The End of the English Major (newyorker.com) 226
During the past decade, the study of English and history at the collegiate level has fallen by a full third. From a report: Humanities enrollment in the United States has declined over all by seventeen per cent, Robert Townsend, the co-director of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences' Humanities Indicators project, found. What's going on? The trend mirrors a global one; four-fifths of countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation reported falling humanities enrollments in the past decade. But that brings little comfort to American scholars, who have begun to wonder what it might mean to graduate a college generation with less education in the human past than any that has come before. If you take a moment to conjure the university in your mind, you will probably arrive at one of two visions. Perhaps you see the liberal-arts idyll, removed from the pressures of the broader world and filled with tweedy creatures reading on quadrangle lawns.
This is the redoubt of the idealized figure of the English major, sensitive and sweatered, moving from "Pale Fire" to "The Fire Next Time" and scaling the heights of "Ulysses" for the view. The goal of such an education isn't direct career training but cultivation of the mind -- the belief that Lionel Trilling caricatured as "certain good things happen if we read literature." This model describes one of those pursuits, like acupuncture or psychoanalysis, which seem to produce salutary effects through mechanisms that we have tried but basically failed to explain. Or perhaps you think of the university as the research colony, filled with laboratories and conferences and peer-reviewed papers written for audiences of specialists. This is a place that thumps with the energy of a thousand gophers turning over knowledge. It's the small-bore university of campus comedy -- of "Lucky Jim" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" -- but also the quarry of deconstruction, quantum electrodynamics, and value theory. It produces new knowledge and ways of understanding that wouldn't have an opportunity to emerge anywhere else.
This is the redoubt of the idealized figure of the English major, sensitive and sweatered, moving from "Pale Fire" to "The Fire Next Time" and scaling the heights of "Ulysses" for the view. The goal of such an education isn't direct career training but cultivation of the mind -- the belief that Lionel Trilling caricatured as "certain good things happen if we read literature." This model describes one of those pursuits, like acupuncture or psychoanalysis, which seem to produce salutary effects through mechanisms that we have tried but basically failed to explain. Or perhaps you think of the university as the research colony, filled with laboratories and conferences and peer-reviewed papers written for audiences of specialists. This is a place that thumps with the energy of a thousand gophers turning over knowledge. It's the small-bore university of campus comedy -- of "Lucky Jim" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" -- but also the quarry of deconstruction, quantum electrodynamics, and value theory. It produces new knowledge and ways of understanding that wouldn't have an opportunity to emerge anywhere else.
Unfortunate (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Unfortunate (Score:4, Insightful)
Most college-related stats are obscured by only looking at the subset of people who attend college, when in fact that baseline has gone up over time.
What I'm saying is, the fraction of all adults who have a liberal arts education may even be rising instead of falling... but I don't know.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Unfortunate (Score:5, Funny)
Your right!
Re: (Score:2)
You need to loose that snarky attitude!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Right. Just the way, a century ago, we were going to be speaking Yiddish, and Irish, and Italian, and....
Shut up, wrong-wing moron. No one's interested in your anti-virtue signalling.
Re: (Score:2)
I all fairness, he wasn't saying "no one here will be speaking English anymore, but $FOREIGN_LANGUAGE". :)
That's what you assumed.
I assumed he meant people will speak "Bad English"
Re:Unfortunate (Score:4, Insightful)
"The number of illegal immigrants in the United States is actually lower than it was 15 years ago."
That is preposterous and you know better. They redefined "illegal". Seriously, that's all they did. Someone sneaking into the US 15 years ago under identical circumstances was considered an illegal alien then but not today.
Re:Unfortunate (Score:4, Insightful)
Are they having me suppose that all of those illegals in the US from 2004-2017 just picked up and went back home and didn't remain here with everyone coming in since them coming in to increase those numbers?
This USA Today [usatoday.com] article in 2018 says about 11.8 million illegals.
Now, are you telling me that with the last 2 years of absolute record illegal crossings, that that 11.8 number has somehow magically dropped?
Methinks your article has redefined illegal immigrants somehow...are they maybe not counting the "Dreamers" anymore?
