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HOWEVER they are organized and named, departments of foreign languages have generally suffered from a particular disadvantage: while faculty members in other departments can often be moved rather easily from less-popular to more-popular courses, and especially to service courses, most teachers of one foreign language can’t teach another. Thus an enrollment decline in one language usually cannot be accommodated by shifting personnel to alternative assignments. Further, faculty members understandably identify with their own language program more strongly than with the department as a whole, and sometimes the department chair is the only persistent voice for the larger organization. Nevertheless, there are strong arguments for supporting departments of foreign languages rather than departments of specific languages and for the teaching of and learning of many foreign languages rather than just a single, highly popular tongue (in today’s circumstances, Spanish).
While large, rich universities sometimes prefer and can afford to organize the study of foreign languages and literatures into more than one academic department, the more common scenario involves only one administrative unit or, at the most, two. Pedagogically, scholars and teachers of foreign languages and literatures employ common methodologies and share common goals, thus profiting from the collegiality of a single department. Pragmatically, specific language programs are often a relatively small part of most colleges and universities; when administrative expenses can be minimized by having a single department organization, the viability of each program is enhanced. But perhaps most important, the concept that the study of foreign languages and literatures is vital to the cultural, intellectual, commercial, and political health of the nation can be supported better by one large department than by a collection of very small, weak ones, each devoted to only a single language program.
Languages, like the people who speak them, are messy and move almost with impunity past the political frontiers governments like to erect. Thus we live in a world of overlapping languages and cultures where a majority of the inhabitants are multilingual because they live in a multilingual environment. But propinquity is only one aspect of the situation. Just as the wealth of human experience and thought recorded in English constitutes a central part of our national life, the wisdom, discoveries, inventions, and wit recorded in other languages—and fully accessible only through competence in those cultures and languages—hold a significant position. Our heritage is multilingual; to deny or abandon that is to lose the treasures of recorded human experience.
Our present needs are also highly international and, in addition, shockingly fluid. Modern commerce, including financial and corporate structures, has been internationalized to a degree previously unknown. And, as recent corporate mergers have demonstrated, monolinguals are at an extreme disadvantage. One can buy in one’s own language, but one cannot sell with great success. Knowledge of other cultures and languages has become a prerequisite for leadership, and to think we can participate adequately in the world by teaching only English and Spanish is most ill advised. At the very least for now we must also have strong representations of Japanese, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Russian, Portuguese, Hindi, Swahili, Indonesian, and Arabic, to mention only the most obvious.
If one accepts these arguments for the moment—that most language programs are too small to survive as separate departments and that the nation’s future will be best served by the study of many foreign languages—the question of how individual members of foreign language departments, and Spanish faculty members in particular, can join their chair in supporting the teaching and learning of a sufficient array of languages in most institutions becomes both interesting and vexing.
Much of what follows here suggests ways in which a presumably prosperous Spanish faculty can aid its colleagues’ beleaguered programs in other foreign languages. None of it, however, will contradict the widespread view that the funding and respect accorded Spanish programs have long been inadequate, that Spanish faculty members have been overworked and underpaid, or that the current glut of students in Spanish has neither produced a correction of old inadequacies nor carried a guarantee of significant longevity. Interest in the humanities is in decline, as is interest in foreign languages, and the currently positive statistics of Spanish programs may be short-lived. But one must plan for good times as well as bad, and the present good times in Spanish require a developed sense of responsibility toward the study of foreign languages as a whole. There is work to be done with department policies and practices, college advising and policy, campus administrators, secondary schools, and non-Spanish language activities.
The means by which departments position themselves to help or hinder a given language program include scheduling, research support, service assignments, advising, and hiring, each of which tactic provides ample opportunities for progress and controversy. While campuses vary depending on their circumstances, they all have some slots in the schedule that draw better than others and are therefore popular with faculty members as well as with students. Normally, the prudent way to administer this situation is to apportion the popular slots among the languages with an even hand. When Spanish courses will fill almost regardless of their position in the schedule, even-handedness needs to be tempered by necessary support for the other language programs. Spanish faculty members need to shoulder their share of the process and be proactive in this aspect of scheduling, seeking out less popular slots where their courses can still prosper and requesting those positions rather than leaving all the controversial decisions to the chair. In this fashion both pragmatic and professional goals can be pursued: enrollment is enhanced and support is clearly signaled for one’s colleagues and their programs. The salubrious effect of such demonstrations is difficult to overvalue.
