Oral history interview with George E. McSpadden, 1990 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: George E. McSpadden
INTERVIEWER: Linda Danford
DATE: December 1, 1990
LD: Dr. McSpadden, can you tell me when you came to UNCG [The University of North
Carolina at Greensboro] and in what capacity?
GM: In the fall of 1967. And I was with the university until 1979 and after retiring they called
me back to teach some graduate students to help them with their master's theses and also
to fill in with some Spanish classes.
LD: And you came to teach Spanish in the romance language department?
GM: Yes. Actually, I came here with the title of professor of romance languages, and they
asked me to head the department as well.
LD: So you became the head of the department in '67?
GM: That's correct.
LD: Who did you take over from? Who was the previous head?
GM: [Dr. James C.] Jim Atkinson was the acting head. He assumed that position for a year,
while Dr. [Charles D.] Blend, whom I did not know, was the former head of the
department.
LD: When you were hired, was there—were you hired by an individual on campus or was
there a process—?
GM: I would say Miss [Mereb] Mossman [sociology and anthropology faculty, dean of
instruction, dean of the college, dean of faculty, vice chancellor for academic affairs],
who was then—well, she later became vice chancellor for academic affairs. She was dean
of academic affairs back then, and the chancellor, Chancellor James Ferguson.
LD: Did Dean Mossman do most of the hiring? Did you feel like she was the—?
GM: I take it so. She did that, I believe, with most all of the faculty. She was dean of faculties,
but I had extensive interviews not only with her, but with Chancellor Ferguson.
LD: How large was the department when you came?
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GM: Well, I think we had perhaps two to three thousand students in the department. There was
a language requirement.
LD: How many years—what kind of a language requirement was it?
GM: That was three years that the university had taken over from the previous practice when it
was the Woman's College [of the University of North Carolina], and the aim was to have
three good years, so that one would be reading consistently and effectively in the foreign
language, so that one would gather not only the mere grammar of the language, but so
that one would have the controls—well, what should we say? One would get an insight,
somewhat, into the culture through its literature.
LD: Was there any concentration or expectation that students would be able to speak as well,
or was it mostly an emphasis on reading and literature?
GM: There had not been as much emphasis on the speaking as I would have liked, but I didn't
want to come in and tell everyone who was an experienced teacher how to do that. I had,
earlier in New Mexico in my second year of teaching in Santa Fe, had observed Miss
Isabelle Seina, who taught her classes in the language. These were Spanish classes in
high school, and this was so effective that I determined that would be the way I would
teach. The following year I went out to Stanford [University, Palo Alto, California] as a
graduate assistant to teach my way through there to the higher degrees, and it was the
custom of the professors there to teach the classes in the foreign language as well, so that
that was the way I grew up. And in my subsequent pilgrimage of the teaching career in
languages, that was what I wanted to do everywhere. And with time, the other instructors
of the country tended to gravitate in that direction. We produced a successful book in that
manner, but that's an additional story, perhaps.
LD: Well, I would like to hear that story also.
GM: Well, I saw that in order to promote the idea of teaching the language from the beginning
in the language, that an excellent demonstration would be needed. I learned of effective
use of this method in California by Madame Yvonne Lenard, who was demonstrating this
and holding it—she was not only demonstrating, but she had her whole program in
teaching at Dominguez University [California State University, Dominguez Hills] doing
this very thing. And so we invited her for a summer workshop for our teachers. Indeed,
we had her come for three different summers because other teachers in the high schools
wanted to observe what she was doing as well. Her fame was growing as Harpers
[American publishing company] prepared her textbooks in teaching the language.
LD: Excuse me. Was this at UNCG now, or was this while you were still in New Mexico?
GM: It was at UNCG that we carried on the workshops with her that way.
LD: And can you remember when this was? What years she came?
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GM: I would guess it would be in the early, would have been in the early seventies, perhaps.
And she has since returned. This was after I was there. The later head of the department,
Roch Smith, invited her to give a special lecture at the university. She's coming the next
time they have their annual celebration at Valdese in North Carolina. She'll return at that
time to meet with the people from that area. Southern France has a province where my
grandfather, my French grandfather, was reared, born and raised, and they have this
beautiful area, and they call—today, the area of Haute Provence, of Upper Provence, and
she has become fascinated with that area. She's bought a home, indeed a castle, over in
that country.