Re: (Score:3)
By starting off with... " what percentage of the total population" you missed the point of the discussion.
He really didn't. You just missed his point, which was that there may be just as much or more pure love of learning in the population as ever, just that more people who previously wouldn't have gone to college at all are now getting career-focused degrees, reducing the humanities degrees on a percentage basis, even if they might be increasing overall. Percentages of the whole population may tell a very different story from percentages of degrees awarded. Or not. The article fails to apply the statistics eff
Re:Unfortunate (Score:5, Insightful)
College Students are Over Saturated.
College Education, use to be for just being educated. College enrollment was much lower, as people would be able to make a good living without it. Those who went to college were the cream of the crop, and if the person wanted to go work in the corporate field they were often looked with high prestige, as they have been perceived as the smartest there is to offer. And often given high ranking jobs, that require more brain than brawn.
Following GI Bill around WWII. This made getting a college degree more accessible, colleges had lowered their requirements in order to get more Government Money, having an influx of College educated folks, meant businesses had raised the bar to require a college degree as a requirement, and not a special perk.
As College Educated folks raised children to be more College Educated, The colleges then have lowered their requirement to be mostly on par with High Schools passing population, where today if you were Able to pass High school with a 2.0 GPA, you will probably be able to Graduate from college with a 2.0 GPA. So for college degrees they were mostly devalued even further, to a point today where businesses want to see Specialized Majors in their field.
What I think is needed is an expansion of adoption, expansion and respect towards vocational training. If you want a Computer Science Degree, you better be prepared for heavy math, and abstract concepts, and less Computer Programming. If you want to be a Software Developer, you should go to a vocational school that focus on the skills to do that job, which might actually be somewhat close to a current CS program, but with more focus on the more popular tools and less on the theoretical background tools.
3.0 HS - 2.0 College (Score:2)
... where today if you were Able to pass High school with a 2.0 GPA, you will probably be able to Graduate from college with a 2.0 GPA.
Is that a typo, 2.0 for HS? I recall 3.0 HS -> 2.0 College.
Re: (Score:2)
Those who went to college were the children of wealthy parents, and if the person wanted to go work in the corporate field they were often assumed to be well connected, as they have been perceived as the progeny of someone else with money and power.
FTFY.
College was far from a meritocracy, it was mostly vocational study for the upper class. It was a nearly foregone conclusion that the children of the rich and powerful would be placed in positions of power and leadership, so they needed the more advanced skills to be leaders.
Today, almost everybody is insanely well educated by historical standards while the well-paying jobs are the nepo-baby's to lose. That doesn't mean they don't have to be competent, it just means that it's theirs unless they fail mi
Re: (Score:2)
So for college degrees they were mostly devalued even further, to a point today where businesses want to see Specialized Majors in their field.
When did businesses not want that? I mean, beyond the people hiring for jobs that don't require a college degree, who are just using the degree as a way of reducing the number of applicants....
What I think is needed is an expansion of adoption, expansion and respect towards vocational training.
Maybe.
If you want a Computer Science Degree, you better be prepared for heavy math, and abstract concepts, and less Computer Programming. If you want to be a Software Developer, you should go to a vocational school that focus on the skills to do that job, which might actually be somewhat close to a current CS program, but with more focus on the more popular tools and less on the theoretical background tools.
A highly theoretical CS degree is pretty much only useful if you want to teach, and arguably not even then. So why not just keep doing what we do now, with most undergraduate programs being mostly practical, and most of the theoretical stuff (beyond a high-level overview) largely restricted to the Master's and
Re:Unfortunate (Score:5, Insightful)
If universities don't like that, they can reduce their prices.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
18 year olds are barely people at all, and certainly not rational.
But then, most 50 year olds aren't rational, either.
Average debt, 4-year degree, $26,190 (Score:2)
Why would any rational person go into hundreds of thousands of dollars of non-dischargeable debt for the "love of learning"?
They don't. Historically college was for (1) families who could afford it or (2) the very bright receiving a scholarship. Today we could add (3) the military paid for it.
