teaching latin american - mención

7/29/2019 teaching latin american - mencin

1/17

Teaching Latin American Politics at American Universities: A SurveyAuthor(s): Henry C. KenskiReviewed work(s):Source: Latin American Research Review, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Spring, 1975), pp. 89-104Published by: The Latin American Studies AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2502580 .

Accessed: 24/09/2012 03:22

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The Latin American Studies Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to

Latin American Research Review.

http://www.jstor.org
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=lamerhttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2502580?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2502580?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=lamer


2/17

TEACHING LATIN AMERICANPOLITICS AT AMERICANUNIVERSITIES: A SURVEY

HenryC. KenskiUniversityfArizonaGENERAL PURPOSEIn thespringof1973,theauthorconducted a surveyofpolitical cientiststeaching LatinAmericanpolitics at Americancolleges and universities.The intentionwas to collect nd disseminate nformation n (1) thetech-niques used in teaching LatinAmericanpolitics, 2) thebooks assignedmostfrequentlyostudents, 3) the dentificationfpolitical ystemsmostfrequentlymphasized in theclassroom,and (4) the currentevel ofstu-dentinterestn thepoliticsofLatinAmerica. In addition to these data,information as gathered nthosewho teach nthearea-i. e., howmanyhave done field esearch, nwhichcountries o theyhave themostexper-tise,andwhichapproachestopoliticaldevelopmentdo they induseful nteachingLatinAmericanpoliticsThe purposes ofthissurveywere several. One was simply ocol-lectthe above informationnd to make it available to those who teachcourses on LatinAmerica.Hopefully, twillbe usefulfor eachers n thisarea to knowwhichteachingtechniques,approaches, texts, tc., othershave foundsuccessful n the classroom. A second purpose was to elicitresponse on the popularity of Latin Americanpoliticsas an academicdiscipline.Before onducting hesurvey twas hypothesizedthat ertaintrends bserved ocallymight e applicablenationally. nparticulartwasfelt hat n thepost-VietNam period,student nterest nd enrollmentncomparativepoliticscourses,on LatinAmerica as well as otherregions,mightbe decreasing.Possible reasons for hisaremultiple,butone canspeculatethat mood of solationism ollowing he Viet Nam fiascomightadverselyaffect nrollment n comparativepoliticscourses. Further, heuncertain tate of theeconomyand continuedhighunemploymentmayinduce a shift way from iberalarts courses towardmore specificallycareer-orientedisciplines.These speculationscouldbe testedbysurvey-ingstudents hemselves,buttentativeupportfor uchtheses might lsocomefrom aculty ho nteractwith heir tudentsn anadvisory apacity.

89


3/17

LatinAmerican esearch eviewA third urpose was to collectdata on the statusofLatin Americanpolitics as a research area. By askingLatin Americanists bout books,

assigned and considered important, nd about approaches to politicaldevelopment found useful n the classroom, an effort as made to esti-mate whetheror not therewas any consensus which might ndicateanyspecific irection r directionsnwhichthe field ngeneralwas heading.METHODOLOGYThis surveywas conducted through mail questionnaire ent to respon-dents nMay 1973.1The population polledwas determinednthe follow-ing way. The catalogs of 575 American colleges and universitieswereexamined and fromthema list of course offerings y institutionwasconstructed.Since the focus of thisstudywas limitedto domesticandcomparativeLatin Americanpolitics,courseson a singlenation or inter-American ffairs ere excluded.2Secondly,to ensure that hewidest pos-siblepopulationwas polled, theAmericanPoliticalScience Association'sBiographical irectory 973 was consulted. From the Directory's ist ofscholarsworking n Foreignand Cross-National nstitutionsnd Behav-ior,3 those interested n the politics of Latin America were identified.Finally, his istofLatinAmerican cholarswas matched gainsttherosterofcourses on Latin Americanpoliticsby nstitutions. romthisprocedurea population of366 emerged.InMay 1973,the questionnairewas mailed to the entire opulationofscholars and course nstructors. welve respondentsrepliedthat heirschool no longeroffered course on Latin America, leaving a usablepopulation of 354. Of this population, 184 respondents (52.0 percent)returned ompleted questionnaires, veryrespectableresponse rate forthe method employed.RESULTSOne set ofquestions concerned which systems re mostfrequentlym-phasized incourses on LatinAmericanpolitics, nwhich systemshave therespondentsdone fieldresearch, nd inwhich do theyfeeltheyhave themostexpertise.When the answers to these questions are placed together4as inTable 1, a definite attern merges.Mexico is the systemmost frequently mphasized in courses (76.6percent), hesystem nwhichrespondentsfelt heyhad the mostexper-tise 52.2 percent), s well as thecountrynwhich mostrespondentshadconducted field research (34.2 percent). The importanceof Mexico isfurtherllustrated ythefrequencywithwhich t s citedby respondents,90