LD: This is Madame Lenard?
GM: Yes. Her heart is there, naturally being a Frenchwoman herself and a very successful
teacher. Well, when the teachers of French saw what she was able to do with the high
school classes that we had come in, people that had not studied in the language before
said, "We want to teach that way." And then our Spanish instructors said, "We want to do
so too. And we're going to write a textbook along that line," which they did. We
published it. It almost cost us our shirt in the department in order to assemble funds for
doing that. But we had the people down at [University of North Carolina at] Chapel Hill
make up a textbook this way, and so we had something that could be shown to
publishers, and Harpers decided that they wanted to publish that in this way. The
textbook, I think, has gone through four editions now, and the authors are men on the
campus, [Associate] Professor [José] Almeida [romance languages] and Professor
[Stephen] Mohler, who later became head over in Memphis [Editor’s note: Martin],
Tennessee, at the University of Tennessee there. And Steve Mohler was in that position,
is still, and then [Robert] Bob Stinson [associate professor of romance languages], who is
at UNCG, was the third author of the text.
LD: That's quite an accomplishment. What else did the romance language department teach
besides French and Spanish at the time?
GM: Italian on occasion. There were also one of our men, Tony Fragola [professor of media
studies], wrestled with making up of drama and movies sometimes with a foreign
language this way. He was one of our Italian instructors. But Margo Bender was our
chief Italian instructor for most of the time. Italian had been taught before I came on
occasion by a Dr. Meta Miller, who was the head not long before Dr. Blend came here. I
did know Dr. Miller because she was in retirement here and lived here. So that was a
very pleasant association indeed with all of the retirees that were about. We used to have
them down to our big old house on West Market Street, and my dear wife was great help
in this.
LD: What about Portuguese?
GM: We had Steve Mohler, whom I mentioned went to Martin to teach Portuguese.
LD: But not on a regular basis, also, from time to time, or was that always a part of the
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curriculum?
GM: No. I think that was the only time it was offered.
LD: When Dr. Mohler was here. When did the—was there a period when there were no
requirements? I know that there was not three years—
GM: Almost. In the—was it the early seventies when the—there was an acceleration of the
resentment against all requirements, and we felt, well, the thing to do was to make the
requirement two years, and that was what the faculty voted. But then one character on the
faculty got up and added an amendment for one year of which he won by four votes. And
this, of course, was a consternation for us as it was in all branches of studies in reference
to keeping a requirement. Well, the faculty found after some years that they had gone the
wrong way, and so they reinstituted the second year requirement.
LD: When it was just one year, could it be just one year at the introductory level or did it have
to be an intermediate?
GM: Just one year at what level?
LD: Did it have to be at the intermediate level or could it be just the first year of a language?
GM: That was hazy. It would depend on how the student came into the university, I think. I
never was involved with that aspect of the problem. Often, Dr. Atkinson and others
wrestled with that.
LD: How good was the preparation of the high school students when they came to the college
in foreign language?
GM: Generally good, I believe, especially in the reading area, and not a few of the teachers in
North Carolina with a history of good instruction at our university here, earlier the
college, into Chapel Hill and so on. The students often were quite well prepared.
LD: Did you find that this preparation changed at all during the years you were at UNCG?
Did they become less well prepared in the seventies or did that continue to be—?
GM: I believe they did decline somewhat in their preparation. The schools were in turmoil at
that time because of the integration that was promoted everywhere, more and more and
increasingly. And departments in the high schools were essentially destroyed, shall we
say, because the teachers were all shuffled from one school to another and so on, and so
there were no departments that were integral in the high schools. It was all a new
scrambling, and it takes time to build up an academic institution, of course, that can be
effective. People have to learn some things by trial and error.
LD: You must have traveled extensively? What part of the world do you—?
GM: Principally in Latin America—almost all of Latin America and Spain.
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LD: Was there not, for a time, a double major or a combined major between Spanish and—I'm
not sure now—anthropology, or—?
GM: Well, we had a Latin American studies program.
LD: That’s—right, that’s what I wanted to ask about.