While we still have those three categories today we also have debt financing However hundreds of thousands is a bit of a political exaggeration. Sure there are idiots who are not part of (1) or (2) or (3) and go to private schools that cost $50K+ per quarter. But the reality is that most people who are not in these categories are smart
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Your hypothetical is a bad one, though. If you have a four year degree, you won't be working min wage unless you want to. You'll easily be able to handle $26k in debt when you're making 2x that in starting salary alone.
Re:Median debt at grad, 4-year degree, $23,796 (Score:2)
You are aware that BMWs and Teslas are luxury cars and buying them with debt is also a dumb move, right?
You do realize that my point is to skip on luxuries so you can pay off that $26K average debt? If your student loan and credit cards are paid off, then luxuries become an option.
Also, if you graduate in something that doesn't improve your career prospects ...
English, history, etc do increase career prospects. You do however have to look outside those fields. Reality for the history major is an entry level management job in some corporation. Those positions don't have what the degree is in.
And yes, jobs that don't require any particular degree do exist, but there aren't too many of them and they don't pay as well as those requiring a particular degree.
I'd disagree with the former (aren't too many) and while the latter (pay as much) has some truth to
Re: (Score:3)
Student debt a private for-profit college thing (Score:2)
Public: 14%
Private, non-profit: 20%
Private, for profit: 51%
https://www.bestcolleges.com/r... [bestcolleges.com]
These numbers may include graduate degrees.
Re: (Score:2)
For what it's worth I was just at college age when the price insanity hit. It was the late nineties, and it started with the local major university's business school adding a $500-per-semester surcharge over the normal ~$2000-per-semester tuition costs. While I have no doubt that someone who was a college-student from the eighties might look at that $2000/semester tuition as crazy, but it was still possible to work to pay cash for one's tuition per year. From there the prices have ballooned at all of the
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Kids aren't prompted to have a love of learning, but merely to learn itself.
Of course! I mean, with a love of learning they might start to ask uncomfortable questions with even less comfortable answers on a wide range of touchy subjects. Just learning is acceptable if it’s absolutely needed, otherwise it would be quite a bit easier to bridle the masses with bullshit when no one is educated in the first place.
Re: Unfortunate (Score:4, Funny)
What's an English major for? To tell people when they should be using your vs you're? We already have AI that could easily do that. However, we have social platforms that refuse to correct users because they think it would offend people's feelings or something?
Re: Unfortunate (Score:5, Funny)
An English major is effectively a critical thinking and communications degree. It is likely one of the degrees with the most transferrable skills to the widest range of careers.
Re: (Score:2)
College costs money. For many people, its lifelong debt levels of money. That price is too high for a mere love-of-learning.
People can read the classics for free from their local library. The tremendously high price of education is one hell of a motivator to only pick options that are going to result in a high paying job.
Kids love to learn and laugh (Score:2)
Nice FP, though another vacuous Subject. I think you should have been clear about how kids don't need to be encouraged to learn. Natural learning machines they are. Maybe stronger linkage to the story, too?
My "contribution" involves the General Theory of Relatively Funny Stuff: We laugh to learn and to signal enjoyment of learning. That's the good stuff, but it extends from the kids through slapstick and all the way up to the college classrooms of the story. However now I think there should be a Special The
Re: (Score:3)
Career training (Score:3)
Education is expensive and has to be paid for somehow, of course most people are going to study fields that are going to increase their earning potential otherwise they will just end up with a mountain of student loan debt and no way to repay it.
Regular schooling should teach people at least the major events of history, and people who are genuinely interested in history can always seek out extra knowledge once they are financially stable.
Re:Career training (Score:5, Informative)
Education is only expensive because of all the money wasted by the "education" industry on all things that have nothing to do with providing an education. Administrators outnumbering students in many institutions, for one. Then add resort-style facilities for leisure and entertainment. Eliminate those and costs will drop dramatically.
https://www.jamesgmartin.cente... [www.jamesgmartin.center]
https://quillette.com/2022/11/... [quillette.com]
Re: (Score:3)
The resort-style facilities are to chase "price-insensitive" consumers, who will be the future donor base.
