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DURING the past academic year, I, as chair of a department of foreign languages and literature, have been struggling against campus criticism of my department's curriculum from business, area studies, and international education. The main complaint is that students do not acquire the “communicative skills” they need for “professional life.” The reason, we are told, is that out department maintains an old-fashioned, high-cultural focus on literature.
Now it is a striking feature of the present conflict that our critics actually know very little about our curriculum. Nearly ten years ago we adopted a proficiency-based methodology. Implementation has been hampered, of course, by large classes, lack of full-time staff, and inadequate technological support. Traditional literature courses have been eliminated in favor of broad surveys, topics seminars, and civilization courses. Full-time staff members mainly teach language courses, most averaging only one literature course a year and some none at all. We hold on to these literature courses partly for our self-identity and self-esteem as professionals. By virtue of our degrees and accomplishments, we are fundamentally not language instructors and tend to resist attempts to comprehend our careers largely in terms of a paradigm appropriate to secondary school instruction. We also cling to our few remaining literature courses because we believe in their pedagogical value.
The situation I have described is, sadly, a familiar one (Byrnes 10). The players and their relative power may differ from college to college, but the conflict itself is widespread. Foreign language and literature programs are attacked because Americans generally lack foreign language skills and a developed understanding of cultural complexities. The gap in their education if often attributed to an instructional emphasis on literature, which is regarded as more or less irrelevant to language skills and cultural awareness. I would argue that literature here functions as a classic scapegoat for deeper problems that most people prefer not to confront directly.
Because business programs are, it seems, producing students unable to compete in internationalized markets, they have been criticized as too highly specialized and too heavily focused on short-term gains. The models with which such programs operate are increasingly seen as rigid and static, insensitive (if not indifferent) to historical change and the ambiguities of global process, and even ethnocentric (Kindleberger; Wilkins; Lincoln; Strange; Davis). The social sciences have met with similar criticism, provoking intense resentment and an uneasy, unfamiliar sense of institutional insecurity (Lincoln; Meyer).
At the same time, the clientele of foreign language and literature programs has changed. More and more students are choosing to combine a major in, for example, French or Spanish and a preprofessional specialization, such as international business, education, international studies, criminal justice. Broad criticism of weak or flawed training can thus be channeled away from the primary preprofessional component as pressure is put on the auxiliary foreign language and literature component, which is becoming more necessary in professions that are still uncomfortable with their intractable otherness.
It is important to understand the reasons underlying the growing hostility toward literature, particularly foreign literature, in the United States. After a year of struggle, however, I believe that overcoming that hostility is impossible; expecting opponents of literature to acknowledge the roots of their antagonism in native anti-intellectualism and xenophobia is psychologically naive. Trying to overcome, moreover, requires provisional acceptance of positions determined largely by the very prejudices one is combating. It also fosters the sort of polarization that, as I have learned, may threaten our existence as distinct academic entities. Ironically, the dissension is occurring at a time when, even ostensibly because, foreign language instruction is again becoming crucial to education in a wide range of fields. Despite their possibly dangerous and certainly debilitating qualities, however, daily, ground-level confrontations with our culture's antiliterature bias compel us to think about why we do what we do and why we should be permitted to continue. More to the point, the struggle compels us to ask what results, what specific linguistic and cognitive skills, what breadth and depth of knowledge, we can realistically expect from our undergraduate curricula (Byrnes 11–12; Friedman 18).
And how do these attainable results relate to the intellectual, professional, and civic needs of modern American society (Arpan 2; Nichols 14; Prokasy 18)? In the words of George Schultz, then secretary of state, “What knowledge and skills should our students now have in order to function most effectively in a changing world?” (Edwards 23).
But do we know, or even agree on, what is means “to function most effectively in a changing world”? In the decade or two after the Second World War, the term “changing world” had, I think, a highly political connotation. In this country, education strove to develop global understanding in a context that mingled a desire for peace with a need for containment of a serious ideological-military threat. Since the early 1980s, by contrast, the word competitive has acquired an economic sense that has, to some extent, replaced the political (Edwards 22–24).
Our critics, who want to “educate young people so that they are equipped to accept employment in an increasingly international business sector” (Edwards 24), expect us to help them in their enterprise. They deny that we are providing appropriate or adequate support. When asked, however, they are unable to specify what foreign language skills and cultural knowledge would make it possible for their students and for Americans at large to become effective participants in global processes. They have no precise foreign language and cultural goals for their students because they have never thought of their problem in terms of specific skills and knowledge. They want us to aid them in achieving a “competitive edge” in international business, but they don't know exactly what such a project entails. We can, perhaps, help them reach their goals, but we must first know what those aims are. We cannot set the foreign language and culture goals for our critics.
