Are the Humanities Doomed?

[spork]

Not sure which thread to put this in:

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2021/04/21/howard-plans-close-classics-department.

[Wahoo Redux]

What a shame.

[Parasaurolophus]

What a shame.

Agreed. Especially since apparently it's the only one at an HBCU.

Hardly surprising, though. Classics enrollment would be low even if there wasn't a language barrier (or two!). I often wonder about the point of maintaining a classics department, as opposed to redistributing it between languages, history, and philosophy. (But I'll also readily admit that I'm not super well-informed about what goes on in the classics department.)

[kaysixteen]

If you break up the classics dept., you remove from one location the classicist specialists, and distribute them into various locations which do not make classics, either classical languages, history, etc., first priority.   You especially devalue the teaching of classical languages, which is not properly done the same way that modern languages are taught.

[Parasaurolophus]

If you break up the classics dept., you remove from one location the classicist specialists, and distribute them into various locations which do not make classics, either classical languages, history, etc., first priority.   You especially devalue the teaching of classical languages, which is not properly done the same way that modern languages are taught.

Aren't they? I'm reasonably confident that my classes in Attic Greek were taught similarly to my classes in Spanish and German. What was I missing about the mode of instruction?
(A genuine question, by the way. I don't mean to be dismissive about the value of the classics. I'm just not sure that the disciplinary boundaries make much sense.)

[Ruralguy]

This is a problem for the field  just about everywhere, save for elites and state flagships. Not that they will all close, but I have the feeling many depts. will fold and many positions will be reduced. As we've mentioned in other threads, its hardly the only example of consolidation in higher ed these days, but probably is the most extreme. As an extra special bonus to an already difficult situation, I doubt this improves morale in said (potentially former) departments.

[Caracal]

If you break up the classics dept., you remove from one location the classicist specialists, and distribute them into various locations which do not make classics, either classical languages, history, etc., first priority.   You especially devalue the teaching of classical languages, which is not properly done the same way that modern languages are taught.

Aren't they? I'm reasonably confident that my classes in Attic Greek were taught similarly to my classes in Spanish and German. What was I missing about the mode of instruction?
(A genuine question, by the way. I don't mean to be dismissive about the value of the classics. I'm just not sure that the disciplinary boundaries make much sense.)

Not sure that's really true. Nobody needs to be able to have conversations in Greek.

[Parasaurolophus]

If you break up the classics dept., you remove from one location the classicist specialists, and distribute them into various locations which do not make classics, either classical languages, history, etc., first priority.   You especially devalue the teaching of classical languages, which is not properly done the same way that modern languages are taught.

Aren't they? I'm reasonably confident that my classes in Attic Greek were taught similarly to my classes in Spanish and German. What was I missing about the mode of instruction?
(A genuine question, by the way. I don't mean to be dismissive about the value of the classics. I'm just not sure that the disciplinary boundaries make much sense.)

Not sure that's really true. Nobody needs to be able to have conversations in Greek.

I might be oversestimating the similarities, but we did a lot of oral exercises when I was learning classical Greek. There was more reading aloud, perhaps, and there were no oral presentations. But we had a workbook, like in my other language classes, and it even included some conversational phrases. At least, as I remember it--I don't have the text with me on this coast, so I can't check.

But yeah, I don't remember it being significantly different from my other language classes. But maybe I didn't go far enough, or I'm misremembering, or my classes were weird outliers.

[kaysixteen]

Caracal is right, we do not generally teach conversational ancient Greek, whatever dialect thereof one is studying.  There are a wide variety of reasons why, including 1) we do not really know what a conversation, as opposed to individual sounds, would have sounded like, esp since it is very difficult to infer what their prose rhythms (aka 'accent') would have sounded like, though we do know that it was a tone/ pitch language, like Chinese 2) the written form was very diglossic, much more so than the differences between written and spoken forms of any dialect of English, or even German or French (modern Greek continues this dichotomy to a large extent-- classical Latin is much the same) 3) it is a very complicated language grammatically, and appreciably different from English, and any conversational Attic speaking would be very limited until and unless the learner actually learns to start *thinking* in it, something very hard to accomplish when there are no longer any native speakers left, country where it is spoken, etc.

Now, of course, I do not know how you learned whatever modern foreign/ second languages you studied (you're a native francophone, right?)-- but it is also very possible you may have studied one or more of these with a basically 'grammar-translation' approach that was until recent generations used for modern languages as it is for classical ones.   This is not necessarily awful, esp when the students are post-pubescent adolescents or adults-- it would be inappropriate for children.  I use this method myself, but then again most of the langs I teach have been classical ones.   It is however almost certainly true that no one could obtain real fluency in a modern language without significant immersion time in an L2 environment, best accomplished by living in a place where said language is spoken.   This is the main reason why I have never fulfilled a long-time wish to learn Spanish, since I see no option for doing this.  I have little to no doubt I could become, on my own, a fluent reader and writer of it in six weeks, but that is not the same as speaking it.