Like everything else, US colleges are dependent on the whims and preferences of the people with the most money. The rest of us are just along for the ride.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Career training (Score:4, Interesting)
There is plenty of fat to trim in education outside of students and degrees. I find the recent arguments in favor of keeping young people out of college to be totally backwards. Sure, trade schools are a good option for many people. But they are a solution to a problem and not necessarily the end goal. We need a dynamic work force that can quickly shift as technological changes alter our society at a pace never before seen. Generalists with a good foundation in communication are exactly the sort of people the Information Age needs.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Generalists with a good foundation in communication are exactly the sort of people the Information Age needs.
This world doesn't need more assholes that think they know everything.
Re: (Score:2)
What do you have against IT support?
Re: (Score:3)
This world doesn't need more assholes that think they know everything.
Indeed, there are enough of those here on Slashdot. :-)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Generalists with a good foundation in communication are exactly the sort of people the Information Age needs.
Hear hear! And not just to maintain flexibility and agility when it comes to switching careers and disciplines. I see the deep specialization of technology and (especially) science, as a kind of siloing not terribly different from social media and political echo chambers. We need to make generalism a specialty - yes, I'm aware of the irony - whose purpose is to find and make connections among a diverse range of disciplines, and bring them to the attention of the people in those disciplines.
why are you forced to take GYM class at collge pri (Score:2)
why are you forced to take GYM classes at college prices at some schools for years?
Some schools still have the swim test and YOU need to pay for it.
Re: (Score:3)
MIT still has this. 100 yards, untimed, if you drown you fail.
make the 2 year CC cost the same as HS and force (Score:2)
make the 2 year CC cost the same as HS and more or less force most students to take it. Maybe start with an choice of 4 year as it is or after HS you go to CC (that also has trades as well) and over time make CC an extension of HS. And the 4 year or more Colleges start at what use to be 2 years into them.
Re: (Score:2)
Many jobs don't need a specific "trade", and English majors, or sociology, etc, suffice. Ie, you're a project manager. Now some will say "get an MBA or go away" but that's overkill, and possibly hurts the actual business side of things. I know a lot of people who's current job is not directly related to what they studied in college.
Education is expensive to the student... (Score:3)
Only if you live in a broken country that does not invest in its next generation.
I continue to be amazed even at the concept of student loans and debts. In my country (that is not a socialist utopia -- I grew up and live in Mexico), there are public universities that are essentially free. I was at the second-largest university in this country for my Masters degree in Computer Security, and it costed me approximately US$50 per semester; I'm currently doing my PhD in the country's biggest university, and I pa
What changed and what didn't (Score:5, Insightful)
Even decades ago I don't know of anyone who majored in English with the intent to earn big bucks. If they ended up a management assistant (secretary) or grade-school teacher, they were okay with that.
I suspect what changed is that college grew so expensive that it became ridiculous to take out loans for something that will not be able to recoup the loans.
Re:What changed and what didn't (Score:5, Interesting)
Even decades ago I don't know of anyone who majored in English with the intent to earn big bucks. If they ended up a management assistant (secretary) or grade-school teacher, they were okay with that.
I suspect what changed is that college grew so expensive that it became ridiculous to take out loans for something that will not be able to recoup the loans.
I don't think it's cost, outside of the fancy schools with ridiculous tuition for the most part I think the biggest cost is the 4-5 years of not earning full-time.
I suspect the real shift has been a cultural change towards practical education and the fact that "English major" became a punch line for a useless degree.
I think there is an issue where more jobs have gotten specific degrees attached to them. I suspect many English majors would be happy to teach, but for that you need a teaching degree, not an English one.
But in general, unless you're going into a hard science there's a lot of jobs where the specific degree isn't that important. And if you want to do something like sales then an English major does probably prepare you better than a degree in the sciences.
Re: (Score:2)
> I suspect the real shift has been a cultural change towards practical education and the fact that "English major" became a punch line for a useless degree.
When did it ever have any status? I suppose it's possible to go from an F+ status to F-, but I don't see how that would change things much.
> to teach, but for that you need a teaching degree, not an English one.
If you want to teach English in high-school, I believe you need both in many states.
English majors had corporate earning potential (Score:2)
Even decades ago I don't know of anyone who majored in English with the intent to earn big bucks. If they ended up a management assistant (secretary) or grade-school teacher, they were okay with that.
