28, no. 3 (Spring 1997): 39-41
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Rising Enrollments in Spanish: Crisis Response or Strategic Planning.?
H. Jay Siskin and James Mandrell
August 12. Two weeks until classes begin. Still one section of Spanish to staff. Every candidate in the instructor pool is already hired for part-time work elsewhere.
AS SPANISH enrollments rise and sections are added at the last moment, the situation described above has become all too familiar. The sometimes desperate scramble for an instructor is a Band-Aid for what seems to be a small problem, but it fails to address the larger implications of continuing enrollment increases in Spanish.
Instead of viewing this trend as a momentary crisis calling for a quick fix, members of the profession should take this opportunity to engage colleagues and university administrations in long-term strategic planning in staffing, methodology, and curricular development. Such planning can not only strengthen language programs but also enhance the credibility of professionals who teach language and culture. We would like to identify and discuss some of the issues that such planning raises, as well as propose some directions for curricular change and hiring.
The overriding issue in strategic planning is, of course, staffing, that is, who is delivering instruction. The reliance on part-time instructors, who are often hired at the last minute, calls into question how language instruction is delivered. Intimately related to these practical concerns are questions about the needs of our students and course content, why students study language, and what outcomes we desire at the end of a program of instruction. Finally, where language instruction takes place, within the department or in allied programs, also merits attention.
The volatility of Spanish enrollments has led to an overreliance on full-time instructors with short-term contracts or part-timers to cover overflow courses. Admittedly, administrations may be reluctant to commit resources over the long term to language study, whose history has been characterized by a boom-and-bust pattern, as in Russian, or by gradual decline, as in French, both of which can leave the university with underutilized faculty members who may not be able to teach in other areas. While cultural and demographic factors point to a continued increase or at least a stabilization of numbers, language courses are often viewed as either remedial or service courses that do not or, worse yet, should not require a large investment in resources.
Yet we need to admit openly and our colleagues and university administrations need to recognize that relying on short-term hires fundamentally weakens a language program. On the one hand, these instructors often lack full knowledge of or commitment to a program's methodological or philosophical underpinnings. On the other hand, last-minute, emergency hiring implies that language instruction is a matter of teaching the book, which anyone who has the requisite degrees and a modicum of experience can do. Clearly, these criteria do not ensure expertise, and if perfunctory interview questions about methodological orientation ease the conscience, they rarely predict satisfactory, much less exceptional, performance.
At Brandeis, we have invested a great deal of time over a number of years in curricular planning. We have modified and continue to modify communicative and content goals for each level of instruction along with the appropriate methodological frameworks. However, this extensive reflection and planning have been undermined by last-minute or short-term hires, which send a contradictory message to colleagues and the administration about the importance of beginning language and the type of preparation and dedication it demands. Furthermore, many highly qualified, dedicated professionals will consider short-term contracts only when more stable positions are unavailable. Understandably, they often bring less commitment to the job and of necessity direct their energies to seeking a more secure position.
Still, staffing—the who of language instruction—is only the beginning. If the strong increase in enrollments in Spanish encourages us to reconsider staffing, it also urges us to ask why we teach Spanish and what we are trying to teach. Spanish is now somewhat anomalous in the United States in that it is no longer a “foreign” language. Although some foreign languages and cultures are evident locally and regionally in the United States, Spanish is spoken nationally, and Hispanic or Latino culture exists in large cities and small communities alike. The increase in enrollment in Spanish therefore should not be seen as a reflection of an interest in a specific geopolitical entity, as might have been true in Russian during the 1970s and 1980s and as might be said of Arabic and Chinese today, or an interest in the culture of another country. Rather, it should be seen as a response to the immediacy of Hispanic culture. Thus, Spanish has become not just potentially useful as a language for study abroad or vacations in Acapulco but as a tool in everyday life. Spanish is no longer merely a classroom or language lab experience but a language heard and read in public and even in our homes.
We might therefore need to rethink the beginning class in Spanish, since so many of our students now arrive with a smattering or, very occasionally, a reasonably well developed passive knowledge of the language. Moreover, even with the current emphasis on the five skills and communicative methodologies, we must articulate the notions of language and particularly culture with great care. If it would be unthinkable today to teach only Castilian Spanish—and, we ought not forget, we did just that until relatively recently—we would be equally remiss were we not to take into account Spanish as it is spoken in, and the Hispanic cultures of, not only Spain and Latin America but also the United States. This last point is especially important and difficult, since it entails a reconsideration of our ideas about culture, “proper” expression, race, and class, issues that are themselves tricky. But we would do our students and ourselves a grave disservice were we to ignore the multiplicity of Hispanic cultures and cultural expressions and the implications for language and its study.
The implications for curriculum development are obvious: geographical distance and lack of immediate communicative context can no longer somehow excuse our failure to attend to the pragmatic goals of language study or to assess student need. It behooves us to place language instruction within a methodological and content-based framework that will allow our students to develop cognitively and intellectually and will address their communicative needs. Such courses may include language for special purposes, film, or Latin American studies offerings, as well as initiatives in foreign language across the curriculum that emphasize the interdisciplinary aspects of language study.
We cannot stress enough the importance of content-based courses in overall strategic planning. Such courses deflect criticism of the required language sequence as a group of intellectually impoverished skills courses, a criticism heard not only from administrations and hostile departments who resent the time commitment that the beginning sequence demands of students but also from our own colleagues who are ill-informed about communicative language teaching and its goals. Furthermore, content-based courses provide a natural context for the integration of language and culture. Finally, the courses, particularly if they are jointly listed with other programs and departments, enhance the status of language teaching, enrich instructional opportunities, and provide a rationale for recruiting and retaining highly qualified candidates.
These last points address the where of language teaching. If language teaching is limited to traditional language departments, we become more vulnerable to fluctuations in enrollments and their effect on staffing. But if we build bridges with other departments, we form alliances, strengthen our position, and maximize our contributions to the university as a whole. We may also then he able to argue for longer-term hiring of instructors with greater expertise. And we may hope that the administration will commit more resources to a department that has proven its worth.
The quick hire may be the most expeditious way of dealing with increasing Spanish enrollments, but it is surely the least productive. It ignores structural issues that affect the long-term viability of a language program, including methodological goals; the depth, breadth, and intellectual content of course offerings; and student needs. Furthermore, such an ill-considered solution keeps us from consolidating our strength and enhancing our importance in the university community. We urge our colleagues to take this opportunity to plan strategically for the long term. Such planning involves formulating convincing rationales for the hiring of highly qualified persons in more secure positions, articulating curricular goals and methodological parameters, creating content-based courses that integrate language and culture within an intellectually challenging framework, and building bridges to other departments and programs. With a planning document in hand that addresses these questions, we can convincingly argue for the welfare of language teaching.
Brandeis University
© 1997 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
ADFL Bulletin 28, no. 3 (Spring 1997): 39-41 |
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