4/17

TEACHING LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS

.%~~~~~, \r. c) Lo Lo ro- LO m m oo oo oo oo t-0, 004 0000r.t- (Z 4-*o Ct C


5/17

LatinAmerican esearch eviewincomparison o otherLatinAmerican ystems.The second highestnum-ber of citations or ystem xpertise s Chilewith 28.3 percent,while thesecond highestfor ieldresearch s Brazilwith19.6percent. n bothcasesthe countrywiththe second highestnumberofmentions s considerablybehind Mexico.ApartfromMexico's overalldominance ofthe results, he data alsoreveal the mportance f seven other ountries-Chile, Brazil,Argentina,Cuba, Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela. AlongwithMexico, theyconsti-tutethe top eight ystems mphasized incourses, as well as the top eightin which respondentsfelt heyhad the mostexpertise.On the questionoffieldresearchCuba drops to ast 1.6 percent), s more scholarswere ableto conduct fieldwork n such traditional ictatorships s Haiti and Para-guay than in this revolutionary sland ninetymiles south of Key West,Florida. Otherwise, the forementioned ystems occupy the seven topranks n fieldresearch.On thequestion of systems mphasized in courses, onlysix coun-trieswere mentionedby at least halfof all respondents. Mexico, as previ-ously noted,was firstwith 76.6 percent,followedbyChile (73.9), Brazil(71.7), Argentina 67.4),Cuba (61.4),and Peru 54.3).Whenasked to den-tify he twoor three ystems nwhichtheyfelt heyhad the mostexper-tise, only six countries were identifiedby more than 20 percentof allrespondents. Mexico was selected by 52.2 percent,Chile by 28.3, Brazilby 26.6, Peruby 26.1, Argentina y 21.7, and Cuba by21.2. Finally, herewere onlyseven systems nwhich fieldresearchwas conductedbymorethan 10percent fallrespondents.Mexico edwith34.2percent nd rightbehindwas Brazil 19.6),Peru 17.4),Colombia 16.8),Chile 13.0), Argen-tina 12.5), and Venezuela (12.5).Furthermore, hese data lead one to several conclusions aboutLatinAmerican politics courses in American colleges and universities.First, he verytitleLatin Americanpoliticsmay be a misnomer lthoughits use is probably nevitable.The heavy concentration n eightpoliticalsystems ndicates that tmaybe difficult or cholars to presenta genu-inelycomprehensiveview of the entire ontinent n a single undergradu-ate course.The complexand diversepolitics fover 20 nationsmay notfitintoa single mold or analytic ramework hat an be called "LatinAmeri-can." Thus thestudy nd teachingof "LatinAmerican"politicsmaywellparallel the situationso oftenfoundin courses on "European" politicswhere GreatBritain,France,and Germany are frequently mphasizedwhiletheScandinavian countries, pain, Portugal, tc., are neglected.

Another bservation ontained n Table 1 nvolves the relationshipbetween systems mphasized in courses, systems n which respondents92


6/17

TEACHING LATIN AMERICAN POLITICSfeel heyhave themostexpertise, nd systemsnwhich field esearchhasbeen conducted. Therelationship, or he mostpart, ppears to be a highone. There is considerabledeviation n a few cases. Cuba, for xample,ranksfifthnsystems mphasized, fifthn perceived expertise, ut dropsto twentiethnfieldresearch.Ecuador, on the otherhand, rankstenthnperceived expertise, ies for ighth n fieldresearch,but is tiedforonlyseventeenthnsystems mphasized. Overall,however, there eems to bea relationship espite a fewexceptions.To check this udgmentreached by inspection, severalstatisticaltests were employed. The data were construed to be ordinal, and thecountries ankedfrom to 20 on systems mphasized, perceived exper-tise, nd field esearch.A conventional ankorder echnique,Spearman'sRho, was applied.5The results re printed nTable2.TA B L E 2 Spearman's ankOrder oefficientsor ystemsEmphasized, erceivedxpertise,ndFieldResearch

Perceivedxpertise FieldResearchSystems mphasized .855** .565**Perceived xpertise .669**Correlationsollowedy * are ignificantt the 01 evel rbetter.

