New Yorker article "The End of the English Major"

[Wahoo Redux]

Not to be *too* snarky, but who cares what an 18yo's opinion about Shakespeare is?

Good point.  Who cares what students think about the stuff we teach them!?  Who cares if they "get it!?"  Ptthththththtth.  Bunch of philistines! 

You go get'em in that classroom, K16! 

[apl68]

Not to be *too* snarky, but who cares what an 18yo's opinion about Shakespeare is?

Good point.  Who cares what students think about the stuff we teach them!?  Who cares if they "get it!?"  Ptthththththtth.  Bunch of philistines! 

Or, to put it another way, if we want students to learn, then they need to care, at some level, about what they're studying.  And so anybody who is trying to teach them has good reason to care about what they think, and to find ways to get them to care.  It can be done.  I started out not caring anything about Shakespeare.  I just paid attention in class because I was a dutiful student in general.  Over time I did develop more of an actual appreciation. 

Classes in literature are an attempt to give students a chance to make these sorts of discoveries.  It's the same with other introductory humanities classes.  It's part of what makes a liberal arts education potentially enriching.

[apl68]

I got my chance to read the article yesterday evening.  Pretty interesting.  Particularly disheartening was the first-generation student who thought of the humanities as a mere hobby for the privileged.  That perception is another crock that has badly hurt the popularity of the humanities.  The writer did hold out some hope that there may yet be ways of convincing students that a humanities major isn't a one-way ticket to a lifetime of dead-end service jobs.

One passage that stood out mentioned surveys that indicate that humanities majors often eventually work their way into leadership positions.  Their skills in communications and analysis fit them for such roles.  I've found that to be the case in my own (minor league) leadership career.  I use these sorts of skills from my studies as a history major and PhD student in my work all the time. 

Thinking about this prompts me to reflect that both my college career and the work I do now have also benefited from skills and lessons gained during all those summers of hands-on construction work with my father.  As important as higher ed is, I'm never able to forget that there's more than one form of education.

[ciao_yall]

Not to be *too* snarky, but who cares what an 18yo's opinion about Shakespeare is?

Good point.  Who cares what students think about the stuff we teach them!?  Who cares if they "get it!?"  Ptthththththtth.  Bunch of philistines! 

Or, to put it another way, if we want students to learn, then they need to care, at some level, about what they're studying.  And so anybody who is trying to teach them has good reason to care about what they think, and to find ways to get them to care.  It can be done.  I started out not caring anything about Shakespeare.  I just paid attention in class because I was a dutiful student in general.  Over time I did develop more of an actual appreciation. 

Classes in literature are an attempt to give students a chance to make these sorts of discoveries.  It's the same with other introductory humanities classes.  It's part of what makes a liberal arts education potentially enriching.

These classes are also a way to teach students about cultural norms and values, and how these can change across time and communities. They help bring students into the broader culture, whatever that means, by reading and discussing canonic texts.

[Mobius]

Should we devote energy to the rocks (borrowing from "Straight Man") who don't want to be there? We can take the intellectually curious and help them get better. I don't know if we can really help those who just want a credential, but don't want to learn.

[mythbuster]

Apl68 I will present another way of thinking about the "hobby" comment.
As a scientist I have had multiple occasions where people actively recoil when they hear that I work in science. Their reaction is that it's a field of incomprehensible difficulty and should be avoided by the "regular person" at all costs.
If that's the alternative- I will gladly take the average person view of my field being somethin fun that people can gain things from in their free time!

I will also admit to my near double major in Art History now being a bit of a hobby of mine. I actively plan entire vacations around seeing and appreciating Art (trying now to find a way to Amsterdam before the Vermeer exhibit closes!). It ALSO influences how I think about science- I've realized how visual my thought processes are through my exploration of art.

[Wahoo Redux]

Should we devote energy to the rocks (borrowing from "Straight Man") who don't want to be there? We can take the intellectually curious and help them get better. I don't know if we can really help those who just want a credential, but don't want to learn.

Add to that the kids "who shouldn't really be in college / would be better off in an apprenticeship" and you have the perennial questions.

You can, BTW, help all these "rock" and misfits. 

[quasihumanist]

Here's what I find interesting about ASU's English major.

In our mathematics courses, we also attempt to meet the students where they are.  If they need a little more help learning how to think mathematically, then we try to give that to them.

