Are the Humanities Doomed?

[marshwiggle]

As a historian, I don't often see clear lessons from the past. My students often think in those terms. "Prohibition shows that banning a substance is ineffective." "The progressive movement shows that concerted effort can lead to solutions to fix aspects of society." I'm never so sure. Maybe they're right, but I tend to see contradictions and complications that muddy the picture.

Those "contradictions and complications that muddy the picture" are the point of studying history, in my mind. It's the unintended consequences of all kinds of actions that lead to bad outcomes. In both cases mentioned above, draconian actions in one moment of history are not what matters; it's incremental change over time that can improve the situation. Prohibition is a good example of how the unintended consequences like bootlegging undermined the goals of dramtic intervention.

I always get annoyed when historians sign some statement about how the past tells us how to do deal with something in the present. I can tell you about what the arguments at the Constitutional Convention as a historian. That might or might not be useful historical context for deciding whether Trump should have been impeached, but I don't think knowing that context gives me any more authority than anyone else to tell you whether or not impeachment should have happened.

In this case, I'd be inclined to say that people often invoke historical progress or technological change to argue for something that they want. People's ideas about the direction of the world often aren't borne out by subsequent events.

The main thing that should come out of history is humility; i.e. rather than a conviction of what the "right" course of action is, a realization that whatever is done, even with good intentions, is likely to have some undesirable consequences, while other actions, even done with bad intentions, will have some redeeming consequences.

[Caracal]

I've seen some programs that originate this way, and the devolve into hiring adjuncts because the tenure track profs want to teach either similar courses that are more specific to their discipline or just upper level stuff that has nothing to do with the gen ed goals. So, there have to be long term commitments.

Yes, a well thought out and meaningful general education sequence requires strong commitment from faculty. In particular, as you say, a willingness to continue engaging students who will not major in their field and will never take enough classes in the subject to justify engaging at length on a professor's pet topic.

The other piece of this is a strong institutional commitment. If you wanted something like that to work you would need to have small class sizes, encourage faculty collaboration and innovation, and perhaps give faculty full credit for teaching team taught courses. Given the choice, I would never teach the gen ed humanities course at my school. It isn't much fun to teach a big class, mostly filled with students who are only there because the course fit into their schedule.

Definitely, setting up the right incentive system, and providing the resources to encourage sustained engagement by faculty in different disciplines is critical to the success of such an endeavor. But, as others have alluded to, general education is typically done on the cheap, and has the net effect of driving out what little enthusiasm there is for a subject in non-majors, as opposed to sparking an interest.

Agree, and I'd argue the same is true for faculty. In theory, I like the idea of teaching a course I can design for non majors that tackles some issue of my own design. In practice, I teach those courses and mostly find them depressing because they are set up in a way that makes it very hard to really engage students and make the material feel relevant and interesting to them.

I prefer teaching courses in my discipline for majors because those students are far more interested and engaged.

[Ruralguy]

Right, and of course that's what I indicated as a major obstacle in establishing core classes that are designed to fit the curriculum rather than the other way around.  These classes will not be a giant fishnet for majors in any discipline...or maybe, if we take your idea, Caracal, they can be? That is, give faculty some freedom in designing courses that fit the curricular goals, whatever they might be.

[mleok]

This discussion has some valuable ideas for making humanities disciplines more impactful in the undergrad curriculum, and looks to me like something a smaller school could do particularly well. There is a chance of getting faculty from across campus to work together toward a more exciting teaching experience. They'd be less inclined than big-school faculty to replicate their graduate program in how they approach research and curriculum.

When I interviewed at Dartmouth many years ago, I came away with the impression that there was a great deal of interaction between faculty in different disciplines, and it seems like a place that might be able to implement such a team taught multidisciplinary course.

[Wahoo Redux]

Do we have examples of schools that are incorporating these changes?

The ideas sound great, I just wonder if we have a model.

[mleok]

Agree, and I'd argue the same is true for faculty. In theory, I like the idea of teaching a course I can design for non majors that tackles some issue of my own design. In practice, I teach those courses and mostly find them depressing because they are set up in a way that makes it very hard to really engage students and make the material feel relevant and interesting to them.

I prefer teaching courses in my discipline for majors because those students are far more interested and engaged.