All threerelationships re confirmed nd are significantt the .01level or better. fon^ewere to grant he exclusion of Cuba from he rankorders nvolvingfieldresearchon thegroundsthat tis truly deviantcase, the results are even morephenomenal. The relationshipbetweensystems mphasized and fieldresearch umps from565 to .803,and therelationshipbetween perceived expertise and field researchincreasesfrom 669 to 711.Evenifone does not grant his ssumption, herelation-shipsarehighand statisticallyignificant.The othertestthatwas applied involved a techniqueknown asKendall's coefficient fconcordance. t s a device to estimate heoverallassociation among several ordinal ranks. In thiscase, it concernedtheassessment of the amount ofagreement mong the rankings f systemsemphasized, perceivedexpertise, nd field esearch imultaneously. hetestrevealed a very high agreementamong the three rankings,witha

93


7/17

LatinAmerican esearch eviewcorrelation oefficient f .860 and statistical ignificance t the .01 level.Although he outcome s impressive nd statisticallyignificant,twouldbecome even more o withCuba left utof herankings. f hisweredone,the coefficient ould increase to .946. In short, the utilizationof bothSpearman's Rho and Kendall's coefficientf concordanceconfirms hestrongrelationshipbetween the threerankings.Those systemsempha-sized in courses are likelyto be those in which the instructor laims tohave the most expertise and in which he or she has conducted fieldresearch. Again the major exceptionto this generalization ppears to beCuba, as 21.2 percentof all respondents dentifytas a system nwhichtheyhave the most expertise despite the fact that t ranks last in fieldresearch with only 1.6 percent of the respondents able to conduct fieldwork. A second set of questions covered in this survey dealtwiththebackgroundof those who teach courseson LatinAmericanpolitics.Herethe concern s not with personal backgroundbut with the kind of experi-ential and intellectualpreparationthat might affect he structureofcourseson LatinAmerica.Thus respondentswere asked if heyhad con-ductedfield esearchnanyLatinAmericannations,whichbooksonLatinAmerica they considered the most important, nd which general ap-proaches to political development they found most useful in teachingtheir ourses.To the question "Have you conducted field esearchnany particu-lar Latin Americancountry r countries?" high 77.2 percentof respon-dents, over threeout of four persons, answered they had, while 22.8percenthad not. No effort as made to elicit nformationboutthekindoffieldresearchdone (delving nto a country'snational archives, urveyofelites,or conducting prolonged researchat the village level, etc.), butapparently fthose teachingLatin Americanpolitics ntheUnitedStates,a vast majorityhave some kind of personal experience to bring to theclassroom.The next uestion on the ntellectual references fLatinAmericanscholars-"What do you consider tobe thetwo orthreemost mportantbooks on Latin Americanpolitics?" elicited an amazing varietyof re-sponses. One hundredand sixseparatetitleswere recorded nresponseto this uestion.Table3 lists he titles fthoseworksdeemedmost mpor-tantbyat east 5.0 percent f the respondents. One work,Charles Ander-son's Politics ndEconomic hange n LatinAmerica,was singled out by ahigh 40.2 percentof respondents for ts contribution o the Latin Ameri-can area. After hat, there appeared to be no consensus among LatinAmericanists n a set of "great books." The next most frequentlymen-94


8/17

TEACHING LATIN AMERICAN POLITICSTAB L E 3 Books nLatinAmerican olitics eemedMost mportantyRespondents

% of espondentsAuthor ndTitle fBook Mentioning nCharles Anderson,Politicsnd EconomichangenLatinAmerica 40.2 74MartinNeedler,Political evelopmentnLatinAmerica 9.2 17Helio Jaguaribe, olitical evelopment: General heorynd a 8.2 15LatinAmerican ase StudyBen Burnett nd KennethJohnson eds.), Political orces nLatin 6.0 11AmericaAlfred tepan,TheMilitarynPolitics: hanging atternsnBrazil 6.0 11SeymourMartinLipsetand Aldo Solari eds.), Elitesn Latin 5.4 10

