity to study a language over a long period of time recognize that their skills have gotten better and better as they have studied the language.