Support for faculty research is largely a different story. There are strong and quite personal egalitarian considerations, along with matters of quality and quantity, that drive the necessary decisions. Released time for research and other types of resources mainly need to be assigned without references to the language that an individual teaches. Still, there are areas where some attention to special opportunities may at times be justified. Class size, for example, is a vital aspect of an instructor’s overall workload and, along with the number and type of class preparations, can be almost as important as released time in determining what research actually gets done. Supporting smaller class sizes for probationary faculty members in the less well enrolled languages can make at least a small contribution to the research accomplishments that must accompany a request for tenure. In a struggling language program, such applications are sometimes viewed with an especially stern eye. The show of support that such an approach constitutes can often be worth more than anything else. Nothing can be accomplished in this area, however, if the faculty as a whole insists that each individual must be considered without reference to the language taught.
Service assignments are also hard to fine-tune. As Geraldine Cleary Nichols pointed out recently in the ADFL Bulletin, shifting the service load can create an imbalance of power—less work means less influence. But it also means more time for teaching and research, elements directly related to the success of a language program in the long run. In this case, it may be the faculty members in the less well enrolled languages who will need to compromise a bit of individual power in support of their program’s long-range success while their colleagues shoulder slightly more of the service load. If these minor inequities do in fact contribute to the success of specific language programs, any faculty controversy over service assignments may be an acceptable cost of administration. When individuals who don’t teach Spanish do allow their names on a ballot, however, support from Spanish faculty members can be extremely productive. Making contacts and receiving general exposure outside the language department are useful both for the individual and for the program, and the sense of departmental cohesion and cooperation that can result is invaluable.
When we advise our students, we transmit values and influence decisions in a wide range of areas, and perhaps no professorial task is less well studied or supervised. Alone with a student, we mention some things and not others, signal attitudes by subtle inflections and body language, and boldly send acolytes off in directions that may serve us better than them. We have no valid reason, though, not to speak well of the study of other languages, and today’s circumstances argue strongly that Spanish faculty members need to lead in exploring with students the desirability of studying more than one language, of studying the language to which they are most strongly drawn, and of exposing themselves to many possibilities. Spanish advisers need to consider their role and responsibilities as department advisers carefully, resisting the temptation to feather their own nest and go home. They need to tout the strengths of their colleagues in other languages, the importance of those languages and literatures on the world stage, and the delights that can result from considering the accompanying cultures. The future of language departments depends heavily on our ability to learn to see ourselves more as department members and less as language-specific people stuck in an administrative unit we frequently find awkward.
Competition and focus come to bear most problematically, however, on hiring. At a time when probationary faculty members in postsecondary institutions generally do indeed receive tenure in spite of their years of great concern and uncertainty, and when most institutions still have not developed an adequate approach to professors who have gone sour, the act of hiring well becomes crucial to the health and future of any department. As chairs we are fond of saying to one another in ADFL seminars, hire well and you won’t have any serious personnel problems to manage. But in today’s competitive academic environment, where every dollar and faculty line seem critical, the foundations for the language departments of the future are being laid in appointments to thirty-plus years of tenure-track service, and although whom we hire matters, what language we hire in matters equally. If we allow numbers and present trends to rule exclusively, we will end up only with departments of Spanish; Spanish faculty members must join with their colleagues in other languages to fight against this current if there is to be adequate success. Everyone needs to view enrollment increases in other languages as desirable, and tenure-track replacement appointments in struggling languages (or additional lines where enrollment warrants them) should have the support of Spanish faculty members even if yet another line for Spanish would ease the problem of class size, make favorite graduate courses more available, or distribute the service load more broadly. Currently, this is the most important area in which relatively popular programs in Spanish can make a substantial contribution to the American academy. This is where responsibility for foreign language instruction in general can be exercised. This is where the line between self-interest and the greater good is hardest to draw but where it is nonetheless absolutely vital that it be drawn.
Central though department policies and practices are, useful steps can also be taken at the college and campus-wide levels, especially in advising and policy. College-level advisers and colleagues in other departments can call only on what they know about the study of foreign languages, and most of that comes from what language faculty members have said at one time or another. If we identify advisers outside our departments and take advantage of any opportunity to be supportive not only of the study of foreign languages in general but of all the languages taught on our campus, we can add data and arguments to our colleagues’ understanding of our field. We can’t expect a physics professor, for example, to muster the best arguments for studying Russian, German, Italian, French, Japanese, or whatever—anything beyond Spanish—if we don’t provide the raw material and, perhaps even more important, the support and enthusiasm. When Spanish faculty members do that, the effect is far greater than when self-interest might seem to color a conversation. Individual conversations are important, but so are formal programs wherein Spanish faculty members accompany their colleagues in other languages to visit groups of advisers or simply colleagues in other departments. Anything that promotes the concept of a unified department faculty supporting the study of foreign languages first and their respective languages only later will be useful.