And if they were not limited by the glass ceiling as you describe, they got an entry level management position at some corporation.
I suspect what changed is that college grew so expensive that it became ridiculous to take out loans for something that will not be able to recoup the loans.
Yes, the government got involved. As a result, looking at one's major and considering the resulting ability to repay no longer was considered. Government involvement allowed universities to inflate their tuitions and fees. The student's ability to borrow was greatly increased and universities saw the opportunity.
That said, the "crisis" is exaggerated. The reality of student d
Re:Lawyers (Score:3)
Worse citizens but better engineers (Score:4, Insightful)
The world cares more about what we can make than what we can think. In fact, being able to think is usually frowned upon. Just look at slashdot mods.
So people go get computer science degrees and design software that can put sunglasses on your dog photos while sowing you advertisements for garbage. And since you're not educated, you think this is what is good in life.
Re:Worse citizens but better engineers (Score:5, Informative)
The world cares more about what we can make than what we can think.
The bank that holds my mortgage, the grocery store, the hardware store, gas station, etc don't really GAFF about how I can think.
Re: (Score:2)
The world cares more about what we can make than what we can think.
The bank that holds my mortgage, the grocery store, the hardware store, gas station, etc don't really GAFF about how I can think.
And to the extent that a society renders 'what we can make' and 'what we can think' mutually exclusive, that society is unhappier and also poorer, money notwithstanding. It's also less stable - witness the loud, nasty fighting across class and political divides that characterizes America today.
Re:Worse citizens but better engineers (Score:5, Informative)
"And since you're not educated, you think this is what is good in life."
While those of us who are educated know that what is best in life is to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.
Re:Worse citizens but better engineers (Score:5, Interesting)
The world cares more about what we can make than what we can think. In fact, being able to think is usually frowned upon.
It's more than frowned upon. In today's USA, there is active hostility toward academia. People who "research" things like vaccine epidemiology on Google value their own opinions over those of people who graduated from medical school.
Re:Worse citizens but better engineers (Score:4, Insightful)
Bureaucrat stealing honor claiming public servant (Score:2)
That's "public servant" to you, kiddo. You likely can't hold a candle to a lot of people who go into public service rather than just opting for filthy lucre.
Wrong. A "public servant" serves the people, not the bureaucracy. Most of those we saw on TV claiming to be "public servants" were bureaucrats engaging in their own form of "stolen valor", let call it "stolen honor".
Worse citizens but worse engineers (Score:5, Insightful)
Communication is a significant part of engineering, This comes a great shock to people who claim to be engineers but have poor communication skills and thus turn out to be bad at engineering.
Re: (Score:2)
It is harder to argue against what you can do. Early 20th century people said we couldn't go to the Moon, we did it in the second half of that century people stop saying that we couldn't (ignoring the conspiracy nuts) . However during the early 20th century people were arguing on the benefits or problems with different economic systems like Capitalism, Socialism and Communism... We are still arguing them today. Because the most brilliant thought, just leads to others to try to counter it. While if you
Re: (Score:2)
The world has a long history of brawns over brains.
It's simply more out in the open nowadays.
General Trend (Score:2)
College has been reduced to vocational training, and life has been reduced to earning enough money to afford a million dollar starter home. Who wants to cultivate their mind?
Re: (Score:2)
College has been reduced to vocational training, and life has been reduced to earning enough money to afford a million dollar starter home. Who wants to cultivate their mind?
Vocational training - with a large dose of reflexive obedience and a sharp curtailment of imaginative tendencies - was the plutocrats' plan for education all along. John D. Rockefeller famously wrote "I don't want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers". He was far from alone in that sentiment among his fellow robber barons.
You might want to read John Taylor Gatto's The Underground History of American Education (pdf) [tripod.com] for more on this.
Re: General Trend (Score:2)
Who are you trying to impress? I'm sure there's plenty of people in Kansas who can't afford even a trailer park. Not everyone has to live in CA and NY...
No kidding (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider most people have only ever pursued college degrees for the salary advantage that the posession of a degree, any degree, used to offer. As more people have attained such degrees, the value has, of course, diminished, while the cost of obtaining the degree has skyrocketed. If your degree does not seem appropriate to a particular job opening, it's very likely your resume will never even see human eyes. It's true, the value of a college education is not about career training, but at the same time, that is the only way to justify the cost.
