Are the Humanities Doomed?

[Caracal]

I have successfully recruited several good students to our majors.  By and large these are people who never had any meaningful exposure to the humanities until college.  And these are people who are pleased to find they have a talent for writing, interpreting, or creating generally and were pleased that I had singled them out for having talent.  From my experience, it really is as simple as that. 

I'm truly curious about this.

How did their high school English, history, geography, etc. not provide "meaningful" exposure? (Honest question.)

Were they not planning to go to university, or were they planning to study other things? If so, what? (Again, honest question)

It wasn't at all clear to me from reading the article exactly who they were supposed to be marketing to. Given the size of the enrollment declines they're talking about, it seems like this needs to be more than just the occasional student, so there needs to be an identifiable audience.

There are some great high school teachers. There are also some not so good ones, and even good teachers are limited by their workload. I get the impression that lots of students come to college with the impression that history is just a bunch of random facts that you memorize for exams.

I think you're right that not many math majors are going to decide they actually want to be English majors. However, you do have a lot of people who go into pre med because of family pressure and realize they either don't like it, or lack the aptitude for it. Some of those people might find that a humanities major they hadn't considered would fit their skills and interests. I also think the more realistic competitors are the default majors like poly sci or psychology. Students tend to think these are majors that are more "practical" but that isn't always true. (This isn't a shot at either discipline, I promise)

[Wahoo Redux]

I'm truly curious about this.

How did their high school English, history, geography, etc. not provide "meaningful" exposure? (Honest question.)

Were they not planning to go to university, or were they planning to study other things? If so, what? (Again, honest question)

Dunno.  I like my students, but I don't dig into their personal lives.

Not everyone comes from a family which reads, goes to museums and concerts, and finds the arts interesting, as mine did. 

Not everyone has good high school English teachers, as I did. 

And I think that sometimes one simply needs to be exposed to something, even if it is right in front of one all the time.  Most people go to movies or watch Breaking Bad without thinking very deeply about what they are watching because no one has ever challenged them to think deeply about entertainment media. 

Sometimes it is being forced to learn something that creates a breakthrough.  I took geology as an undergrad gen ed cluster because it was required and, while I did not become a scientist, those classes changed my life. 

[polly_mer]

Sometimes it is being forced to learn something that creates a breakthrough.  I took geology as an undergrad gen ed cluster because it was required and, while I did not become a scientist, those classes changed my life.

Give details on how it changed your life so much that it was worth the opportunity cost and then give examples of similar level of influence for every single class you've ever been forced to take.  Why does it have to be college?  Why wasn't the first 13 years of formal, forced education sufficient?

Being required to take Fortran in college changed my life.  I could not possibly have had any of the professional class jobs I've had without formal programming experience.  However, I also could not have become an engineer without it so the requirement makes sense.

The one political science class I took to check a box was interesting enough, but not nearly as life-changing as decades of engaging with dystopian fiction and then reading up on applications to reality.

I still am frequently amused that my five undergrad classes in math make me well above average and allowed to teach math at the college level while my five undergrad classes in philosophy mean I am unqualified to even hold an opinion on humanities gen ed requirements.

[Wahoo Redux]

Sometimes it is being forced to learn something that creates a breakthrough.  I took geology as an undergrad gen ed cluster because it was required and, while I did not become a scientist, those classes changed my life.

Give details on how it changed your life so much that it was worth the opportunity cost and then give examples of similar level of influence for every single class you've ever been forced to take.  Why does it have to be college?  Why wasn't the first 13 years of formal, forced education sufficient?

I do not have to give you anything, Polly.

You too should talk to somebody.

[Hibush]

Assuming that the structure of an undergraduate history curriculum says something about its content and delivery, here is a sample from my employer:

• History of the United States to 1877 (lecture-based, farmed out to adjuncts)
• Western Civilization I: 500 B.C.-1500 A.D. (lecture-based, farmed out to adjuncts)
• Europe 1789-1914
• The American Revolution
• America's Civil War
• Modern America
• Modern Italy

Doubtful that students are engaging in actual research, using primary sources, in any of these. And term papers are probably the norm.

This list looks like the kind of curriculum that the book criticizes as being all about the professors and not about the students. Changing the focus to something students can relate to, and then using history to explore those ideas is what he recommends. What if those periods were covered, but presented in the context of the tension between romanticism and enlightenment. We see both motivations in our academic world and society today, so they are pretty relatable. That engagement with ideas really beats the prospect of memorizing the dates of battles and who was king.

What might your curriculum look like if built around concepts like that?

[spork]

Assuming that the structure of an undergraduate history curriculum says something about its content and delivery, here is a sample from my employer:

• History of the United States to 1877 (lecture-based, farmed out to adjuncts)
• Western Civilization I: 500 B.C.-1500 A.D. (lecture-based, farmed out to adjuncts)
• Europe 1789-1914
• The American Revolution
• America's Civil War
• Modern America
• Modern Italy

Doubtful that students are engaging in actual research, using primary sources, in any of these. And term papers are probably the norm.