GM: And did your husband not participate in that lecturing to—did he not study in Chile in
the—?
LD: He goes to the observatory in Chile from time to time. He told me that he had—once you
had called him and asked him about—
GM: He helped us with that, and I want you to greet him and thank him. I didn't remember,
with my very poor recollection for names, that it was he, and then I began to think about
it, and I said to my wife, "I believe he lectured for us in Latin American studies."
LD: When was that program started and who was involved in the organization of that
program?
GM: All of us that had taken part in the field of Latin America contributed to it. Dr. Franklin
Parker [professor of history and political science], who is still a historian in retirement
here at the university and is still writing history books, was a mainspring in it. Dr.
Ramiro Lagos [professor of romance languages], who still heads the program abroad in
Spain, and Dr. Stephen Mohler; the men in anthropology, offered courses—I should say,
and the women. The former head did so, and there were many of us who did who offered
lectures.
LD: Was Dr. [Joseph] Mountjoy [professor of anthropology] involved in that?
GM: Yes, he was. And what was the former head of the department before him in
anthropology?
LD: Was it the woman who died, the forensic anthropologist? I forget.
GM: [Dr.] Harriet [Kupferer, Class of 1943]—what was her last name? She offered lectures as
well. Well, with a dozen or so of us doing this, it added a great variety to the program.
Heads of the Latin American study committee that carried on this course were Dr.
Mohler, Dr. Almeida. I don't remember whether others did. Then I headed it for three
years.
LD: Does that program still exist or has it been discontinued?
GM: I'm not sure. I fear that it may not if your husband isn't taking part in it.
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LD: I don't think he is, but I'm not sure. It seems to me I've been told that it was discontinued.
GM: We so much appreciated what he brought to us, and I'm very fond of Chile as a country
because I've had the opportunity of being down there. Indeed, I studied as a graduate
student in the University of Chile [Santiago, Chile].
LD: What other changes do you remember having taken place in the romance language
department while you were there? Did the department become larger? Did it become
smaller?
GM: I would say it went along pretty much with the same number of people teaching.
However, with the decrease in the requirement when we were ready to promote people,
this often was something of a problem. Though they had books that they had written,
studies that had been published, yet one couldn't always have them offered an associate
or a full professorship.
LD: Because the student enrollment did not merit it?
GM: I take it the university resources were limited. Even back then, from time to time we were
experiencing budgetary problems because the state support from time to time would be
cut back because of an emergency statewide in financing.
LD: Do you think UNCG experienced those cutbacks on an equal basis with Chapel Hill and
North Carolina State [University, Raleigh, North Carolina], or do you think that we
suffered more?
GM: Well, of course, we perhaps felt that we suffered more. We had the feeling that the
alumni of Chapel Hill and NC State, somewhat, would come to their rescue, and it took
some years for Dr. Ferguson and others to build up this resource so that contributors
helped out somewhat in meeting the needs of the university.
LD: Do you mean politically or financially?
GM: Excuse me?
LD: Did these alumni affect the situation politically or financially?
GM: Financially is what I had in mind. The—of course, usually the fortunes were in the hands
of the men that had graduated from Chapel Hill or the school down there in Raleigh,
wasn't it?
LD: [North Carolina] State [University]. Although presumably, they were married to
graduates at WC [Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina].
GM: That's true.
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LD: But not effective enough.
GM: Well, as a rule, the women back then didn't have the purse strings as much as the men
did.
LD: Maybe they weren't asked. Maybe the college didn't ask them to exercise their clout.
GM: I think that may have been true, in part.
LD: Was there ever a difficulty in having two languages in the same department? Did the
French and the Spanish professors always get along?
GM: We thought so. And I came with the ideal of never playing favorites, and yet, after nine
years I think it was, this was what some of the French teachers thought I was up to. And
so I resigned after things had quieted down and went ahead teaching, and that's when
Dean [Robert] Miller [dean of the College of Arts and Sciences] asked me to head the
Latin American Studies Program, which I did for three years before retirement.
LD: Do most universities have a combined romance language department? Is that fairly
typical?