I believe that if we, as foreign language and literature faculty members, are ever again to be full partners, not merely auxiliary service personnel, in the American educational endeavor, we should give serious consideration to the question of goals—our own and those of our majors, of course—but even more important, the precise foreign language skills and understanding that other departments wish their students to acquire. Depending on the answers, we can then develop the mans of attaining those ends through curricula that we consider professionally credible, intellectually stimulating, and socially responsive. If we don't, we shall find, as I have, that disciplines whose interests are in such pragmatic areas as international business will try to go beyond (or even avoid) the assessment of their functional needs, in order to prescribe or proscribe various aspects of our discipline.
In discussions of internationalized education, certain general objectives emerge that can be grouped under four broad headings: linguistic proficiencies, knowledge, attitudes, and cognitive skills. Appropriate proficiency levels in the four linguistic skills would seem indispensable. Cultural knowledge is most often described synchronically, focusing, for instance, on values and beliefs, rules of behavior, conceptual categories, or basic social, political, and economic structures. The diachronic dimension, the fact that codes and structures have changed over time and continue to do so, cannot, however, be ignored. In the domain of attitudes, the traditional effort to discover the familiar inside the strange has lately been supplemented by a belief that students should confront, as well, their response to what remains strange. Finally, the cognitive skills most important to an internationalized perspective, discernible but not emphasized enough, range from fundamental analytic and critical thinking to the ability to accommodate the messiness of process, change, and indeterminacy.
If the achievement of such educational aims is the legitimate pursuit of programs within a foreign language and literature department, then we must determine which level of proficiency in each area our students should attain in order to meet their intellectual, civic, and professional needs. The ACTFL guidelines provide a sound basis for making this determination in the linguistic skills area. I have used them in elaborating guidelines for assessing literary interpretation skills that dovetail with, and go beyond, the ACTFL reading scale. Literary interpretation is not merely an upward extension of reading skills but involves both a deepened awareness of textual elements and a broadened understanding of the text's relation to its various contexts. Consequently, literary interpretation takes in skills now included in the reading scales; some of the skills are specific to literary texts, while others can be linked to varying degrees of cultural awareness and even “cultural literacy” (Henning). Dissatisfied with ACTFL's provisional work. Gisèle Féal has developed useful culture scales based on the grid published by Wendy Allen.
With the help of both these guidelines, we can see how the various levels of skills development, knowledge acquisition, and even attitudinal change are related. By using the guidelines as assessment instruments, we can obtain a more realistic sense of how quickly, or rather how slowly, students reach a desired level of proficiency. We can also learn how to design curricula that integrate the several components of the foreign language and literature program. Indeed, a well-conceived curriculum (for French, Spanish, German, etc.) into which literature is fully integrated is, in my opinion, the best answer to critics. Such a curriculum would have the following:
In such a curriculum, literature has, I believe, a crucial role to play. Through literature, students can develop a full range of linguistic and cognitive skills, cultural knowledge, and sensitivity. But undergraduate programs must be structured so that students have the opportunity to benefit from the readings. I should like to sketch out a program that meets this criterion. In order not to limit in any way its scope and dimensions, I would name it simply a program in French, German, Spanish, and so on. Its purpose is the integration of language, literature, and culture, but the overall form that the integration assumes depends on the needs and interests of the students and faculty members.
Elementary foreign language textbooks usually focus on basic personal and social communication, often in a frankly touristic context. While this technique may sometimes be appropriate, it also fosters a narrowly pragmatic attitude toward the language and a patronizingly folkloric conception of foreign culture. Including a wide variety of material, particularly written, that deals with values, attitudes, and beliefs in a less elementary fashion would compel students to think more about the culture they are encountering through the language. Because students often do not perceive similarities and differences, it might be helpful to introduce materials about American behavior in comparable situations.
The comparative, synchronic approach is even more appropriate in intermediate and advanced language study. Courses organized around societal units or institutions—family, school, work, social classes, gender models, religion—would move students up the proficiency ladders. In such courses it is possible to present longer written passages, even entire short stories, particularly those treating aspects of life with which students are familiar. A comparative approach such as the one described by Heidi Byrnes (13–14) would sharpen students' awareness of similarities and differences, thus enriching their cultural knowledge as well as improving their linguistic and cognitive skills. At the same time they would learn to read more insightfully.