Is that because you don't have full rein to design the course, or do you think it's because trying to silo it into a single discipline makes it less engaging for non-majors? There is no doubt that constructing an engaging, intellectually meaningful and rigorous class for non-majors is exceptionally challenging, but I think it is critical if one wishes to continue requiring a significant core curriculum for all students.

[Ruralguy]

What are the parameters? That is, how much of the curriculum would be interdisciplinary and meet general education goals?

There are probably a few SLACs that already do this with one course, and then kind of open up the rest of the curriculum to be pretty standard, but I don't know if that is what you are looking for.

[spork]

At many universities, the definition of "significant core curriculum" is "a core curriculum that forces students to take a course delivered by my department."

[mleok]

At many universities, the definition of "significant core curriculum" is "a core curriculum that forces students to take a course delivered by my department."

Yes, pretty much that, except that I would change "many" to "most."

[marshwiggle]

What are the parameters? That is, how much of the curriculum would be interdisciplinary and meet general education goals?

To me, the goal would be quality instead of quantity; instead of requiring people to just fill some shopping list of random courses from outside their discipline, only require one or two but make them targeted to non-majors to give real long-term value.

[Caracal]

Agree, and I'd argue the same is true for faculty. In theory, I like the idea of teaching a course I can design for non majors that tackles some issue of my own design. In practice, I teach those courses and mostly find them depressing because they are set up in a way that makes it very hard to really engage students and make the material feel relevant and interesting to them.

I prefer teaching courses in my discipline for majors because those students are far more interested and engaged.

Is that because you don't have full rein to design the course, or do you think it's because trying to silo it into a single discipline makes it less engaging for non-majors? There is no doubt that constructing an engaging, intellectually meaningful and rigorous class for non-majors is exceptionally challenging, but I think it is critical if one wishes to continue requiring a significant core curriculum for all students.

Some of it is on me, I haven't been able to figure out a way to really make it work. I think to make the course really work, I probably need to teach and structure the course very differently than I do my other courses in the major. Maybe a big emphasis on a project, a lot of independent and group work, etc. The problem is that the class is structured and situated in ways that would make it very difficult to make this kind of stuff work. In my other classes, when I have students do group work, most of them engage readily enough and usually a few groups have really interesting discussions. When I do the same things in my gen ed courses, many students just sit there and I have to go prod them to have a discussion. It doesn't help that I always have 50 students in the class. Any kind of multi stage tiered project would be a logistical nightmare.

It comes down to student engagement. The courses are set up in a way that encourages students to see it as something completely separate from the rest of their studies and an annoying hoop to jump through and that's how most of them approach it. I'm not very good at engaging students who don't particularly want to be engaged...

[spork]

Editorial by two Howard U. professors about the eliminations of its classics department:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/02/opinion/howard-university-classics-department.html.

[Hibush]

CHE has another installment in this genre, so this is a pro forma post.

Why should students listen to me?
What claim do I have on the public?

When these questions can no longer be answered clearly and convincingly, a discipline risks extinction. This fate looms for literary studies.

The crisis long manifest at every level of the profession — from the decline in majors to the collapse of the job market — has complex causes, but is surely exacerbated by the profession's incapacity to answer the basic questions.

I agree that all faculty should have some ready answer to those questions. WHat is the nature of the "incapacity" Is it that literary studies faculty don't think the answer is yes? Or that they do have answers, but are temperamentally prevented from offering them? Or is the author not talking about literary-studies professors in general, just the two or three in his department that annoy him?


Skipping to the end, we find this:

My hope is that these reflections will inspire someone to make the case for literature professors as moral experts, to describe the skills and knowledges that underlie this expertise, to show what the moral expertise of literature professors can teach us that we don't already know, and to exemplify moral approaches to literary works.

Then, faced with these alternative models of expertise, perhaps literature professors will finally be in a position to decide what we are. Our students, states, and colleagues are curious to know.

Yes, we are indeed curious to know.

Any branch of the academy that fails to continuously demonstrate its importance will find itself doomed regardless of its intrinsic value.

Does Professor Clune add any insight to the discussion?

[Parasaurolophus]

I should think that ethicists are the academy's moral experts.

Or do we think he means something else by 'moral'?

[spork]

[. . . ]

Does Professor Clune add any insight to the discussion?

No. He laboriously discusses the problem but leaves it to others to come up with solutions. And by "laboriously," I mean the essay could have been cut by at least half.

The tendency to engage in pedantic verbosity is one of the reasons the humanities are doomed.