AmericaClaudio Veliz (ed.), ThePolitics fConfornitynLatinAmerica 5.4 10None 16.3 30

tionedwas MartinNeedler's Political evelopmentnLatinAmerica ith9.2percent,followedby Helio Jaguaribe'sPoliticalDevelopment: GeneralTheory nd a LatinAmerican ase Studywith 8.2. Only four otherbooksreceived mentionby more than 5.0 percentof respondents. One was thetext ditedbyBurnett nd Johnson, nd twowere readers-Lipset andSolari (eds.) and Veliz (ed.). The onlybook on a single country o meritrecognitionwas Stepan's The Military n Politics:ChangingPatternsnBrazil. Overall, the lack of consensus on importantbooks is not onlyillustrated y the fact hat ust seven books were mentionedby more than5.0 percent of academics surveyed, but also by the sizable 16.3 percentwho refusedto identify elections because theybelieved there were noimportant ooks on Latin Americanpolitics.Similarly, herewas a lack ofconsensus among respondentsto thequestion "Which of the leading approaches to political development, fany,have you founduseful n teachingyour course(s)?" Of the78 titlesmentionedby respondentsonlyfivewere istedby morethan 5.0 percent.Table4 lists he datainresponse to thisquestion. Leading the istwere theworksofHuntingtonwith44.0percent nd Almond and Powell with37.0percent.These werefollowedby Anderson 16.8), Apter 6.5), and Jagua-ribe 5.4). Some 6.5 percent tatedthat he best orientationwas a synthe-sis of eading approaches todevelopment,while 14.1percent ontended

that t thepresenttime no approach to development as yet was an ade-quate explanatorymodel for se intheir ourses.95


9/17

LatinAmerican esearch eviewTA B LE 4 ApproachesoPolitical evelopmentoundUseful yRespondents

% ofRespondentsAuthor ndTitle Mentioning nSamuel Huntington, olitical rdernChanging ocieties 44.0 81GabrielAlmond and G. Bingham Powell, Comparativeolitics: 37.0 68A DevelopmentalpproachCharlesAnderson,Politicsnd EconomichangenLatinAmerica 16.8 31David Apter,ThePolitics fModernization 6.5 12Helio Jaguaribe, olitical evelopment: General heorynd 5.4 10a LatinAmerican ase StudyNone 14.1 26Synthesis 6.5 12

TA B LE 5 ApproachesoPolitical evelopmentoundUseful: PercentagefAfrican,atinAmerican,ndDevelopment/ModernizationRespondentsListed yFive PercentrMoreofRespondentsnatLeastOneof heThree urveys)

Approach Africanists LatinAmericanistsevelopmentalistsSamuel Huntington 37.1 44.0 59.4GabrielAlmond andG. BinghamPowell 44.9 37.0 47.0David Apter 30.9 6.5 25.3LucianPye * * 13.5Charles Anderson * 16.8 *C. E. Black * * 9.4Christian otholm 7.9 * *Aristide olberg 7.9 * *JohnKautsky * * 7.0BarringtonMoore * * 6.5Helio Jaguaribe * 5.4 *FredRiggs * * 5.0*Less than5.0 percent

96


10/17

TEACHING LATIN AMERICAN POLITICSTo provide the reader with nformation n how the orientation fLatin Americanists n approaches to development compares with teach-

ing n other reas, the data are contrastedwith imilar urveysofAfrican-ists and those teaching general courses on development.6The data arepresented in Table 5. It would appear fromthe data comparison thatHuntington nd Almond and Powell are viewed as the two eading worksby all three.Huntington s rankedfirst y developmentalists ith59.4 per-centand LatinAmericanists 4.0, and is second among Africanists 7.1.Almond and Powell is rated first y Africanists ith44.9, and second bydevelopmentalists 7.0 and Latin Americanists 7.0. The next highestcontributorsApter, atedthird yAfricanists 0.9and developmentalists25.3 and fourth y Latin Americanists .5. After histhere s no consensusamong fields. Latin Americanists select works fromtheirown ranks,Anderson and Jaguaribe,while Africanists o the same, Zolberg andPotholm. Developmentalists hose the contributions fPye, Black,Kaut-sky,Moore, and Riggs.The next area of nvestigationn this survey deals withthe tech-niques utilized in teaching Latin American politics and with assignedreadings and audio-visual materials.Table 6 gives the answers to a ques-tion which asked if the respondents had the opportunity o utilize a