GM: Many of the leading, best universities do so. Stanford. I think Yale [University, New
Haven, Connecticut] does, and I can't—well, Harvard [University, Cambridge,
Massachusetts] had that tradition. The professors there, [Henry Wadsworth] Longfellow
[American poet and educator] and [Robert] Lowell [American poet; won two Pulitzer
Prizes], noted for their contributions to literature. All were professors of romance
languages. But curiously before they could take the chair, they always went to Europe
and studied in the German universities because that's where romance philology was
cradled. And graduate studies in the romance languages weren't offered in the United
States until about, perhaps 1915—well, at Stanford I guess it was earlier than that. I think
Dr. [Aurelio] Espinosa [Jr.], who was head for many years, went out there in the fairly
early 1900s, perhaps right after World War I [1914-18 global conflict that centered in
Europe] in 1916 or so. 1918.
LD: To start a graduate program?
GM: That's correct. Yes.
LD: What kind of graduate program, now, does the department at UNCG have?
GM: We had a master's degree in French when they called me, and the administration wanted
us to offer a master's degree in Spanish, which we did successfully with the blessing of
the department at Chapel Hill. And so we succeeded rather early in that. Another thing
we did was—I applied for the backing from the United States Department of Education
to offer master's degrees in French and Spanish combined with a Master of Arts in
Teaching, which we were successful in obtaining. We obtained federal funds for this, and
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we were pleased with the results with our teachers. The funding of this thing seemed
somewhat easy because while I teaching at George Washington University [Washington,
DC] before I came here for ten years, the Department of Education blessed us with a few
fellowships each year for graduate students to work for the doctorate.
This was a time when it was felt that it was crucial that more institutions offer
good graduate training, so that as I offered the program to the government year after year,
they gave us these fellowships. And there were fourteen in all that had a graduate study
from the beginning of the program up through the doctorate. And some of my students
did work along this line. [sound of moving around, presumably to bring out the document
referred to] This is one from Joe [unclear]. He was earlier; he was a lad from Turkey, and
he studied with us for the beginning degree at the University of British Columbia
[Vancouver, BC], where I taught first after World War II [1939-45 global conflict]. And
then when I went to the University of Chicago [Illinois] to teach, I invited him to accept a
fellowship with us there, which he did. But at George Washington University, Gisella
Huberman, who is professor [of language and foreign studies] at American University in
the District, wrote that as her dissertation, A Thousand Works on Spanish and Spanish-
American Linguistics.
LD: That's impressive. Did the graduate program here ever proceed beyond the MA?
GM: No, it hasn't.
LD: So a master's is what is offered in French and Spanish?
GM: I think that it may have been felt that the university should not intrude on the territory of
Chapel Hill.
LD: Was that always a consideration when designing graduate programs?
GM: Yes. I believe so. Dr. [John W.] Kennedy, and he asked Miss Mossman to support him in
this. He was dean of graduate studies, and the feeling was that the university should not
apply for any assistance beyond the master's degrees.
LD: Was that resented by faculty here at UNCG?
GM: I don't know that they realized that that was being done. Dr. Kennedy just discouraged
me repeatedly from moving in that direction.
LD: But that was something that you had—was it a desire of yours to do?
GM: It was on my part because I had been successful with numerous graduate students that
went on through the doctorate. But I was aiming too high, apparently, in this situation.
My relations with the men at Chapel Hill in romance languages were most cordial. They
would have me to go on occasion and preside at statewide meetings or, more than that,
when they put on programs there at Chapel Hill. They were very kind to ask me to chair
the meetings for them.
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LD: What do you think the effect is on the undergraduate program when you have graduate
programs? Do you think it's a beneficial effect or do you think that it takes attention
away?
GM: I think so because it encourages the teachers to excel and to move ahead, to branch out.
I think of one thing that is worth remembering: Fairly early in my career, Dr.
