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NAVIGATING difficult seas in unpredictable weather, the collective ship of college and university foreign language departments not only has stayed afloat over the last several decades but may even be stronger as a result of the storms it has endured. 1 Certainly it has been adapted to withstand them. Not without losses, unfortunately: during the worst periods, too many programs were abridged or even dismantled as circumstances changed; too many teachers and scholars became unable to find permanent employment and either dropped out or moved to alternative careers. Yet, even as we regret these losses, we can benefit from analysis of the ways in which so many departments have successfully adjusted. At a minimum we need to understand what we have lived through as we take steps to overhaul the ship and fortify it against future storms.
How have circumstances changed? And how have we, as departments and as individuals, adapted to the changes? Using as a baseline 1958, the year the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) was signed, we can easily trace the quantitative fluctuations of our circumstances over the years. The first ten years under NDEA were marked by major growth in student population, significant federal investment in foreign languages and area studies, and substantial increases in foreign language enrollments in both secondary and postsecondary institutions. By 1968, however, the cycle had reversed. The turmoil of that year included widespread student rebellion against established curricular requirements and traditional courses of study. There was no evidence of student distaste for languages per se, but the decision by several hundred colleges and universities to abridge or eliminate requirements led inevitably to a decline in language enrollments during the 1970s.
The appointment in 1978 of a presidential commission to study the status of languages and international studies in American education could be seen as an indication of renewed awareness of the “national interest” in language study. The commission's report, dated 1979, like many other studies issued during the ensuing decade, assumed a national interest in the quality of education, postulated a federal role in creating national education policy, and recognized the value of curricular requirements as an instrument for strengthening education. By 1980 the cycle had turned again, and a slow trend toward restoration of foreign language requirements emerged. By 1990 language enrollments had rebounded, though they had not yet reached mid-1960s levels. 2 Recent growth has been uneven, and while some measures of growth offer encouragement, it is too early to say how strong and how persistent the current upturn will be. An uneven pattern of rises and falls, with local variations, is still the norm and likely to continue.
If we look beyond quantifiable trends, we can say with justification that the principal mode of change in the foreign language education enterprise over the last thirty-six years has been expansion: not so much a quantitative increase in programs, students, or resources as an intellectual expansion of our role in American education. This shift derives in turn from a broadening of our geographical perspective and an expansion of the constituency we serve and the universe of ideas and subject matter we teach.
The first of these factors, the broadening of our geographic horizons, is obvious to anyone who remembers world maps that showed large chunks of Africa and Asia in pink, to indicate that they were pieces of the British Empire, and other chunks of the world in blue, to show their status as dependencies of France. Well after the Second World War students educated in the United States were still learning about the world as it had been organized and perceived through European eyes. Since then, our consciousness of the world, and of the role of the United States in it, has changed radically and repeatedly, and at the same time the role of foreign language educators as teachers and interpreters of living, contemporary languages and cultures has expanded significantly. And since none of us wishes to see these new roles displace our departments' established responsibility to be home to teachers of the past and interpreters of cultural tradition, we need to seize the opportunity to expand into the future while still learning from the past.
The second expansion that has affected foreign language departments relates to the student clientele. As the demographics of the United States and Canada have shifted over the last thirty to forty years, so too have the demographics of colleges and universities, as a result of wider access to higher education, growth in newer types of institutions and in nontraditional programs, and the advent of large numbers of students whose ethnic, racial, or class backgrounds had not been well represented in the student population before 1960. Institutions generally have had to learn more about the languages and cultures of these new populations, and language and literature departments have often played a major role in the process.
Third, and not surprisingly, in an expanding world, with an expanding population of students, foreign language and literature departments have been called on to teach an expanded curriculum. Building on the base in language and literature that constituted the traditional subject matter of our departments, we have managed not merely to maintain these traditions but also to develop expertise in the cultures of the languages we teach, both past and contemporary; in the history and social structures of the countries we teach about; in the links between those cultures and American life; in theories of linguistics and literature; in the premises of research, teaching, and learning in our field; and in the philosophical bases of the American higher education enterprise. Given the nature of our field, we could never be totally narrow specialists; but the demands on our departments in the late decades of the twentieth century have been broader than anyone might have expected.