Children of wealthy parents who can rely upon a trust fund or some long term care and maintenance are free to pursue degrees in the humanities and arts, they do not have to worry about getting a job: either they have the trust fund, or daddy will get them on a board somewhere, it's not a big deal. They can do whatever they wish. But for 99.9% of us, we can't justify the high cost of education if it isn't going to land us a job, and thus we're left with STEM degrees or (to great frustration in the US) attempting to pursue the trades. I've already warned my children that any money I have set aside for their post-secondary education has to be aligned with some career goal, we aren't in the "liberal arts degree" economic class. Find something useful that you like, and we'll figure out how to get there and what else you might get as a side effect along the way.
Change In Attitude Towards Higher Level Ed (Score:4, Insightful)
For better or worse, and I'm not making a value judgment, I think the prevailing attitude towards what value higher education adds has shifted away from becoming a well rounded individual who found themselves through the experience of post-secondary and into a vehicle for finding a job.
I'm speculating but I think that exploding tuition costs and long lived student debt has made the value proposition for many people less appealing. If I'm going to spend 50k per year on tuition, the ROI looks less appealing to me if the only ROI is the highly abstract concept of "finding myself" and "becoming well rounded." But if I need that to net me an engineering job that will let me pay off the tuition in 10 years then the math leads to different conclusions.
And ... I can pursue my HOBBY of history and creative writing through countless resources online today, many of which are free. These are great hobbies, and people can find value in them, but unfortunately all the well paying history and philosophy factories have shut down and so the tuition just isn't worth it.
Re: (Score:3)
That doesn't mean that universities are doomed. For every 10 people who t
Re: (Score:3)
I think the needs have changed a lot.
Even a century ago books without the current state of knowledge on any given topic were pretty hard to come by unless you lived in a small number of metropolitan areas. Imagine its 1920 and you're in a rural part of Ohio growing corn. There might be a library in down but its small and what it has geared toward the practical and likely dated.
Now any one can hop on the internet and read up on any topic they want, study art images from around the globe, read the classics f
well rounded individual was used to kill tech scho (Score:2)
well rounded individual was used to kill tech schools.
By the big higher education places but at the same time they trun out people loaded with skill gaps.
Not really a problem (Score:2)
I read part of the article and a lot of the people they interviewed were majoring in things that didn't exist 20 years ago, but doing a lot of studies that would be similar to an English degree. I didn't see employers complaining that they couldn't find English majors to hire or universities saying that they can't find English professors to hire, so I have to assume that this isn't really a problem. The fact that people choose to study economics before their law degree instead English doesn't mean that we
Re: (Score:2)
And of course I make a grammar mistake in my post about why we don't need English majors...
That explains things (Score:2)
Now we know why the editing on here can be so abysmal.
... so it is a hobby (Score:2)
The goal of such an education isn't direct career training but cultivation of the mind
That makes it a hobby.
Not many people want to invest time and money in getting a college degree for a hobby.
English Majors as Techs (Score:4, Interesting)
This is strictly anecdotal, but in my 28 years of working in tech, two of the best network engineers I've worked with both majored in English. One of them ran a guerilla poetry group and has a deeper grasp of Active Directory than anyone else in the shop.
Re:English Majors as Techs (Score:4, Funny)
One of them ran a guerilla poetry group and has a deeper grasp of Active Directory than anyone else in the shop.
Perhaps that says more about Active Directory than the value of an English major degree.
Re: (Score:3)
One of the best engineers I know had no college education and had a previous career in fast food. Have to think it's not that fast food prepares you to be an amazing engineer (although not ruling it out), but that, precisely because it doesn't, only particularly apt people make the transition.
Doesn't pay enough (Score:2)
When your not teaching kids to read and write! (Score:2)
Its no longer a serious subject (Score:5, Insightful)
"...moving from "Pale Fire" to "The Fire Next Time" and scaling the heights of "Ulysses" for the view..."
