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Three years as a Fulbright professor in Spain changed forever the way Paul Witkowsky teaches. The experience also gave him a renewed appreciation for the U.S. system of higher education and a fresh perspective on himself as an American.
“Once you’ve taught Huckleberry Finn to students who have no background that would help them understand slavery or race relations in America, your way of approaching a text changes,” says Witkowsky, who taught American civilization at the University of Seville from 1981 to 1984. “I can never teach literature in the same way again.” Even when he started out, his approach was different from that of his Spanish counterparts, and Witkowsky found his students eager to work and learn under his American style of teaching.
In one elective course, in which students would normally have written one paper for the year, Witkowsky required six. In another course he required three papers, plus biweekly informal essays. “Complaints were few, interest was high, and progress was spectacular,” says Witkowsky. “Students were delighted with the idea that someone would actually try to explain to them how to organize their ideas and improve their writing. The first time I gave a set of scribbled-on papers to a fourth-year class, the students’ response was amazement that anyone would pay that much attention to their work.” He recalls a student who was auditing the class and asked permission to write the next assignment so that he, too, could get this kind of feedback.
Witkowsky returned to the United States with a fondness and admiration for his students but with a critical attitude toward the Spanish higher education system.
When he arrived at the University of Seville, he says, “I’d been sent to teach in a war zone” -- not a war with bullets and missiles, but a war of personalities among the faculty. Because of personal animosities and departmental politics the Department of English had just been divided into the departments of English Language and of English Literature. During Witkowsky’s first year alone, there were faculty-encouraged student strikes, inflammatory posters in hallways and “a marching, chanting demonstration” demanding the resignation of one of the department chairs. It was because of this difficult situation that the Fulbright Commission in Madrid approved his request for an unprecedented third year as a lecturer.
The situation, says Witkowsky, was a symptom of a problem in the Spanish system: full professors had absolute power; younger professors were anxious to find their place in the system under the full professors who determined their livelihood; and students were “the least important people around.” Classes were large, and Spanish professors, who depended heavily on lecturing, neither encouraged critical thinking nor commented in detail on students’ work.
Witkowsky stayed, however, because he loved Spain, enjoyed his students and made good friends. In fact, he met his wife there. The city was old -- with structures dating back to Roman and Moorish occupations -- and the architecture beautiful. He lived in a 100-year-old house in what had been the Jewish Quarter in the Middle Ages. The university itself was founded in 1507; the monumental main building, where he taught, was built in 1757 as the Royal Tobacco Factory (where Bizet’s Carmen would have worked). He came to speak Spanish nearly like a native and, except for his teaching and lecturing, lived his life mostly in Spanish. He grew so close to his friends and colleagues that his program director described him as the most Hispanicized Fulbrighter she had known.
Rather than feeling Spanish, however, Witkowsky says his experience made him more conscious of being an American, increasingly aware of fundamental cultural differences. “I had never thought of myself as very patriotic,” he says, “but over there, I began to recognize my own patriotism.” He would be happy to live and teach in Spain, but not, he says, at the cost of giving up his American citizenship. “Even though my wife is Spanish, and my children are half Spanish, I wouldn’t want to do that -- any more than my wife, who lives and works here and is happy here, wants to give up her Spanish citizenship.”
As for the Spanish, “they see Americans as pie-eyed optimists,” he says. While he was there, an American enthusiast of Walt Whitman came to speak at the university. He became so animated when speaking about Whitman, waving his arms around with “the kind of animation Whitman inspires,” says Witkowsky, the students joked later that “only an American” could get so excited. There is some truth to their impression of our people, says Witkowsky. For example, “we believe, or at least say we believe, anyone can become president of the United States. The Spanish would never entertain the thought that anyone could become president of Spain.”
The sum of the experience, with its trials and triumphs: “I think I’m a better teacher and a better American for those three years,” says Witkowsky. “I think I was able to contribute something useful both to my students and to the university. And I know I’ll never be able to look at Radford, or the United States, or the rest of the world in the same way again.”
