NYT Opinion: I Teach the Humanities, and I Still Don’t Know What Their Value Is

[Wahoo Redux]

The ink is black, the page is white
Together we learn to read and write

A child is black, a child is white
The whole world looks upon the sight
A beautiful sight
And now a child can understand
That this is the law of all the land
All the land

The world is black, the world is white
It turns by day and then by night
A child is black, a child is white
Together they grow to see the light
To see the light

And now, at last, we plainly see
We'll have a dance of liberty
Liberty

The world is black, the world is white
It turns by day and then by night
A child is black, a child is white
The whole world looks upon the sight
A beautiful sight

The world is black, the world is white
It turns by day and then by night
A child is black, a child is white
Together they grow to see the light
To see the light

The world is black, the world is white
It turns by day and then by night
A child is black, a child is white
The whole world looks upon the sight
A beautiful sight

The world is black, the world is white
It turns by day and then by night
A child is black, a child is white
Together they grow to see the light
To see the light

C'mon
Get it
Get it
Ohh-ohhhh yeah
Yeah
Keep it up now, around the world
Little boys and little girls
Yeah
Yeah-eah, oh-ohhh

[Myword]

There is no one definite value to all the humanities. Don't ask the question.
Each discipline has its own value (Emphasize discipline), and all together
they provide some rigor and intellectual achievement, broadly said. The content itself
not be important as the process of tackling an unknown written material with new vocabulary and
ways of figuring out problems that they pose. The content will be forgotten soon
but the quality of rigorous thinking remains for a while. This is a favorable case scenario--
in the common worst case, little/nothing is recalled with no intelligent rigor remaining.
 So when students cheat, they cheat themselves. When the course is too easy, no learning occurs.

[marshwiggle]

There is no one definite value to all the humanities. Don't ask the question.

So is the only answer to effectively offer people "Trust us; we know what we're doing."?

Each discipline has its own value (Emphasize discipline), and all together
they provide some rigor and intellectual achievement, broadly said. The content itself
not be important as the process of tackling an unknown written material with new vocabulary and
ways of figuring out problems that they pose. The content will be forgotten soon
but the quality of rigorous thinking remains for a while. This is a favorable case scenario--
in the common worst case, little/nothing is recalled with no intelligent rigor remaining.
 So when students cheat, they cheat themselves. When the course is too easy, no learning occurs.

So who can decide when a course is too easy, if everyone gets to decides for themselves what they do?

When people in other professions (doctors, lawyers, etc.) say people should  just trust them to know what they're doing and that they don't need any oversight, other people (including academics) argue otherwise. Who should provide oversight to academics? Or is academia entirely unique among professions as requiring nothing of the sort?

[Wahoo Redux]

What the hell are you talking about, Marshburger?

[marshwiggle]

What the hell are you talking about, Marshburger?

As I said, in any other profession, when people say that no-one else should try to regulate or evaluate them, the public finds it hard to swallow, and academics typically agree with that. It shouldn't come as a surprise that when academics make that claim for themselves, the public will be skeptical as well.

I don't think continuing to say "Just trust us; we know what we're doing" is going to build the kind of public trust that people need in an industry like academia where public support, i.e. funding, is essential.

I don't have any answers, but the status quo response is pretty clearly failing.

[Wahoo Redux]

What the hell are you talking about, Marshburger?

As I said, in any other profession, when people say that no-one else should try to regulate or evaluate them, the public finds it hard to swallow, and academics typically agree with that. It shouldn't come as a surprise that when academics make that claim for themselves, the public will be skeptical as well.

I don't think continuing to say "Just trust us; we know what we're doing" is going to build the kind of public trust that people need in an industry like academia where public support, i.e. funding, is essential.

I don't have any answers, but the status quo response is pretty clearly failing.

No one said anything like what you are asking about.

The "status quo" is failing because of the expense of college, the perception of "ROI" on college degrees, and a lot of negative and misdirected press.

Where have you been for the last decade, son?  This has been gone over ad nauseum.   

[Myword]

I never suggested the idea "trust us, we know what we're doing", but that is the attitude and position of professionals and non-professionals alike. Some professions like medicine dictate when courses are too easy, but not in the humanities. No general standard exists, except some colleges adopt a Great Books program. I taught in this program
long time ago. It provides some structure and many students fail.

[marshwiggle]

For context:
Public Trust in Higher Ed Has Plummeted. Yes, Again.

Five years ago, roughly half of people surveyed by Gallup expressed confidence in colleges and universities. That share has dwindled to just over one third, according to a new poll released Tuesday. Since 2015, confidence in higher ed has fallen by 21 percentage points.

In the world of public-opinion polling, that's a "pretty precipitous" drop, said Zach Hrynowski, a research consultant at Gallup.

And here it's about journalists, but perhaps telling:
U.S. journalists differ from the public in their views of 'bothsidesism' in journalism

Journalists in the United States differ markedly from the general public in their views of "bothsidesism" – whether journalists should always strive to give equal coverage to all sides of an issue – according to a recent Pew Research Center study. A little more than half of the journalists surveyed (55%) say that every side does not always deserve equal coverage in the news. By contrast, 22% of Americans overall say the same, whereas about three-quarters (76%) say journalists should always strive to give all sides equal coverage.

That gap between what the public expects versus what the people who they are supposed to be able to count on for the truth is stark.

[Wahoo Redux]

The CHE story is behind a paywall, but the Gallup Poll it refers to is here:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/508352/americans-confidence-higher-education-down-sharply.aspx

[marshwiggle]

The CHE story is behind a paywall, but the Gallup Poll it refers to is here:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/508352/americans-confidence-higher-education-down-sharply.aspx

One interesting point is that over that period, people with a postgraduate degree have gone from 67% to 50% having "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in higher education.

That should give pause, since those are the people who valued it enough to invest a significant chunk of their time and money to pursue it themselves.

[Hibush]

One interesting point is that over that period, people with a postgraduate degree have gone from 67% to 50% having "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in higher education.

That should give pause, since those are the people who valued it enough to invest a significant chunk of their time and money to pursue it themselves.

Perhaps they have seen uneducated dolts coming out of the system lately, and are opining on the education those people got rather than their own.