TA BL E 6 Teaching echniques tilized yRespondentsnd Evaluation fTheir ffectivenessOpportunityoUtilize EffectivenessfTechnique

Technique Yes No Extremely Moderately Not Very% n % n % n % n % nStudentDiscussion

Panels 56.5 104 43.5 80 15.4 16 71.2 74 13.4 14FormalizedClass Debate 11.4 21 88.6 163 38.1 8 61.9 13Simulations 13.0 24 87.0 160 33.3 8 62.5 15 4.2 1Audio-VisualMaterials 60.9 112 39.1 72 42.9 48 50.0 56 7.1 8WorksofFiction 40.8 75 59.2 109 20.0 15 80.0 60SocraticLectures 69.6 128 30.4 56 39.1 50 59.4 76 1.5 2OtherTraditionalLecture 15.2 28 64.3 18 35.7 10StudentReports 14.7 27 22.2 6 74.1 20 3.7 1

97


11/17

LatinAmerican esearch eviewnumber of teaching techniques and, if so, to assess the effectiveness feach technique used. Of the various techniques dentified, nly threesocratic ectures, udio-visual materials, nd studentdiscussion panels-were used by more thanhalf fthe respondents.These were used by 69.6,60.9,and 56.5 percent ftherespondents espectively, ollowedbyworksof fiction 0.8, simulations13.0, and formalized lass debate11.4. A partof thisquestion allowed for n open-ended response, but only two addi-tionaltechniqueswere istedby 5.0 percent rmore ofscholars urveyed.They were traditionalectures itedby 15.2 percent nd studentpresenta-tion of research reports istedby 14.7 percent.Of the eight techniquesthusfarmentioned only one was perceivedas extremelyffectivey asmany as halfoftherespondents utilizing tand surprisinglyhiswas thetraditional ecture 64.3 percent). fmentionby 10 percentor more of re-spondents is reasonable for singling out the techniquesthat have notproven veryeffective, t least for significantminority f teachers, henstudentdiscussion panels is the only teaching echniqueoverwhichLatinAmericanistshave serious reservations. ome 13.4 percent tatedthat thad not proven very ffective.Table 7places teaching echniquesutilizedby LatinAmericanistsna cross-disciplinary erspectiveby comparing tto similardata on Afri-canists and developmentalists.As can be seen, socratic ectures nd stu-dent discussion panels are also listed by more than half of the African-

TABL E 7 Teaching echniques tilized yAfrican, atinAmerican,ndDevelopment/ModernizationespondentsPercentWhoHadOpportunityoUtilize

Technique Africanists LatinAmericanists evelopmentalists% n % n % n

Works of Fiction 75.6 130 40.8 75 38.6 64Socratic Lectures 75.0 129 69.6 128 66.3 110Audio-Visual Materials 65.7 113 60.9 112 35.5 59StudentDiscussion Panels 53.5 92 56.5 104 63.8 106Simulations 20.3 35 13.0 24 21.1 35FormalizedClass Debate 16.3 28 11.4 21 16.9 28OtherStudent Reports 23.0 41 14.7 27 21.1 35Traditional Lectures 12.0 23 15.2 28 12.0 20