Elizabeth Barineau [professor of romance languages, Class of 1936] was afflicted with
cancer here, which went to the cerebellum. Was very unhappy, it was a very unhappy
thing. And she had to withdraw rather suddenly that way, and it wasn't too many months
before she went home to heaven that way. Her family is in Lincoln, North Carolina. And
it obviously was an old French family in origin, Barineau being a French name. They
were Huguenots [members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France], as not a few in
this state have been. The—I mentioned Valdese [North Carolina], which was originally
made up of French people. And they have—they had to flee into the Italian area when
persecution rose during the terrible days; such things as the slaughter of Saint
Bartholomew's Day that took place. So that drove many to the New World. [John] Calvin
[French theologian and pastor during the Protestant Reformation] himself was a refugee
from France. Went into Geneva [Switzerland] because he was told, "You must leave
before I have to kill you." And so it was a rough time early in the Reformation [16th
century schism between Western Christianity]. But now the people at, up in Valdese have
their origins under Peter Waldo [founder of the Waldensians, Christian spiritual
movement in the Middle Ages] back in 1000 AD. And as the people moved into Italian
areas in the mountains, of course, then they were multiplying. Farms could be divided
only so much, and the young people in the Waldensian, which is the same as Valdese, the
Waldensian areas, sent someone over here to North Carolina, and they were sold with the
rocky piles up in—where Valdese is.
LD: Where is Valdese?
GM: It's just outside of going up heading toward the mountains, in the foothills up there. What
is the name there? There's a town close by where Sam Ervin [Democratic Senator from
North Carolina]—
LD: Morganton.
GM: —used to live. Yes. It's right close to Morganton.
LD: It's near Morganton.
GM: If you want to go and stay at Valdese, you take a room in the Holiday Inn at Morganton.
LD: So you were talking about Professor Barineau.
GM: And it was through her—
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LD: Excuse me. I'd like to turn the tape over.
[recording paused]
LD: Go ahead. Excuse me.
GM: Professor Barineau and I were teaching together. We were colleagues, that is, at the
University of Chicago, and that was how I came to come here eventually. I went to
George Washington University. She returned. She had been an undergraduate here at
UNCG. She did graduate work at Chicago, then was asked to teach there, and she did
beautifully here. And when I met her at one of the Modern Language Association
meetings that we attended regularly from different areas, she asked me if I would not
recommend someone for the head of the department. I recommended Ozzie Fernandez
[?], but he had already accepted another position elsewhere. Then they approached me
and asked me if I would come. I came down for an interview with Miss Mossman and
with Chancellor Ferguson and ended up being invited to come here. So I regretted very
much that Miss Barineau didn't survive to help counsel me and give me the background
that I needed. Jim Atkinson, however, Professor Jim Atkinson, was very loyal, and he
helped me tremendously during the years when I endeavored to steer the department.
LD: What do you feel are your special accomplishments at UNCG? What do you like to look
back on?
GM: Well, I continued to write articles and another book, and the fact that we launched this
teaching of Spanish in Spanish so attractively, patterning largely after Yvonne Lanarre's
work in approaching the language, teaching language in the language. The friends and
colleagues—everyone continues to be most friendly to me and to my dear wife, so that
we are happy that this is where we've ended my career. But I found on retirement we took
a trip, and then the question was, “What was I to do?” At John Wesley College, which
was moving to High Point, invited me to teach with them, which I have done, and I'm
still doing. [laughs]
LD: So you've kept quite active? You've kept quite active.
GM: Yes. It's been pleasant indeed. And my feeling is that perhaps often our public
universities are moving away from foundations that they had. After World War II, you
know, the British said we made a tremendous mistake in allowing our roots to be cut. Our
foundation was biblical and Greek, following the teaching of Plato [classical Greek
philosopher] on teaching and so on. And Spencer Leeson [eminent headmaster and
Anglican bishop], who gave the Bampton Lectures [held at Oxford University, England,
focusing on Christian theological issues] right after World War II, said, "We must return
to a biblical foundation in our teaching. After all," he said, "the greatest teacher was
Christ, and he fed.” Education by etymology is feeding not leading, as the popular
etymology gives for the word, but educare is "to feed," and that was the hope in Britain
that they would carry on that way. I do not know how successful their program has been,
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but in our own experience—and all of the universities I taught at, there was a chapter of
the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, and regularly, this was the most esteemed student
organization on campus because the students were careful about the way they conducted
themselves. They were conscientious. They were diligent in their work. They were
careful in their relations with faculty and students. And so both my wife and I have felt
that we wanted to help the fellowship in carrying on its work, and so we have tried to do
that in a way because it's most effective. You have to affect a student in his whole
perspective and outlook, not just in his studies, say. We're seeing so often shipwreck on
the part of students, and as we look at the campuses, we feel that this is something—
[recording error]
LD: You feel that students these nowadays are lacking some sort of center to their lives?