The point of an English major should be, used to be, discrimination. It taught students to read with understanding, and to evaluate. If the piece is citing the three books in the quote as an example of what an English major is supposed to be learning to appreciate, the author has no clue what literature is. They are none of them worth study as literature.
What has happened to English majors is that works of no literary merit have come to dominate the curriculum. Studying them has become the exercise of political indoctrination. Post modernism has inflitrated and attacked the legitimacy of discrimination among works of objectively different values. Reading and interpretation now becomes a matter of projecting one's ideas into a text, which in good post-modernist style is treated as having neither objective meaning nor value. Its all what the reader brings to it - its become a fashionable variant of moral relativism.
Of the three books cited, Pale Fire is not worth reading at all, certainly not studying. The Fire Next Time is interesting as social and historical document, but of no literary interest. Ulysses is a case of genuine literary interest, but not because its a height to be scaled. But because its a massive failure by an intelligent writer who became disconnected from humanity and obsessively pursued for hundreds of pages the working out of a mechanical scheme which in the end is of no human interest whatever. It is not surprising that after that he drove into the swamp of Finnegans Wake. There is more merit in one of his short stories than in the whole of Ulysses.
I suppose there is some slight interest in dead ends, so its probably worth one class. Which would also include Flaubert as another example. And perhaps a nod to Ford Maddox Ford's The Good Soldier. There are more dead end streets to go down than there is time to list them, and 20th century American novel writing is full of them, but students should probably have a couple of the major ones exposed to them so they can recognize the signs.
The consequence of the current approach to literature, as exemplified by current teaching, is that there is nothing intellectually substantial there, from the selection of works to be studied to the method by which they are approached. This is why its finally falling out of favor. There is nothing to understand in what is offered as works to study, and anyway if there were, the method of study would not bring you to it.
People will find this offensive and elitist. So I will offer some examples of what to do if you don't see the point but are prepared to look into it. Read the opening chapter of Pride and Prejudice and try to figure out why the particular words were chosen. Ask yourself, is this the first use of the omniscient narrator in English? It is, so why and how do you think the author was driven to invent it. There are other novels of the same time you can find and compare with it. Understand the difference. Read the opening page of Portrait of a Lady, and then The Ambassadors. What has gone wrong in the second, and are the signs already there in the first? Read Leslie Stephen on George Eliot (first having read George Eliot!) and try to decide if he is right in his valuation of the early and late work. Read Dr Johnson on the Metaphysicals and consider his reaction to them. Is he right? Partially right?
And if you still doubt the idea of objective quality, read some Yeats. Speech After Long Silence perhaps, and Sailing to Byzantium. And in a minor vein, Auden's Musee des Beaux Arts. You will have to work on it to understand what they is saying, but its in there, its clear, its specific, its concise, it could not be done in any other way. There is much more in our literature, but these will do as specimens. Then read Sylvia Plath, and shake your head to think that kids are being asked to study this. Not to form their taste, because
Re: (Score:3)
Its a fine example, particularly considering how short it is, of the double vision in English poetry. He included it in his selection of his own poems in the Oxford Book he edited. The theme is the same as in Sailing to Byzantium where it appears in a much richer and more explicit form, with the same double vision. Also the same theme in the Ode on a Grecian Urn by Keats.
Read the last two lines carefully. This is what the earlier lines have led up to. It faces both ways. When Yeats says something like
Re: (Score:3)
This is really about how to read poetry, at least English poetry, and what poetry does that nothing else can do.
This, and Sailing to Byzantium (and the Keats Ode) are about a tension between the life of the emotions and sensuality and the life of intellect and art. You get it in Sailing to Byzantium in the way the lines echo each other but with a whole different feeling. 'Whatever is begotten, born and dies' turns into 'Of what is passed, or passing, or to come'. Also
Caught in that sensual music all negl
I'm a science guy, but... (Score:2)
We are really going to miss the humanities. Humanities education is being ground between a rock (the best career path it offers is a professorship, that ticket to a life of genteel poverty) and a hard place (cancel cultism has quashed the very campus atmosphere of free inquiry and debate that these disciplines depend on for survival). We will miss it because history, literature and the arts are how human civilization is transmitted to the next generation.
