The regional newpaper HOY has been hosting a series of articles on the state of the University of Extremadura. I was asked to contribute and rather than offer an in-depth academic analysis, I opted to tell my story and experience of working there.
First the English version:
It came as a complete shock
to me. It was during my first weeks teaching in Filosofia y Letras at the University of Extremadura and one day
as I walked into class, I noticed a thick, heavy tome weighing down the table
in front of one of the young students.
Being curious by nature, I
wanted to see what young people were reading beyond Harry Potter. But perhaps
what drew my curiosity even more was the size of the book. It was as thick as a
dictionary yet from afar I could tell that it was a novel and not a reference
book. I walked over and asked the student what they were reading and couldn’t
believe my eyes when I saw that it was James Joyce’s Ulysses. I cautiously
asked the student if they were reading it for pleasure and was completely
floored when he answered that it had been assigned to them to read in another subject.
Not that it’s a bad book.
After all, it is considered to be one of the most important works in modernist
literature in English but one that is also extremely difficult to understand,
even for educated native speakers of the language. It is a book that makes
Goytisolo’s triologia de Alvaro Mendiola look
like easy reading and here was an English student that was still
struggling with basic verb tenses being asked to read and analyze it.
I found myself asking, why
would something so incredibly dense and difficult be assigned to
learners who were just beginning to explore the language? I wondered what
possible interpretation could be expected from the learner when even a
dictionary would not help clarify some of the puns found in the opus? Was the
student being asked to analyze the book on his own or was he simply being asked
to memorize what others had written about it? I found myself feeling sorry for
the students and began asking myself what exactly was the purpose? A doubt that
would continue to plague me while I taught at the University. What were we
trying to achieve with these students?
Informal surveys over the
years have shown me that at large majority of the students enrolled in
the English program at the University had done so because they wanted to become
English teachers and those that hadn't would probably end up doing so anyways. Yet the program they were studying had only one elective/optative subject
in the whole four year degree that dealt with applied linguistics and not one
that specifically focused on methodology or language acquisition. Could this glaring oversight be due to the fact that the next step was a rather expensive Masters that would, in theory, convert the graduates into professionals? Here we had
students being assigned Joyce and musty Victorians
when they would never use anything even remotely similar in their hoped-for
jobs as English teachers. Modern concepts such as corpus linguistics were
beginning to creep into the teaching but only to show stylistic patterns in the
works of writers long since dead who would never have dreamed of something like
Twitter and how it is influencing the way the language is used today. And my
doubts were raised again, what is the purpose? Were professors meant to be
teachers or researchers? And if they are meant to research, should that
research necessarily be related towards what the field of language teaching and acquisition in order to ensure that their students were as up to date as possible? Were these due to an inherent disregard for being 'teachers' and even teaching within the University?
It was only some years
later when I began to help people prepare for oposiciones that I would find a possible answer. In my initial
confusion to grasp exactly what topics such as the legal history of the United
States had to do with language teaching, I suddenly remembered that book on the
table and came to a realization. The University wasn't preparing language
teachers or even proficient users of the language but instead was readying them
to face an arcane exam which itself has no real tangible meaning in relation
to the job they would be asked to do if they somehow passed. Rather than
preparing them for the job they dreamed of, they are being moulded for the exam
that they have to sit in the future in order to get that job.
I have met and had the
pleasure to observe some great teachers, both within and beyond the University. I
have also heard of a few brave, questioning voices within the system that are
raised now and again, but that are also quickly silenced or isolated. The closed,
endogmatic nature of the selection process for university teachers ensures this pact of
silence. If you want to get on, and get on easily, you learn to keep your head
down and which group you need to join, agree with them or not. A truer version
of Pablo Iglesia’s casta would be hard to find.
So indeed what is the
purpose? Some would argue that it isn’t to create workers for specific jobs,
but instead to focus on producing creative thinkers adaptable to any job and
they might be right. Yet the mere word philology sounds ancient and Greek to my Canadian ears and memorizing the analysis of others contrary to this
purpose. Others might denounce this utilitarian,
practical view of University study as neoconservative thought and the
antithesis of the Humanities in general. But then I think of that student
facing Joyce, armed with the arguments of others and think, there must be
another route in this odyssey.
*In the Spanish version there is a translation error. It should read literatura modernista en ingles rather than literatura modernista inglesa.