GM: All too often, this is true. We had a young man come to us at John Wesley College, and
he had been released from a life sentence in prison in order to go to college. And he had,
as it were, pulled himself up by his bootstraps and was the most diligent beginning
English student that I had out at the college. And he had done this with the help of Prison
Fellowship, which is the work that Charles Colson [special counsel to President Richard
Nixon, noted Evangelical Christian leader and cultural commentator] is carrying on
throughout the country and indeed internationally. Drugs and their abuse and so many
problems are solved often only as people come and realize that they need help, more than
their own resources.
LD: I'm familiar with the program of Charles Colson. That's interesting. What did you do at
UNCG? Were you involved with the Christian Fellowship on campus?
GM: I was counselor to them, and we found that they were so far ahead of us that we could do
little [more] than offer them the facilities of our home for a party or something like that.
And I had an impressive example in knowing what happened up at Appalachian State
University [Boone, North Carolina]. The—one of the professors up there was counseling
the students, and Hunter Dockery, who was president of the fellowship chapter, and the
professor and his friends began encouraging other students to join them. They built a
chapter of some three hundred students, and it did a great deal toward building excellent
student life. There still is work on the campus. We're friendly with an advisor to the
students. The Inter-Varsity staff, made up in that case of a husband and his wife, are
counseling the students, and I think they work closely with our vice chancellor for
student affairs.
LD: Do you know what their names are?
GM: Let me see if my wife's here.
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[recording error]
GM: Repeat that?
LD: Yes.
GM: Michelle and David Mallard are the people that have gone there to encourage the
students.
LD: And this organization is called the Inter-Varsity—?
GM: Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. And it goes back—it had a British origin in the days
of John Wesley. There was a Church of England preacher that—he was a curate at Saint
Mary's, I think it was, which is a church at Cambridge [England], and he was in a day
when student relaxation was so great that he was unpopular. His own servant even asked
him, "Sir, don't recognize me on the street." [laughs] But he lived to see the day when the
students were clamoring in Saint Mary's for his teaching, and they filled the church and
climbed up on the rafters even, and it—there was a time of warming. Fellowship is still
very active at Cambridge, and it went from England to Canada. The Canadian students
sent a man, Stacey Woods, who headed the work in the United States for many years,
sent him to the United States. I learned about this and asked him how you start a
fellowship when I was at Stanford. And he said, "Well, if you have any friends that are
interested in reading the Bible, praying, call them together, and I'll be out and see you."
He was as good as his word, came all the way to the West Coast from Chicago. And that
was our start of the chapter at Stanford. The same is true at the University of Michigan
[Ann Arbor, Michigan], at Harvard, at Yale, and Chicago, and so on. And so, we think
this is one bright spot in which there's reforming that's needed.
LD: Is there anything else that you'd like to add to the record?
GM: I don't think of anything at the moment. Just let me check, and let me see. As I reflected
last night after talking with your husband, I wondered, "Well, now what is this about?"
[Chuckles] And it's been so kind of you to come and speak of this. As you may know,
Miss Mereb Mossman, who was so long dean of faculties, and later, vice chancellor for
faculty affairs, was one who followed this line of thinking. And she herself taught in
higher education in China, you know. And so, this was the feeling of the dean of—let's
see—the vice chancellor for student affairs, my good friend, what is his name?
LD: Allen?
GM: Yes.
LD: Jim Allen?
GM: Vice Chancellor Allen. And so, though we had the memorial service for Miss Mossman
not too long ago, yet we take it that in such endeavors, they'll carry on her high aims.
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LD: Do you think the university lost a great deal when they lost Mereb Mossman?
GM: Well, of course, she had been in retirement for a goodly number of years, but she kept on
so bravely right up to the end in doing what little she could for friends and helping in
other ways. She would often visit. Her sister, Benita, would drive her, and they would
bring tidbits, and let us know that they were still thinking of us, and we were in their
hearts. I think that's all, and I do thank you so much.
LD: Well, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure to interview you.
[End of Interview]