However, if someone graduates with a math major, then they are expected to learn about groups and prove facts about them at roughly the same level as anyone else graduating with a math major anywhere.  If it takes them 6 years and repeating some courses a couple times to get to that level, then that's what it takes.  (I do occasionally tell a student that their general intellectual maturity is such (because of their background) that they're just not going to pass this semester, but they can work hard and keep gaining intellectual maturity so that that general advancement combined with seeing the material a second time means they can pass the next time around.)

ASU, and perhaps the English professing profession in general, seems to have decided that taking 40 credits (or whatever) of English courses and learning in them is enough to get an English major, wherever the student ends up.  If they end up still unable to parse Shakespeare because they started as barely literate, then that's where they are, and they have done 40 credits of learning (plus another 80 in other courses) so they graduate.

I'm not going to say whether that's right or wrong, but it's different.

[MarathonRunner]

Apl68 I will present another way of thinking about the "hobby" comment.
As a scientist I have had multiple occasions where people actively recoil when they hear that I work in science. Their reaction is that it's a field of incomprehensible difficulty and should be avoided by the "regular person" at all costs.
If that's the alternative- I will gladly take the average person view of my field being somethin fun that people can gain things from in their free time!

I will also admit to my near double major in Art History now being a bit of a hobby of mine. I actively plan entire vacations around seeing and appreciating Art (trying now to find a way to Amsterdam before the Vermeer exhibit closes!). It ALSO influences how I think about science- I've realized how visual my thought processes are through my exploration of art.

I'm in a STEM field, but I am am fascinated by ancient Egypt and Rome, so my free electives (as opposed to constrained electives where you could choose, say 5 out of this group of 15), were all in classics and ancient history. I've visited Rome (twice), Egypt (pyramids and Cairo museum twice), Tuscany, Trier, and others, and just thoroughly enjoy what I've learned during those trips. The humanities definitely have value, even though that's not how I make my living. As much as I enjoy learning about ancient Egypt and Rome, I could never do the fieldwork that the experts do - I value my comforts of modern living too much. I do watch every documentary I have access to, read every book I can find, and, pre-COVID, attended every lecture I could. I remember one on Rome and engineering, which talked about their engineering failures. It was super interesting as I had always admired Ancient Rome for its engineering accomplishments. The professor who gave that lecture was amazing, and that's why it sticks in my mind.

[Wahoo Redux]

However, if someone graduates with a math major, then they are expected to learn about groups and prove facts about them at roughly the same level as anyone else graduating with a math major anywhere. 

ASU, and perhaps the English professing profession in general, seems to have decided that taking 40 credits (or whatever) of English courses and learning in them is enough to get an English major, wherever the student ends up.  If they end up still unable to parse Shakespeare because they started as barely literate, then that's where they are, and they have done 40 credits of learning (plus another 80 in other courses) so they graduate.

I'm not going to say whether that's right or wrong, but it's different.

Where do you get your perception from?

I will say that I, like most college English instructors, have seen virtually every major represented in our composition courses.  If I go by this experience, English and sometimes (and only sometimes) Engineering majors are by far the most capable and thoughtful students.  This comes, of course, from the fact that I see a great deal of writing done by students from across the colleges, and so I judge students by how well they do in my classes. It's the natural thing to do.  This is doubly true of literature classes. 

My first FT job our of grad school was running a writing center at a STEM school.  Engineers are not always very good writers...and they are not always all that smart, either. 

Mind you, I have seen relatively brilliant and relatively stupid people in virtually every major----but by and large, I celebrate whenever I find an English major, even at our very mediocre school, because I know they will be successful (mostly).

I think the point is that we all have our perceptions of other majors for whatever dumb reason----and usually we are wrong.

[kaysixteen]

I get that my quick take was direct, and not in accordance with the standard modern take on education common in individualistic, egalitarian America.   It was intended to be hyperbolic, of course, but my point remains: the *opinions* of an 18yo wrt what Willie Shake says, how he is to be properly interpreted, etc., are not at all the same as those of the 'sage on the stage' expert professor.  Classes can be conducted socratically, where appropriate, but this does not mean that they should devolve into a bull session where people, quite frankly, just sit around exchanging ignorance, and no one gets to be told that, well, 'that's wrong'.  I was at a Bible study last week where this problem manifested itself pretty starkly (not an  unusual problem for free church evangelicals)-- the pastor was trying to, ahem, *teach* something, but various folks who, quite frankly, did not know what they were talking about, still felt the need and liberty to interject their alternative views and expect that those views be credited as more or less the same.