98


12/17

TEACHING LATIN AMERICAN POLITICSists and developmentalists. n addition, more than half theAfricanistshave also utilizedaudio-visual materials.The striking ifference etweenthe threedisciplines ppears to be use ofworks offiction. t s at the top ofthe list of teaching techniques for Africanists 75.6 percent), while it isused by ess than halfof Latin American 40.8 percent) nd developmen-tal 38.6 percent)respondents.Additional data on the three areas are also revealing.7The tradi-tional ecturemethod was perceived as extremelyffectiveymore thanhalf of the respondents utilizing t n all three fields LatinAmericanists64.3 percent, developmentalists60.0 percent,and Africanists 3.8 per-cent).Worksof iteraturewas viewed as extremelyffectivey70.8 per-cent of Africanists nd 65.6 percentof developmentalistsusing suchmaterial.By contrast,twas regarded as extremelyffectivey only20.0percentof Latin Americanistswho used it. Lastly,58.3 percentofAfri-canists encouragingstudentpresentationsof researchprojects abeledthemextremely ffective.If, as suggested earlier,mentionby 10 percentor more of respon-dents s reasonablefor dentifyingechniquesthathave not proven veryeffective,t least for significantminority fteachers,then we find hefollowing omparativeresults. Some 13.4 percentof LatinAmericanistsand 15.1 percentofdevelopmentalistswho utilized student discussionpanels concluded thattheywere not veryeffective. ormalizedclass de-bate was viewed as not very ffective y 21.4 percent fdevelopmentalistsand 14.3percentofAfricanists ho had adopted itas a pedagogicaltech-nique. Developmentalists adopting student reports and audio-visualmaterials are disenchanted with 22.9 percentand 10.2 percent respec-tively ecordingnegative evaluations.Overall the comparativedata indicate thatthe various disciplineshave barely reached "take-off' with respect to experimentationwithteaching echniques. Africanists, s a group,are somewhatmorewillingto innovate than are Latin Americanists nd developmentalists.The onetechnique particularly orthy ffurtherxplorationbyteachersof LatinAmericanpolitics s theuse ofworksoffiction, oundhighly uccessful yboth Africanists nd developmentalists.AnotherquestionintheLatin American urvey sked therespon-dent to list the required readingsforcourses offeredn the area. Eightrespondentsreplied that heyhad no required readings and eightothersdid notanswer thequestion, eaving a populationof168. Fromthispopu-lation merged 159 titles,with22 ofthemmentionedby morethan5.0 per-centof llthose urveyed.8 Theseworks re isted nTable8. It sapparentthat here s no consensus onwhatshould be assigned,and thebook most

99


13/17

LatinAmerican esearch eviewT A BL E 8 Required eadings isted yFivePercent rMoreofRespondents

% ofRespondentsAuthor nd Title Mentioning nRobertTomasek (ed.), LatinAmerican olitics: tudies f heContemporarycene 16.8 31JacquesLambert, atinAmerica: ocialStructurend PoliticalInstitutions 12.0 22JohnMartz ed.), TheDynamics fChange n LatinAmericanPolitics 11.4 21James etrasand MauriceZeitlin eds.), LatinAmerica: eformorRevolution? 11.4 21CharlesAnderson,Politics ndEconomichangen LatinAmerica 10.9 20SeymourMartinLipsetand Aldo Solari eds.), Elites nLatinAmerica 10.9 20IrvingLouis Horowitz, Josu6de Castro and JohnGerassi(eds.), LatinAmerican adicalism 10.3 19KennethJohnson,MexicanDemocracy: Critical iew 9.8 18PeterSnow, Political orces n Argentina 9.2 17Charles Denton and PrestonLee Lawrence,LatinAmericanPolitics: Functional pproach 8.7 16RichardFagen and Wayne Cornelius eds.), Political ower nLatinAmerica:evenConfrontations 8.7 16BenBurnettnd Kenneth F. Johnson eds.), Political orces nLatinAmerica 8.2 15EricWolf nd EdwardHansen, TheHumanConditionn LatinAmerica 7.1 13Regis Debray, TheChileanRevolution: onversations ithAllende 6.5 12AlexanderEdelmann,LatinAmerican overnmentnd Politics 6.5 12MartinNeedler,Political evelopmentnLatinAmerica 6.5 12MartinNeedler (ed.), Political ystems f atinAmerica 6.5 12PeterRanis,FiveLatinAmerican ations:A Comparativetudy 6.5 12RiordanRoett,Brazil: oliticsna Patrimonialociety 6.0 11Arpad Von Lazar, LatinAmerican olitics: Primer 6.0 11RichardFagen, TheTransformationfPolitical ulture n Cuba 5.4 10FranciscoJos6Moreno and BarbaraMitrani eds.), ConflictndViolencen LatinAmerican olitics 5.4 10

frequently cited, the Tomasek reader, was mentioned by only 16.8 per-cent. Of these 22 titles, seven are anthologies orreaders (Tomasek, Martz,

100


14/17

TEACHING LATIN AMERICAN POLITICSPetras and Zeitlin, Lipset and Solari,Horowitz,de Castro and Gerassi,Fagen and Cornelius,and Moreno and Mitrani),while fiveare single ormulti-authored exts Denton and Lawrence, Burnett ndJohnson, del-mann,Needler, and VonLazar). Five areworksof general nd compara-tive nature Lambert,Anderson,Wolf nd Hansen, Needler,Ranis), andfive are on a single country Johnsonon Mexico, Snow on Argentina,Debray on Chile, Roett on Braziland Fagen on Cuba). Itwould appearthat,although there s no consensus on assigned reading,thevast ma-jority f instructors tilizereaders,texts, nd materialofa generalandcomparativenature nan efforto capturethecomplexitynd diversityfthe political ystems fLatin America.