[BACK]
Three years as a Fulbright professor in Spain changed forever the way Paul Witkowsky teaches. The experience also gave him a renewed appreciation for the U.S. system of higher education and a fresh perspective on himself as an American.
“Once you’ve taught Huckleberry Finn to students who have no background that would help them understand slavery or race relations in America, your way of approaching a text changes,” says Witkowsky, who taught American civilization at the University of Seville from 1981 to 1984. “I can never teach literature in the same way again.” Even when he started out, his approach was different from that of his Spanish counterparts, and Witkowsky found his students eager to work and learn under his American style of teaching.
In one elective course, in which students would normally have written one paper for the year, Witkowsky required six. In another course he required three papers, plus biweekly informal essays. “Complaints were few, interest was high, and progress was spectacular,” says Witkowsky. “Students were delighted with the idea that someone would actually try to explain to them how to organize their ideas and improve their writing. The first time I gave a set of scribbled-on papers to a fourth-year class, the students’ response was amazement that anyone would pay that much attention to their work.” He recalls a student who was auditing the class and asked permission to write the next assignment so that he, too, could get this kind of feedback.
Witkowsky returned to the United States with a fondness and admiration for his students but with a critical attitude toward the Spanish higher education system.
When he arrived at the University of Seville, he says, “I’d been sent to teach in a war zone” -- not a war with bullets and missiles, but a war of personalities among the faculty. Because of personal animosities and departmental politics the Department of English had just been divided into the departments of English Language and of English Literature. During Witkowsky’s first year alone, there were faculty-encouraged student strikes, inflammatory posters in hallways and “a marching, chanting demonstration” demanding the resignation of one of the department chairs. It was because of this difficult situation that the Fulbright Commission in Madrid approved his request for an unprecedented third year as a lecturer.
The situation, says Witkowsky, was a symptom of a problem in the Spanish system: full professors had absolute power; younger professors were anxious to find their place in the system under the full professors who determined their livelihood; and students were “the least important people around.” Classes were large, and Spanish professors, who depended heavily on lecturing, neither encouraged critical thinking nor commented in detail on students’ work.
Witkowsky stayed, however, because he loved Spain, enjoyed his students and made good friends. In fact, he met his wife there. The city was old -- with structures dating back to Roman and Moorish occupations -- and the architecture beautiful. He lived in a 100-year-old house in what had been the Jewish Quarter in the Middle Ages. The university itself was founded in 1507; the monumental main building, where he taught, was built in 1757 as the Royal Tobacco Factory (where Bizet’s Carmen would have worked). He came to speak Spanish nearly like a native and, except for his teaching and lecturing, lived his life mostly in Spanish. He grew so close to his friends and colleagues that his program director described him as the most Hispanicized Fulbrighter she had known.
Rather than feeling Spanish, however, Witkowsky says his experience made him more conscious of being an American, increasingly aware of fundamental cultural differences. “I had never thought of myself as very patriotic,” he says, “but over there, I began to recognize my own patriotism.” He would be happy to live and teach in Spain, but not, he says, at the cost of giving up his American citizenship. “Even though my wife is Spanish, and my children are half Spanish, I wouldn’t want to do that -- any more than my wife, who lives and works here and is happy here, wants to give up her Spanish citizenship.”
As for the Spanish, “they see Americans as pie-eyed optimists,” he says. While he was there, an American enthusiast of Walt Whitman came to speak at the university. He became so animated when speaking about Whitman, waving his arms around with “the kind of animation Whitman inspires,” says Witkowsky, the students joked later that “only an American” could get so excited. There is some truth to their impression of our people, says Witkowsky. For example, “we believe, or at least say we believe, anyone can become president of the United States. The Spanish would never entertain the thought that anyone could become president of Spain.”
The sum of the experience, with its trials and triumphs: “I think I’m a better teacher and a better American for those three years,” says Witkowsky. “I think I was able to contribute something useful both to my students and to the university. And I know I’ll never be able to look at Radford, or the United States, or the rest of the world in the same way again.”
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