Similarly, wrt whether a kid should be *told* what classes to take, rather than given full liberty to decide what to take, is, within reason, not a hard call to make.  We would all recognize that med schools get to do this, because docs need to, ahem, know doc stuff, but why would it be difficult to similarly suggest that 18yos need to be guided into appropriate decisions wrt any given major or overall broad-based academic plan?

[marshwiggle]

Similarly, wrt whether a kid should be *told* what classes to take, rather than given full liberty to decide what to take, is, within reason, not a hard call to make.  We would all recognize that med schools get to do this, because docs need to, ahem, know doc stuff, but why would it be difficult to similarly suggest that 18yos need to be guided into appropriate decisions wrt any given major or overall broad-based academic plan?

I think this is one of the major ways that STEM education and humanities education differ. In STEM, there are a lot of courses that have a very strict prerequisite structure, and many many courses have a curriculum which is pretty standard across many institutions (partly for that reason). In humanities my impression is that there is much less that is cast in stone both within programs and across institutions. So in STEM, the idea that students could have any sort of "vote" on the content of a particular course would be pretty bizarre. (If students want to study something 'else' they can take an elective in whatever it is if they have the prerequisites.)

The biggest sort of variation that happens is if topic X can be taught in either Course A or Course B; in that case, if it's taught in Course B it will have to be at the beginning before the other content in Course B which relies on it.
(And this will hold in other countries as well, because Calculus isn't "cultural"; it's what you need to do lots of advanced math.)

[Wahoo Redux]

the *opinions* of an 18yo wrt what Willie Shake says, how he is to be properly interpreted, etc., are not at all the same as those of the 'sage on the stage' expert professor.  Classes can be conducted socratically, where appropriate, but this does not mean that they should devolve into a bull session where people, quite frankly, just sit around exchanging ignorance, and no one gets to be told that, well, 'that's wrong'. 

You very basically misunderstood my point.  We teach Shakespeare because it is good for people to know about the greatest writer to ever live. Every English department I have ever heard about teaches the great Elizabethan dramatist.  However, students are often thrown by The Bard.  Therefore we have to make room to explain his masterpieces.  And we also need to find other, more contemporary things so that students understand that literature is not just ancient, incomprehensible stuff but that lit also reflects their world.

Most English majors are already conversant with Shakespeare.  But, since lower division English classes generally count for all sorts of gen ed things, we tend to get people from all over.  We also have to make room for people who are unaccustomed to reading for meaning.

Sometimes we survey students to see what reaches students.  Don't compare what we do with what other disciplines do.  I know how stupid it is to declare "I never use math" (which I don't) "so why do non STEM people have to take it?"

On Edit: Marshy has made a very good point above.

[Langue_doc]

The NYT responds https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/opinion/english-literature-study-decline.html

How to Get Kids to Hate English

Here are the first four paragraphs from the "guest essay":

Imagine a world without English majors. In the last decade, the study of English and history in college has fallen by a third. At Columbia University, the share of English majors fell from 10 percent to 5 percent between 2002 and 2020. According to a recent story in The New Yorker, "The End of the English Major," this decline is largely a result of economic factors — which departments get funded, what students earn after graduation, etc. Fields once wide open to English majors — teaching, academia, publishing, the arts, nonprofits, the media — have collapsed or become less desirable. Facing astronomical debt and an uncertain job market, students may find majors like communication arts and digital storytelling more pragmatic.

That's definitely a big part of the story. Yet many would-be humanities majors have turned toward, not more pragmatic degrees, but more esoteric, interdisciplinary majors, filled with courses that encourage use of words like "hegemony," "intersectional" and "paradigm." These educational tracks don't exactly lead to gainful employment, either.

Another part of the story is how demanding English literature is, full of daunting passages through Middle English. Chaucer. The multivolume "Norton Anthology," its thousands of wafery pages promising long hours of dense verse, verse, verse, but also, stories that have endured for over a thousand years. (I still cherish my copy.)

And yet another important and dispiriting part of the story is that the study of English itself may have lost its allure, even among kids who enjoy reading. They are learning to hate the subject well before college. Both in terms of what kids are assigned and how they are instructed to read it, English class in middle and high school — now reconceived as language arts, E.L.A. or language and literature — is often a misery. It's as if once schools teach kids how to read, they devote the remainder of their education to making them dread doing so.

[Wahoo Redux]

Yup.  Here you go.  FOX News to the trough.

This is absolutely the attitude.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/college-students-universities-ditching-humanities-majors-prepare-demand-careers