[Hegemony]

I teach a dead language, and I went to a big workshop our university was having about incorporating all the best methods into language teaching. We were supposed to report on whether we had our students reading social media in the target language, how many blogs in the target language were assigned, whether we were using menus in the target language, whether our students were listening to native speaker videos on YouTube ... and on and on. None of these were very applicable to my particular dead language, or probably to almost any dead language. Sure, you could make up some menus in Greek and find a few Vatican blogs in Latin. That's not the kind of "dynamic contemporary engagement" the workshop really meant.

[apl68]

I teach a dead language, and I went to a big workshop our university was having about incorporating all the best methods into language teaching. We were supposed to report on whether we had our students reading social media in the target language, how many blogs in the target language were assigned, whether we were using menus in the target language, whether our students were listening to native speaker videos on YouTube ... and on and on. None of these were very applicable to my particular dead language, or probably to almost any dead language. Sure, you could make up some menus in Greek and find a few Vatican blogs in Latin. That's not the kind of "dynamic contemporary engagement" the workshop really meant.

I can just see language students Facebooking in Old Church Slavonic or biblical Hebrew.

[spork]

Again unsure which thread to put this in:

https://www.chronicle.com/article/heres-who-was-hit-hardest-by-higher-eds-pandemic-driven-job-losses.

12% decrease in the higher ed labor force during the pandemic.

I find it interesting that the college-educated people who are profiled studied ESL/English/rhet & comp (3), biology (1), math (1), and physics (1).

[Wahoo Redux]

We lost our very sweet, funny, Army-vet admin assistant who supports hu's elderly mother.  Multiple departments were combined, and I know several administrative positions vanished in the crunch.

Our actual enrollment numbers for online classes increased a bit, and we are actually hiring a TT line right now, but I don't know about the adjuncts because, quite frankly, only a few of them were ever around.

[Parasaurolophus]

Caracal is right, we do not generally teach conversational ancient Greek, whatever dialect thereof one is studying.  There are a wide variety of reasons why, including 1) we do not really know what a conversation, as opposed to individual sounds, would have sounded like, esp since it is very difficult to infer what their prose rhythms (aka 'accent') would have sounded like, though we do know that it was a tone/ pitch language, like Chinese 2) the written form was very diglossic, much more so than the differences between written and spoken forms of any dialect of English, or even German or French (modern Greek continues this dichotomy to a large extent-- classical Latin is much the same) 3) it is a very complicated language grammatically, and appreciably different from English, and any conversational Attic speaking would be very limited until and unless the learner actually learns to start *thinking* in it, something very hard to accomplish when there are no longer any native speakers left, country where it is spoken, etc.

Now, of course, I do not know how you learned whatever modern foreign/ second languages you studied (you're a native francophone, right?)-- but it is also very possible you may have studied one or more of these with a basically 'grammar-translation' approach that was until recent generations used for modern languages as it is for classical ones.   This is not necessarily awful, esp when the students are post-pubescent adolescents or adults-- it would be inappropriate for children.  I use this method myself, but then again most of the langs I teach have been classical ones.   It is however almost certainly true that no one could obtain real fluency in a modern language without significant immersion time in an L2 environment, best accomplished by living in a place where said language is spoken.   This is the main reason why I have never fulfilled a long-time wish to learn Spanish, since I see no option for doing this.  I have little to no doubt I could become, on my own, a fluent reader and writer of it in six weeks, but that is not the same as speaking it.

Thanks for that.

[kaysixteen]

You are welcome.

It is also perhaps also a dirty little secret that most classicists, like it or not, are not really qualified to teach classical langs conversationally.   I do not want to do this, for reasons I mentioned above, but it is true nonetheless that I have no training in it and would have to learn on the fly if I tried to do so.  I tried to do some of this some years back when I had to teach a Latin class to 5th/6th grade kids, but my heart was not in it, largely because 1) I do not think kids that young belong in Latin class and 2) I do not have the chops to teach kids that young.   I had a phone interview this winter with a business that teached online Latin classes to the homeschool market, and was not hired-- I thought I knew why, based on the interview, so I took the chance to write and ask for feedback.  The guy essentially confirmed my impressions, namely that my unwillingness to do conversational Latin was not what they wanted.   I get that  this approach is probably more marketable to their target audience, but it does not help the students to actually learn to read real Latin, really, it just doesn't.