Recently my department designed an advanced course in reading and interpretation (to supplement existing courses in writing and conversation) that we hope will push students into the advanced reader range while enhancing their interpretive skills. Increasingly I have come to believe that Byrnes is right to question the emphasis on oral proficiency in American programs. The receptive skills, especially reading, are just as important, perhaps even more so, for most students, including undergraduate majors. The ability to read texts in a foreign language—newspapers, magazines, professional journals, technical trade manuals and reports, promotional and marketing materials, even literature—is an essential but frequently neglected aspect of many newly internationalized professions. Students who don't or can't read a major foreign language are cut off from vital sources of information about global concerns, international events, and socio-political reality beyond their own often highly circumscribed experience. Without an understanding of the historical development of social, political, and economic institutions, or the sources of a foreign culture's values, practices, and attitudes, of course, it is difficult to interpret intelligently what one reads.
As I suggested earlier, therefore, a synchronic study of culture cannot by itself provide students with adequate knowledge of a changing world. The necessary complement—an understanding of diachronic processes—has usually been attempted through literary courses that focus on major historical periods or movements and great authors, augmented by the study of civilization from a historical perspective. An alternative is a series of introductory courses stressing significant issues within given epochs. Through written texts, primarily literary in the strict sense, students discover some of the ways in which a given society has confronted these concerns and addressed these problems.
An external consultant recently asked me why American French majors should study the eighteenth century and Voltaire in particular. Arguments like “because every educated native speaker of French knows about them” or “because they are part of the French cultural heritage” simply do not persuade those opposed to foreignness, high culture, and history in general. If, instead, we talk about the concerns of the Enlightenment—the emergence of cultural relativism, the struggle between religious fundamentalism and rational or scientific inquiry, the treatment of religious or philosophical dissidents, the development of bourgeois values—its relation to current issues becomes clearer. Even if the interests of a previous era are radically different from those of our own, such an awareness in itself is significant and can provide a critical distance on both that epoch and our own. A diachronic framework would enable students to make connections between different periods, different countries, and even different disciplines; it would also help students develop advanced-level interpretive skills, particularly those that involve relating works to their social, cultural, political, and historical contexts.
In all such introductory courses, literature is presented as an integral part of the historical process, sometimes symptomatic of its sociocultural context, often critical of it. Indeed, literature is frequently regarded as a transformative force, at least in non-American conceptions of culture. Students should be made aware of the complex relations between texts, especially literary texts, and their various contexts and intertexts (Ryan 17). Moreover, texts themselves consist of levels of meaning that are seldom fully distinguishable, nor are they always in perfect accord. The literary text, like many other human constructs, is typically an association of diverse components and tendencies, situated and interwoven into a network of social, political, religious, philosophical, personal, historical contexts (LaCapra, Bovary 19–20; History 23–71). Insofar as students learn how to read and interpret complex texts, they become better able to manage effectively elsewhere in the real world.
The introductory sequence could be complemented, in the last year of undergraduate study, with problem-oriented seminars. Possible topics include the treatment of dissident voices, the conception of France as a nation, and attitudes toward nature. In these seminars students would be asked to examine collections of texts from various domains in order to identify the nature and sources of a problem, to consider what solutions were proposed and to evaluate them critically. Students would draw on the knowledge they had acquired from the issues-focused, diachronic courses, the synchronic study of culture in their language skills courses, and information from courses in other disciplines. In their work, they would be required to use advanced-level language, cognitive, and interpretive skills. Thus they would put into action, at it were, what they had been shown in previous culture courses or practiced in language skills courses.
Since I began teaching at the college level, seventeen years years ago, I have repeatedly been obliged to justify to a hostile audience of students, administrators, and colleagues the teaching of foreign languages and literature. Apparently, resistance to the language and literature of other cultures is a perennial problem in the United States. Yet the global political and economic situation does seem to be shifting in our favor. The challenge, it seems to me, is to steer the changes in directions that we, the trained foreign language professionals, consider credible, effective, and intellectually stimulating, as well as responsive to societal needs. We should be prepared, moreover, to abandon the defensive position that we have too often assumed, in favor of a more assertive one. In particular, we should insist on several key items.
The author is Associate Professor of French and Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at the State University College of New York, Plattsburgh. This article is based on a paper presented at ADFL Seminar East, 18–20 June 1992, in Atlanta, Georgia.
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© 1993 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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