Analysis of the data collectedin this survey also shows that al-thoughsome 60.9 percentof LatinAmericanistshave used audio-visualmaterial, here s little onsensus about content.Only threefilmswerementionedby at least 5 percentofthose withexperience withthis tech-nique. They are listed n Table 9. A largerpercentagethan thatgiven toany filmwas the 26.8 percentwho said theyused slides, often heir wntakenduringfieldresearch.T A B L E 9 FilmsUsedByRespondents

% ofA-VUsers % ofTotalRespondentsTitle Mentioning n Mentioning n"Fidel" 10.7 12 6.5 12"The Frozen Revolution" 10.7 12 6.5 12"A ProblemofPower" 7.1 8 4.3 8Slides 26.8 30 16.3 30

Thefinal rea of nformationoncernsthe statusofLatin Americanpoliticson the Americancampus. Is student nterest ncreasingor de-creasing?Are enrollments p or down? The Latin Americanistswho re-sponded to such questions reportedan enrollment ange of4 to 77, amean class size of 25.7 and a median class size of 21.0. Compared toprevious years, as shown in Table 10, enrollments n Latin Americancourses have increasedmore frequently han theyhave decreased.9Atotalof31.5 percent ofrespondentsreporteda substantialor slight n-crease,whileonly23.9 recordeda slight r substantialdecrease. Overall,enrollments eemed tohave improved,howeverslightly. he speculationadvanced earlier n this article bout the impactofpost-VietNam dis-

101


15/17

LatinAmerican esearch eviewillusionment nd mediocreperformance f the economyon enrollmentsin comparative courses does not appear very applicable to the LatinAmerican urriculum.TABLE 10 Respondents'Comparison TABLE 11 Respondents'PerceptionofofCurrentnrollmentso StudentnterestomparedPrevious ears'Class Size toPrevious ears

%of %ofRespondents n Interest evel Respondents nSubstantialncrease 18.5 34 Substantiallyigher 4.9 9Slightncrease 13.0 24 Moderately igher 15.2 28Same 37.0 68 Same 53.2 98Slight ecrease 12.5 23 Moderatelyower 16.9 31Substantial ecrease 11.4 21 Substantiallyower 2.2 4No Answer 7.6 14 No Answer 7.6 14

If enrollments ave slightly ncreased, thesame cannot be said ofstudent interest. As demonstrated n Table 11, the impressionof 98respondentsas to student nterest s that t s aboutthe same in compari-son to student nterestnprevious years.Those who reported substan-tialor moderately igher ncrease nstudent nterest onstituted 0.1per-centofall respondents,while thosewho claimed a moderately ower orsubstantiallyower decrease totaled19.1 percent.The othersobserveditwas the same. Itwould appear, therefore,hat he field s at anchorwithrespect ostimulating ndergraduates.CONCLUSIONSFrom the above responses to the surveyquestionnaire, everal general-izations aboutLatinAmericanpolitics s a teaching nd research rea maybe tentatively rawn. As an academic discipline, t seems to be highlydynamicand diverse. The very ack of consensus on books in the field(exceptforAnderson onLatinAmerica, ndHuntington nd Almond andPowell on development) seems to be a healthysign. Latin Americanpolitics ssuredly s an area where intellectual reakthroughsmay yetbeforthcoming.Not so encouraging is the relative concentration n eight LatinAmericansystems as objectsof field research and classroom emphasis.