This list looks like the kind of curriculum that the book criticizes as being all about the professors and not about the students. Changing the focus to something students can relate to, and then using history to explore those ideas is what he recommends. What if those periods were covered, but presented in the context of the tension between romanticism and enlightenment. We see both motivations in our academic world and society today, so they are pretty relatable. That engagement with ideas really beats the prospect of memorizing the dates of battles and who was king.

What might your curriculum look like if built around concepts like that?

It might cause enrollments in some history courses to increase, and it might even peel away a student or two from the six different flavors of the "business" major. But (1) the history department won't create a curriculum like that, because the majority of faculty in the department insist on presenting an undergraduate version of what they themselves do as professional historians, (2) the change, even if implemented, is not going to persuade 18-year old high school graduates that they need to attend this college so that they can major in history. 

[Wahoo Redux]

This list looks like the kind of curriculum that the book criticizes as being all about the professors and not about the students. Changing the focus to something students can relate to, and then using history to explore those ideas is what he recommends.

Do the students know what they want?
Do the students know what they should be learning?

Is there any point in having an expert design coursework?

[marshwiggle]

I have successfully recruited several good students to our majors.  By and large these are people who never had any meaningful exposure to the humanities until college.  And these are people who are pleased to find they have a talent for writing, interpreting, or creating generally and were pleased that I had singled them out for having talent.  From my experience, it really is as simple as that. 

I'm truly curious about this.

How did their high school English, history, geography, etc. not provide "meaningful" exposure? (Honest question.)

Were they not planning to go to university, or were they planning to study other things? If so, what? (Again, honest question)

It wasn't at all clear to me from reading the article exactly who they were supposed to be marketing to. Given the size of the enrollment declines they're talking about, it seems like this needs to be more than just the occasional student, so there needs to be an identifiable audience.

There are some great high school teachers. There are also some not so good ones, and even good teachers are limited by their workload. I get the impression that lots of students come to college with the impression that history is just a bunch of random facts that you memorize for exams.

I think you're right that not many math majors are going to decide they actually want to be English majors. However, you do have a lot of people who go into pre med because of family pressure and realize they either don't like it, or lack the aptitude for it.

In my experience, "pre-med" consists of

• a few really good students, who decided this is what they want
• a bunch of people who aren't exceptional students, who will probably go for something like business when they flunk out, since medicine seemed like a lucrative career choice.

I don't see a lot of potential there for humanities.

Some of those people might find that a humanities major they hadn't considered would fit their skills and interests. I also think the more realistic competitors are the default majors like poly sci or psychology. Students tend to think these are majors that are more "practical" but that isn't always true. (This isn't a shot at either discipline, I promise)

Isn't poly sci in humanities already? Psychology may be close, but like pre-med it's probably going to seem a bit more career focused. (And to the more STEM-y students, who are more interested from a neuroscience angle, they'll probably be more attracted to biology or other STEM.)

Maybe people going for sociology or other social science would be reachable. Perhaps someone here more familiar with that could weigh in.

[Caracal]

This list looks like the kind of curriculum that the book criticizes as being all about the professors and not about the students. Changing the focus to something students can relate to, and then using history to explore those ideas is what he recommends. What if those periods were covered, but presented in the context of the tension between romanticism and enlightenment. We see both motivations in our academic world and society today, so they are pretty relatable. That engagement with ideas really beats the prospect of memorizing the dates of battles and who was king.

What might your curriculum look like if built around concepts like that?

It might cause enrollments in some history courses to increase, and it might even peel away a student or two from the six different flavors of the "business" major. But (1) the history department won't create a curriculum like that, because the majority of faculty in the department insist on presenting an undergraduate version of what they themselves do as professional historians, (2) the change, even if implemented, is not going to persuade 18-year old high school graduates that they need to attend this college so that they can major in history.
[/quote]

I'm always amazed that people outside of the humanities feel qualified to look at a few course lists and make these sorts of suggestions. To be clear, I don't think that only people in history can have opinions about history curriculums, but I don't think its asking too much that if you want to weigh in you might want to learn something first about the discipline. Pretty clearly, this attitude comes out of a belief that humanities disciplines aren't really serious disciplines.

How would you react if I looked at a bunch of random course listings in geology and said, "hey, guys, I've got an idea, why don't we just do away with all of this boring stuff where you learn a lot of basic principals and just do a bunch of courses centered around stuff that seems more interesting, like how about rocks on Mars?"

The problem with centering the study of various periods around the tension between romanticism and englightment is that it would an ahistorical construct which wouldn't really make any sense. I don't mean that you couldn't have a course on romanticism and enlightenment, but it would be a really bizarre way to cover the Civil War. It also betrays the basic ignorance at work here. I teach Civil War courses almost every semester and they are always full. Students are really interested in the Civil War, it remains very relevant.

Now, I don't think the idea of having more courses based around big themes that students might find interesting is a bad one. I've designed a couple of courses like that where we examine some big theme like violence or drinking over a long period of time. I don't think it makes sense to think these courses are a replacement for survey courses which serve an important purpose, but it could make sense to have more of them.