Campus administrators pose an equally important audience. Often focused on short-term goals, budget constraints, and enrollment statistics, deans and vice-chancellors have been known to argue on Monday that closed sections of Spanish are no problem when there are still seats left in French—a foreign language is a foreign language after all—but then on Tuesday turn down retention of a vacated line in French because enrollment is declining. This is an area of information and education where faculty members from all languages can make a greater contribution in concert with one another than as entrepreneurs for just their own subject. When administrators hear that faculty members value all the languages taught in their institution and have good reasons for doing so, when the importance of language choice for students is skillfully articulated, and when the national need for speakers in a wide variety of languages is persuasively explained by Spanish instructors as well as their colleagues in other languages, the effect can be powerful.
In a similar vein, postsecondary language departments need to incorporate an information project into their contacts with secondary school language programs. We always have to ask why students arrive on college campuses with settled notions of whether to study a foreign language and if so, which one. Secondary schools face the same problems with the lopsided popularity of Spanish that we do but with faculty members often less well positioned to argue the issues where it counts. Postsecondary faculty members need clearly and consistently to convey their own attitudes about language study to their secondary colleagues, once again offering data and arguments for linguistic diversity and mutual concern. We need to have lunch, to attend teacher conferences, to visit schools and meet with faculties—all in the service of explaining our support for the study of many languages and our reservations about Spanish-only programs. When Spanish faculty members articulate that themselves, people listen more carefully.
Closer to home, our individual behavior and attitudes within department boundaries can be as significant as official policies and practices. Whether to bolster hard-pressed colleagues or to encourage students, Spanish professors can have great impact by attending programs in another language; demonstrating familiarity with the issues relevant to that language; speaking well of the language, the program, and the people involved; celebrating their success; sharing their difficulties; and buying at their bake sales. It’s time to think expansively and creatively about a discipline far broader than just one language.
None of these suggestions for how Spanish faculty members can develop and communicate their support for programs of study in other foreign languages carries much weight, however, unless one accepts the opening argument here that we really should not allow or celebrate disproportionate growth in the study of Spanish at the great expense of the study of other languages. The issue is clouded by several factors. First, we continue to debate the causes for the radical increase in Spanish enrollments most recently chronicled by Richard Brod and Elizabeth B. Welles in the Winter 2000 issue of the ADFL Bulletin. One can be reluctant to divert resources of any sort away from Spanish before we are more certain about the scope, nature, and duration of the current trend. Second, discussions at the 1999 ADFL Seminar West identified serious concerns about the willingness of many Spanish faculty members to forgo any concentration on Spanish program issues in favor of support for other languages. This reluctance often seemed to involve resentment over a perception that because the study of Spanish has been understaffed and assigned less than appropriate status for a century or more, it now deserves to prosper unimpeded. Third, the United States has one of the largest and fastest-growing Spanish-speaking populations in the world, and the development of an adequate Spanish-as-a-second-language establishment deserves extensive attention and support.
But while it is important for Spanish programs to concentrate on making their own programs better, this need should not preclude support for other languages and the concept of highly diverse foreign language study in the United States. I continue to recall past follies and opportunities that argue for great foreign language diversity in any society. I remember a graduate school professor telling us about his professor of Far Eastern history who held one of two subscriptions in the country before 1941 to the journal of the Japanese navy. I remember my own first job, which had me at sixteen translating international postal regulations from French into Spanish in my native Asunción, Paraguay. I note the alienated student on his way to dropping out who got hooked on Dostoevsky in English and went on to Russian courses both here and in Moscow. I can’t forget the magazine article explaining that while the German DaimlerChrysler executives speak excellent English, they often conduct meetings in German, which forces the monolingual American executives to employ interpreters. And from the Age of Aquarius, I still remember with a chuckle the undergraduates who discovered in Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons the nihilism they thought was invented in 1968. We simply cannot afford to let complacency or greed lead us back toward monolingual, or at best bilingual, isolationism. Who knows what tomorrow will bring, but if today’s winners don’t concern themselves effectively and generously with the health and welfare of the study of as many languages as possible in the United States, we will surely have adequate leisure in which to contemplate our future sorrows.
Nichols, Geraldine Cleary. “Spanish and the Multilingual Department: Ways to Use the Rising Tide.” ADFL Bulletin 31.2 (2000): 39’43.[Show Article]
© 2001 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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