Humanities Now?

A question that has been pursuing me as of late is, What difference might the “humanities” make in a college education in the U.S. in the 21st century. A narrower version of this question that is of interest to me goes like this: What is it that the humanities contribute to a Cascadia Community College education? I suppose my interest is driven in part by a literature teacher’s fear of being irrelevant. My work in a college that assesses itself is a more significant driver, at least in the present. I began asking these questions with more urgency after Cascadia (the college where I teach the humanities) began to take up program review eighteen months ago and my colleagues needed to wonder about what learning in the humanities might look like. If learning happens in the humanities, then I need to be able to argue with some confidence that the study of literature (my bag in the humanities) will alter learners’ practice of being human and enable them better to pursue “important social ends” (a phrase of Lee Shulman’s that I am taken with). Making this argument seems both attractive and harder than I thought it would be. The argument turns out to be very personal. Between 1981 and 1994, I worked my way to three degrees in English. I studied the humanities because I loved the courses and (for the most part) the people who taught them. Despite the fact that I was moved enough by literature and drama, music and architecture to forego more lucrative and, much of the time, comprehensible interests, I have never written for myself an apology. I have long offered to my students various arguments about the value of the courses we are beginning; those arguments may even be valid and compelling. But I have never integrated such an argument to the point that I might offer it to the parents of one of my students (or to group of my students who are themselves parents).

So here goes. I’ll start from the boilerplate that describes the humanities and associated learning outcomes at Cascadia:

Languages, literature, the arts and philosophy are essential cultural expressions of being human. Underlying these subjects are ideas such as aesthetics, ethics, symbolism and creativity that vary across times and cultures. Through the humanities, learners participate in others’ subjective experience of reality and convey their own.

• Learn: Learners will gain knowledge of the core content of at least two humanities disciplines and of methods of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
• Think: Learners will analyze and evaluate humanities content, drawing conclusions about the form and impact of human artifacts.
• Communicate: Learners will discover and use a creative process to communicate understandings of human experience through visual, musical, dramatic, oral, or written products.
• Interact: Learners will investigate the context and language of the human experience to examine and explore their everyday worlds and to expand their experience and under- standing of other cultures and times.

I have to admit that I like the last sentence of our summary: “learners participate in others’ subjective experience of reality and convey their own.” We are suggesting that one studies the humanities to practice listening to the way that others have represented experience and to speak richly about those representations in ways that are honest to one’s experience.

So what would I watch, say, a lit student doing in order to know where they are in achieving such an outcome? I would want to see her talk about literary texts as historical forms but as a person who is consuming those texts (and not some disembodied expert). I would also want to see her respond to another person talking about a literary artifact. It might be that just the latter would do. If a learner considered a response to a text and explained how that other presented an artifact as an aesthetic form and how that other’s response builds for her a more complete understanding. This “talk” could be delivered in a variety of media (from a book club performance to a conference talk to a website to a podcast to a conventional essay). This “talk” might be aimed at a variety of identified audiences and assessed for its effectiveness.

This sort of performance might integrate (for me and my students) our purpose in studying literature or drama. Our aim would be the ability to talk richly (with creativity and sensitivity) about artifacts that make humans identifiably human. We would aim at understanding hard, theoretical analysis but also at identifying honest responses to aesthetic forms. Rather than taking the experts as the last word, we would aim at being able to listen to the experts so that our own responses become both more expert and also more open to alternative understanding.

Should college take up this aim with an entire course distribution area (15-20% of a degree)? The question becomes easier to answer after this thought experiment. Our students need to learn how to read expert literature and grapple with artifacts that don’t yield an obvious interpretation (think of designing an ad or trying to repair the HVAC system in a hospital). They need to be able to listen generously to other’s ideas and report back those ideas with accuracy and honesty but also go beyond what others say to new solutions. They need to be able to settle in on an interpretation of a situation without rejecting or losing track of the various alternative explanations. They need this sort of humanities.

I have convinced myself of a need. I now wonder whether what I offer in a humanities course has much to do with it.

To Professional Students

When I first read Lee Shulman’s essay “Professing the Liberal Arts,” I scribbled the phrase “professional student” in the margin of the second page and again about three-quarters of the way through the essay. This phrase has me thinking. My friends and I at the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire joked about becoming professional students in the 1980s. We were humanities students from rural Wisconsin and the Milwaukee suburbs. Studying at a regional campus, we had only a vague notion of graduate study and the professional academic world. For us, “professional student” named a mythical opportunity to continue to study literature or art or music or history. A few of us went on to grad school and stuck to the liberal arts trajectory of our bachelor’s degrees. I lived as a happy but poor semi-pro for a decade.