102


16/17

TEACHING LATIN AMERICAN POLITICSThe somewhat mbalanced reliance on Mexico, Brazil, Chile,Argentina,Cuba, Colombia,Peru and Venezuela maywell distort ne's perceptionsof hecontinent s a whole. Surelyourunderstanding f heregionwouldbe enhanced by research on Panama and Uruguay as well as Peru andMexico.A thirdgeneralization that may be drawn from he above datadeals withteaching echniques. Although everalteaching echniques reutilizedbythose teachingLatin Americanpolitics ourses, onlyone-thetraditionalecture-won overwhelming upport n terms f ffectiveness.Furthermore, omparativedata reveal thatLatin Americanists resomewhat less innovative n the classroom than are theirAfricanistol-leagues. Presumably hereneeds to be muchwork done improving eda-gogicalmethodology.Finally, twould appear that LatinAmerican politics courses arenotundergoing ny significant ecline nenrollments.f nything, nroll-mentshave slightlyncreased and theareahasnotbeen adversely ffectedby post-VietNam disillusionment nd a slumpingeconomy.Student n-terestnLatinAmerica,however,has remained at a standstill. raditionalmodes ofteachingare not necessarilybad in themselves,nor could oneassume thatall innovation s necessarilygood. It does seem reasonableto postulate,however, thatexperimentationwithdiversifiedmodes ofpresentingmaterialmighthelp to arouse more student nterestn LatinAmerica.N O T E S1. On the methodology fthemail questionnaire ee DelbertC. Miller,HandbookfResearchandSocialMeasurementNew York:David McKay Company, nc., 1970),pp. 76-77;JulianL. Simon, BasicResearchMethods n SocialScience: heArt fEmpiricalnvestigationNewYork:Random House, 1969), p. 249; and Claire Selltiz, Marie Jahoda,MortonDeutsch,StuartW.Cook, ResearchMethodsnSocialRelationsNew York:Holt, Rinehart,ndWin-ston, 1967), pp. 241-42.2. For a broad surveyof Latin AmericanStudies Programs degrees offered nd programcontent-Spanish language and literature, istory, conomics,and geography s wellas political cience-based on catalog analysis) see MartinC. Needler and Thomas W.Walker, The Current tatus of Latin AmericanStudies Programs,"LARR,6: 1: 119-39(Spring 1971).3. Biographical irectory 973 (Washington, .C.: American PoliticalScience Association,1973), pp. 551-54.4. Thirteenpercentof all respondents wrote that their ourses were so orientedto con-ceptual approaches rather hancountry nalysis that twas impossible o dentify oun-tries hatwere particularly mphasized. Hence theywere not ncluded n the "systemsemphasized incourse" part fthis able. Also, Guyana, Trinidad, nd Surinameach re-

ceived one mention.Since this percentagewas less than1 percent, heywere not n-cluded inthetable.

103


17/17

LatinAmerican esearch eview5. See HerbertM. Blalock, Jr., ocialStatisticsNew York: McGraw-Hill BookCompany,Inc., 1960),pp. 317-19.Dennis J.Palumbo pointsout that he more aboriousKendalltauprocedure s often referredoSpearman, as a highnumberofties nrankings nflatesthe correlation oefficient roduced by thelatter.See Dennis J. Palumbo, StatisticsnPolitical ehavioralcience New York:Appleton-Century-Crofts,969,p. 168. n order oguard against such an artificialnflation f the correlation oefficient ue to a highnumberof ties n the ordinalscales, thecorrection ormula ecommendedby YeomansforSpearman's Rho has been adopted. See K. A. Yeomans, Applied tatistics:tatisticsfor he ocial cientist2 vols.: Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1968), 1, pp. 304-305.6. The surveys referred o are bothby HenryC. Kenski and MargaretGorgan Kenski,Teaching frican olitics t American niversities: Survey Tucson, Arizona:UniversityofArizona, Institute f GovernmentResearch, 1974) and Teaching olitical evelopmentand Modernizationt AmericanUniversities: Survey Tucson, Arizona: University fArizona Institute f GovernmentResearch, 1974). Further ata comparisons by fieldthatwill appear inthe text ely n thesesurveys, lso conducted nMay 1973. Thepolit-

ical development/modernizationopulation consisted of courses on developmentthatwereprimarily onceptualor cross-nationalnfocus.7. Ibid.8. A listof assigned readingswas also compiled by HenryA. Dietz and AbrahamF. Low-enthal, Some Notes on theTeachingofLatin AmericanPolitics n theUnitedStates,"Teaching olitical cience, : 1: 85 (October 1973). There s overlap between the ist pre-sentedhereand that fDietz and Lowenthal,butthere re also differences. he Kenskilist s more comprehensive nd systematic ue to the surveyof a much argerpopula-tionteaching n thearea. On theDietz-Lowenthal survey proceduresee pp. 83-84oftheir rticle.9. Slightwas defined s less than10.0 percent; ubstantialwas defined s 10.0 percent rmore.

104

teaching latin american - mención

Documents