If someone gave me total power over a curriculum and unlimited resources, I'd probably design something rather different than what usually exists now, so it isn't that I think the status quo is perfect. I just think most of these suggestions really fail to understand the dynamics at work.

[mythbuster]

So I'm going to ask a really simple question: What does it look like for the humanities to thrive? Is it just more people taking the classes or specifically more majors? If it's more majors, what % of the total student body is the goal? I certainly don't think it's more Grad degrees, given the issues we currently have with their employment prospects.

[polly_mer]

Sometimes it is being forced to learn something that creates a breakthrough.  I took geology as an undergrad gen ed cluster because it was required and, while I did not become a scientist, those classes changed my life.

Give details on how it changed your life so much that it was worth the opportunity cost and then give examples of similar level of influence for every single class you've ever been forced to take.  Why does it have to be college?  Why wasn't the first 13 years of formal, forced education sufficient?

I do not have to give you anything, Polly.

You too should talk to somebody.

We've talked for years (probably a good decade at this point).

At no point has anyone been able to explain in small words why a liberal arts education is necessary for everyone...other than the flat out statement that humanities faculty need jobs and the way to get jobs is to impose requirements.  The general education distribution requirements is not how university education works in any other country.

You don't have to give me anything and I asked because I'm pretty sure no one can.  I remember a discussion about how algebra I isn't all that useful to normal people after the class is over and yet in other discussions you have mentioned how astronomy and geology courses changed your life.  I have no idea how that can be true because really knowing those subjects and being able to think scientifically at more than a superficial level requires calculus and other higher math as well as far, far more energy invested in learning the science facts than any one, even excellent, course can do.

You have multiple times asked why the general public doesn't have more science knowledge or at least science respect.  The answer is they think that one course in college or the forced march through science classes in k-12 where nothing really works and it doesn't matter anyway is science.

Even many of the folks here who claim to value science and watch documentaries/PBS/Discovery Channel aren't really scientists or even good scientific thinking.  They have not changed their lives to use scientific thinking in all the necessary contexts.  They have fond memories of watching neat demos and picking up unexpected facts.

They don't use statistical thinking to ask questions when reading the news.

They don't use baseline knowledge (like what germy hosts little kids are) to think critically about news headlines (little kids do indeed get and spread Covid; any assertion to the contrary is akin to saying that the sky is usually green and should require extreme levels of information before accepting as fact).

They think of science as nifty pictures of the physical world and some memorized facts, not a way of knowing that involves a lot of questions and is applicable everywhere every day.

I can believe that a normal person never writes and solves partial differential equations in the course of their normal day.  I only do that as part of my professional work.

I can believe that a normal person never uses quantitative reasoning and limits themselves to basic arithmetic in daily life (almost always with a calculator).  However, anyone who truly does not use quantitative reasoning in daily life on a regular basis is going through life on hard mode. 

The life changing aspect of good science and math education means using quantitative reasoning everywhere.  Being able to identify the rocks along the road cut is far, far less useful than knowing and regularly using estimation, different types of averages, and comparison of distributions to determine if a thing that appears different as a one-off is really different in context.  Knowing how to ask more questions because something is absurd is a similar life changing aspect.  Watching more science shows or reading general interest science magazines is not life changing, unless you're spending far more than you can afford doing so.

You're feeling negative feelings towards me because you can't make the argument for the humanities being important enough to force, but you also know that being unable to make the argument is why humanities faculty jobs are greatly declining.  After all, even forcing science isn't enough to be truly life changing and I say that as a professional scientist.

[Mobius]

The goal is we don't want a bunch of Elon Musks and Mark Zuckerbergs, right, or "business bros!" who we think just look at the balance sheet?

Grossly oversimplifying it, but that is the gist, right?

[Caracal]

Sigh. Let's all just ignore that rant, ok?

[marshwiggle]

The goal is we don't want a bunch of Elon Musks and Mark Zuckerbergs, right, or "business bros!" who we think just look at the balance sheet?

Grossly oversimplifying it, but that is the gist, right?

Unlike Bernie Madoff, who got a BA in Poli. Sci.

[Wahoo Redux]

We've talked for years (probably a good decade at this point).

Indeed.  Our flamewars irritate the other posters, who mostly ignore us.  Not sure why you want to talk more.  I suspect you want me to capitulate, which won't happen.

I don't have "negative feelings" towards you----in fact, quite the opposite.

But you have some issues (who doesn't, right!?) that find vent with this odd animosity toward liberal arts education.

I was forced to take a general science cluster to get my undergraduate degree.  I didn't want to take the classes; I just wanted to get the degree and to get on with my life.  But I have been forever grateful that I had to fulfill a science requirement.  My life has been different since then.  I always thought that I would get a job on a college campus and audit classes on geology, but sadly I find that they actually expect me to work.  Bummer.  But now that we are talking about it, and now that I have had my first Fauci Ouchy (thank you President Biden!!!) and will be inoculated by next fall, maybe I'll actually see if I could sit in on a Geology 101!!!  Maybe an intro to astrophysics?  Life changing event, you know.