My ideals about being a student have evolved since the mid ‘80s. College is more expensive and seems to be a more instrumental venture; higher education seems to have become concurrently more accessible and less available. Because being a student is both more dear and less valued, students and teachers seem to be a bit confused by one another’s expectations. Shulman, I think, offers a way forward.

He asks us to reflect on what it means to be in a profession. His six criteria are useful, but what seems most important to me is the focus on service and the generation of new knowledge. Professionals pursue “important social ends” (14), and they test and expand knowledge developed in the academy (15). They do this work in and on behalf of communities whatever their own interests are. While thinking of the professions in these terms makes me mutter about investment bankers (are they professionals?), this argument helps me rethink how we might understand the role of a learner in the first two years of college. First, we have to stipulate to the social ends general education students pursue. I might argue for the development of citizens with critical literacy and what Richard Hugo called a “crap detector.” I think that we (members of the U.S. democracy) need such development, would be enriched by it. I might also suggest that pro students are pursuing the interpretation and celebration of cultures (another social good). Perhaps most importantly, they are contributing to the refinement of the process by which members of our society get an education. Clearly, other arguments could be made. Bring them on.

Second, we need to clarify how students are applying theoretical knowledge in a field of practice and using their own judgment to revise theory and report back to the theoreticians. The question here for me is, What is the field of practice in which a pro student labors? Shulman hints at an answer to this question: “service learning” (26). Many of my general education students see classes as communities, but passing communities that exist of a brief period and exist to serve the learners. Shulman, by suggesting “a clinical component or the equivalent of an internship experience,” outlines quite a different perception of the classroom. If GE courses are service to the broader community, then the learning community is not about the learners but about producing learning that is of use to someone. In such a setting, it makes little sense to ask, How many points is this worth? Instead, the question is, Have you done enough reading and writing or drawing to contribute to the cause?

Shulman wonders aloud, “How might this sort of thing go on?” He offers a methodology, the case study, that works brilliantly in professional schools and in the third and fourth year of the college curriculum. What cases might the professional students that I am imagining work on? To even begin to work on that question, teachers like me (Shulman admits he knows little about teaching in the GE curriculum) have to reimagine our classrooms and identify more clearly what service our students are involved in. I have only vague ideas about what that service might look like, but I know at least the part of the problem I need to work on.

New Thoughts on Writing in School

So, I am rethinking my position on school writing a bit because of my experience this past summer helping someone get ready to take the GRE General Test. In a conversation with a friend, I brought this up, and her reply was, “What’s the GRE?” I thought that was a wonderful response. For those aware of it, the GRE becomes an overwhelming and all-encompassing part of life. For the rest of the world, it is quite irrelevant. I hadn’t really thought of it since taking it about 23 years ago.

So, for some definition. The Graduate Record Examinations are a set of standardized tests. Universities and some fellowships use the scores on this test in their process of deciding whether someone is ready for graduate school or for a research position. The test is for those trying to get into grad school what the SAT is for high school juniors and seniors. The current version includes tests of verbal and quantitative reasoning, but also of argumentative and analytical writing. The two writing segments are timed, vague, and, from the points of view of most writers, ridiculous. The test offers a claim and writers have to present their perspective on the issue implicit in the claim. Here’s an example: “Important truths begin as outrageous, or at least uncomfortable, attacks upon the accepted wisdom of the time.” The writer gets 45 minutes to agree or disagree or restate.

As we got ready for the test, we practiced. I practiced so that I had a better sense of what the demands were. Practice involved looking at a prompt, clicking on a stop watch, and going through an intentional process (I actually drew my approach in my journal). I found these sessions to be so unappealing that I had to schedule them and tell my wife when I was going to do them. If someone else were not asking me about this work, I would have avoided it. I found myself wondering, “Is this how students feel when they confront one of my writing assignments?” I knew how to make a response, even had confidence that I could draft a strong response. I just dreaded spending the 45 minutes that it would take.

Here’s what has me rethinking the impromptu, though. In a couple of instances, the act of writing under pressure actually led me to interesting, innovative thinking. I found myself wishing that I had more time when the clock hit 45 minutes because I had found an approach worth pursuing.

So does this mean that school writing, even timed, impromptu writing can actually lead people to think more completely? Scary.