How have these forms of expansion affected the work of language and literature departments? Geographic expansion has been reflected in the rapid and substantial growth of interest and enrollments in several of the less commonly taught languages: for example, between 1968 and 1990 enrollments in Arabic at United States colleges and universities grew by 216%, while Chinese grew by 285% and Japanese by 957% (Brod and Huber 8). Among the more commonly taught languages, Spanish also experienced growth during this period, and, more to the point, the strong emphasis on the culture and literature of Spain prevalent forty years ago has been superseded by a broader view of the Spanish-speaking world that encompasses the cultural diversity of individual countries in South and Central America and in the Caribbean.
Similarly, shifts in student populations have also fostered changes in language instruction. Growth in Spanish, Italian, and Chinese, for example, may derive in part from an increase in the numbers of students who identify ethnically with those languages. And increased interest in the study of languages for special purposes, including use in business and other careers, reflects the growing presence on college and university campuses of students who see the college experience not solely as general education but also as preparation for employment.
Such students—indeed, most students—have probably been well served by the recent evolution of language instruction. Where forty to fifty years ago the principal concerns of college-level instruction were grammar and literary reading, the emphasis has long since shifted to the spoken language in its authentic cultural context. The shift has been accompanied by improved and increasingly accessible media and materials and by growing concern about refining assessment procedures and defining standards of achievement.
Clearly, faculty members have not been unaffected by these changes. It is also clear, however, that as a by-product of the changing seas and the adaptive growth that has taken place in our profession, we have learned to appreciate and rely on the strength of our collective vessels—the departments, large or small, to which we belong and contribute our collective efforts and expertise; the institutions that pay us and give us a wider identity; and the profession to which we belong.
Our recognition of the need to act collectively has been salutary. True, in our scholarly training and research we work mostly alone, reading and writing. Departmental work, however, requires the kinds of “communicative competencies” that are learned partly in books but mostly in real-life situations and interactions with other people, including colleagues. These competencies are not easily achieved, but they are essential to our professional lives, particularly to the successful piloting of our collective ships. The competencies we have learned inside departments are even more valuable outside them, and the health of the enterprise requires that we not neglect them.
The title of this essay is intended to focus attention on a simple truth: that acceptance of a position of leadership, such as that of department chair, entails a commitment of time and energy, on the one hand, and willingness to make judgments, on the other. Our commitment as leaders derives ultimately from the same sources as does the commitment that has inspired us as teachers, even in difficult times: our enthusiasm and passion for the study of language and literature, our awareness of the enrichment of experience that such study can provide, and, ultimately, the desire to communicate that enthusiasm and passion to our students.
We need to remember that the forces that unite us are stronger than the forces that divide us. True, we no longer all share a common place of origin, background, training, or ideology (and actually we never did). Our astounding diversity, and that of our students, is an essential source of strength and richness, but it also makes subtle demands on our communicative abilities, both inside and outside the discipline, and on our capacity for interpreting the contexts we live and work in. Communication and interpretation can be fatiguing. It is much easier, after all, to stay within the group, within the familiar family or clique of those who most resemble us.
As humanists we have sought and accepted the mission to expound and interpret the words and ideas of the past, and as teachers of languages we have accepted the mission to communicate across borders. Our values remain strong because they are humanistic in the best sense of the word, and our scope and vision have expanded in both space and time. Leaders of departments need to take advantage of opportunities for rethinking and renewal by helping their colleagues to redefine the mission of the department yet again in the wider contexts of the institution, the discipline, and the nation. In responding to this urgent challenge, we can connect with colleagues everywhere who share our values and we can establish our profession on a stronger basis than in the past. With such demands on our abilities, and under such circumstances, leadership will not be easy, but I can conceive of no higher calling in the American educational community of the next twenty years.
1 The author respectfully acknowledges James F. Jones's prior use of the nautical metaphor in his essay in this issue, “A Dialogue on the Departmental Ship: How Possibly to Steer.”
2 The ratio of modern foreign language registrations to college and university enrollments fell from 16.5 per 100 in 1965 to 7.3 per 100 in 1980, but began to rise again in the late 1980s and reached 8.5 per 100 in the MLA's 1990 census (Brod and Huber 8).
Brod, Richard, and Bettina J. Huber. “Foreign Language Enrollments in United States Institutions of Higher Education, Fall 1990.” ADFL Bulletin 23.3 (1992): 6–10. [Show Article]
© 1994 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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