Could localized continuing education supplemented cy
Generalist vs specialization. (Score:3)
An English degree is a general degree, it is the parent/source of such degrees as:
Advertising
Marketing
Journalism
Communication
Public Relations
Education
Public Speaking
Creative Writing
Linguistics
etc. If you went to Oxford in 1096 and wanted to do any of the above, you would have taken a degree in English. The skills learned in an English degree are still helpful for all of those sub-degrees. To a large extent, it is surprising that such a general degree still exists.
While English as a separate degree has survived, you can not get a degree in "Science" any more (Or Natural Philosophy as they originally called it). Instead you Major in Biology, Chemistry, Physics, etc. Or more likely even further specialized subjects such as Genetics, Organic Chemistry or Nuclear Engineering.
English is still worth taking for itself, even though it's sub-skills have become so useful for commerce. While less people take it then it's sub-degrees, there are still MORE people taking English today then there were 100 years ago because of the huge increase in the number of college educated people.
facts not in evidence (Score:2)
The idea that an English degree somehow makes you a better person or citizen, or that it uniquely provides you with an appreciation of history or culture is dubious. English as a major is concerned with deconstruction of works of literature; for example what kinds of foreshadowing was used, how metaphors play into the ambiance of the piece, what themes permeate, how they are interwoven, etc.
This is not the same as a broad education in the humanities, which should be required of every college student; it's
The Humanities Should Be Saved (Score:3)
Dammit (Score:2)
I clicked on the post hoping to hear the tragic story of a heroic British officer who battled in the Crimean War.
Says more about the cost of tuition (Score:2)
If college were free we'd have a better idea of what people were actually interested in and wanted to learn. Since it's not, and most people aren't born into massive wealth, it has turned into a stepping stone for increasing your earning potential. And means the humanities are a luxury item that few can afford.
They don't teach kids how to *apply* the skills (Score:2)
Turn universities in to coding camps (Score:2)
How's those huckster degrees going? (Score:2)
How's those huckster degrees going? You know, the really divisive stuff like African-American Queer Studies or Gender Studies?
Any market for that now that corporations have started to swing the axe at DEI departments, now that they see all the crazy coming out with those degrees is costing them real money and tarnishing reputations?
And yes, this post *is* flame bait, a lightning rod. It has to be said. DEI has to die. Before people die FROM it.
Some degrees are worthless. English Major is a shortcut t
Re: (Score:2)
How's those huckster degrees going?
My degree is in Russian Literature.
My job is I'm a senior developer at a successful mid-size consulting firm.
So mine is working out really well thank you very much for asking.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe not cleaning fuel tanks, but you may have a future in laundry.
Sheets mostly. Very white sheets.
As seen on Slashdot! (Score:2)
People are getting dumber.
People are getting dumber all the time.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Generally speaking the humanities in college have become corrupted activist disciplines, and are intellectual poison in the 20th century. so if there's less people drinking the poison kool-aid, that's good news.
Heh - I'm a liberal-bordering-on-Marxist-humanities-lover, and even I mostly agree with your assessment. It seems the folks who modded you down either swallowed a big dose of the kool-aid you mentioned, or lack reading comprehension skills.
Re: (Score:2)
Only partly. Yes, its learning to read. But its also learning to discriminate between good and bad. Its learning to understand what separates E M Forster from Charles Morgan. Or why Mauriac is in the end profoundly uninteresting as a novelist.
[Morgan is another in the plethora of dead ends in twentieth century English literature. I suppose a contemporary equivalent in pretentiousness, with greater complexity, is John Barth.]
This however is no longer what English majors are learning. The general loss o
Re: (Score:2)
No one disputes the need to speak and write in a compelling manner. However, this should be accomplished - like many other subjects of study in colleges - at the high school level. That doesn't mean a university is the best place for vocational training. Perhaps trade schools or apprenticeships are better suited for some of these pursuits. But for STEM degrees, the number of course hours that many consider wasted by repeating subject matter you should have learned in high school is outrageous.
With the adve
Re: (Score:2)
Didn't mean to slight the International Baccalaureate(R) programs either. They also have a good course load, even if their CAS hours are a bit over the top.