The Associated Press recently detailed the desperation of our public universities as they strive to protect the humanities from budget-cutting state governors and legislatures. The story focuses on comments made last month by Florida governor Rick Scott. Citing the miserable economy, Scott argued that precious state tax dollars should go to support science and tech studies, not “educate more people who can’t get jobs in anthropology.”
This has sent shock waves through faculty lounges across the country. The story quotes University of Connecticut president Susan Herbst, who worries that an overemphasis on job training will rob students of what is truly higher in higher education. Not only do the humanities teach “critical thinking,” says Herbst, they also “teach us how we’re supposed to live.”
As someone with a Ph.D. in the humanities myself, I’d share Herbst’s sadness if I thought there was much left of the genuine humanities still being taught that needed saving. Instead, Herbst is right for the wrong reason: The humanities are indeed in mortal peril, if not dead already. But neither our governors nor our state legislators are the assassins. Our humanities professors are.
Adolph Berle recognized this over a half-century ago. An FDR brain-truster, he went on to become a law professor at Columbia. In a 1960 speech, he took American universities to task for having “run away” from their duty to teach, as Herbst puts it, “how we’re supposed to live.” Berle’s bill of indictment aims particularly at university philosophy departments, but does not spare history or the social sciences.
The abandonment of the humanities’ core function, lamented by Berle in 1960, has only accelerated since. Up until the ’60s, most colleges and universities required all students, regardless of major, to study the great works of philosophy, literature, politics, art, and music. If you examine the course catalogues of today’s schools, you’ll find that fewer than 2 percent of them still offer a common core curriculum.
The “Western Civ” requirement is another casualty of the past 50 years. In a landmark study titled “The Vanishing West: 1964–2010,” the National Association of Scholars found that required Western Civilization survey courses, which were a staple up until the ’60s, are today “virtually extinct” across the country.
As for Herbst’s claim that the humanities “teach us how we’re supposed to live,” this is true; rather, it was true, up until about 50 years ago. The last two generations of college students have been taught by their humanities and social-science professors that principles regarding “how we’re supposed to live” are merely “values,” and that all values are as good as any others. Moral and cultural relativism are the thin gruel that the universities feed their students’ hungry souls.
No wonder, then, that while Herbst claims that the humanities teach “critical thinking,” the facts reveal a less-sunny reality. A recent study of college achievement, titled, Academically Adrift, found that 45 percent of the students it surveyed showed little improvement in their critical-thinking capacities after two years of college. After four years, 36 percent continued to show little improvement. Having been pummeled to near-death by our universities, today’s humanities lack the wherewithal to sharpen effectively students’ critical-reasoning capacities.
And so now, after their decades-long assault on the humanities, our universities are surprised to find that students and state governments have finally learned their lesson of contempt, and are responding in perfectly logical fashion by declaring, “No need to spend much time and money studying this stuff.”
My only surprise is that it didn’t happen sooner.
If they hope to reignite the public’s interest in the serious study of the humanities, our universities might first show an interest in such serious study themselves.
— Thomas K. Lindsay serves as director of the Center for Higher Education at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Prior to that, he was deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities during the second term of Pres. George W. Bush.
"The story quotes University of Connecticut president Susan Herbst, who worries that an overemphasis on job training will rob students of what is truly higher in higher education."
I suppose having the top ranked Masters of Fine Arts program in Puppet Studies puts the "higher" in "higher education."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI never pass by the chance to make fun of Connecticut (strate motto "Bigger than Rhode Island"), but I'm sure that advanced degree work in puttpry studies has placed the academic program of the university at the same pinnalce that their football team has achieved -- competeing for the national championsip. Er, competing in the Cotton Bowl? Ah, competing in the godaddy.com Bowl? On the sidelines, watching the big boys play?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDidn't someone by the name of Wm F Buckley, Jr., first make his name known for a book excoriating that "other" Connecticut center of higher education, not exactly for the same reason that FL Gov. Scott does higher education, but certainly in opposition to that defense offer by president Herbst.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe original post challenges Herbst's claims; the first two comments take aim at her university. This seems a good place to note an important distinction between an academy that has become increasingly ridiculous and the remaining scholars still doing good work within it.
Herbst's work itself -- if one can judge by the titles -- seems to focus on important issues within her specialization. It seems, at cursory glance, that is, to avoid the excesses (rightly) decried in the post, mocked in the comments.
Her c.v. is available here: External Link
Why does this matter? Because in rightly critiquing the failures of the poor practitioners of humanities scholarship, it's wise (and, more importantly, fair and just) to not denigrate (and thus alienate) the good ones. Perhaps she is doing good work *within* the academy -- something conservatives should applaud.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseA small college in Georgia recently adopted "critical thinking" as its academic goal for the next five years. SACS instructed the faculty that any and all exercises in critical thinking had to be "quantifiable." The faculty sat mute in the training meeting, waiting for the college president to take the lead. Even then, they would not say anything which could be construed as critical of the administration. How do you teach people to think critically when the faculty can not or will not think? Reasoning has been reduced to a box on a scantron.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseToday, the measure of intellectualism is being "critical"--thinking is optional. I took a modern rhetoric course last year and was disgusted by the blather passing as rhetorical studies. The overweening theme: "whitey did it." After suffering through all that, I went for the brain bleach: classical rhetoric. One paragraph of Aristotle was more edifying than 1,000-plus pages of modern rhetorical drivel.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIn theory, the humanities are an important area of knowledge and learning. In practice in the United States of 2011, most humanities faculty and students are just another class of worthless parasites who can't think, write or do.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Critical thinking" is the last thing the humanities teach. Rather, they teach an utterly slavish devotion to the latest Lefty trends and anti-white-male grievance-mongering. Real "critical thinking" in most humanities classes would guarantee you a lousy grade and very likely get you brought up on charges of violating the campus speech codes.
Naturally, the arts become boring when everything is interpreted to mean the exact same thing: "white male hegemonic patriarchal racist sexist..... blah blah blah."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThere are still some profs who teach the old-time humanities (such as this one: External Link
), but I agree that they're few and far between.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe "100 reasons NOT to go to grad school" blog recently brought attention to a surprising study done at Yale. The university found that humanities and social science graduate students were costing the university far more money than grad students in the sciences:
External Link
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSeems to me that the first role of a university is to provide the matriculated the tools to be self-sustaining. Figuring out one is to feed oneself engenders the deepest critical thinking of all.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"The “Western Civ” requirement is another casualty of the past 50 years"
You forget that it was purposefully killed. Don't you remember the oh-so-endearing chants of "hey, hey, ho, ho, western civ has got to go"?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAt this point, anyone interested in English Literature or Philosophy should just study the source material themselves. The university courses and professors are pretty much dross, and to be avoided.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt would seem the word "University" has devolved to mean "career skills training school" for certain classes of creative and analytical careers, which is why Humanities as taught are at a disadvantage...there is no career, other than that of teaching Humanities, for which they clearly provide training.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNot to say it has to be that way; I'd suggest for those who think the studies of Humanities have actual value in teaching critical thinking and a superior understanding of the human condition, limits, and potential, that you establish some sort of intellectual finishing school to impart those skills through the teaching of the Humanities, and market your teaching to those who perceive an advantage to having those skills in their chosen careers. A decade or two of graduates who are demonstrably more successful in certain careers would likely resuscitate the value of Humanities in the common mind.
I try to remind my English teacher that after I got two degrees in Engineering, I spend most of my time reading, writing, editing and reviewing reports or directives on technical matters. I took two college English course.
The time I spend doing library research on underlying science is in second place, and the time spent on framing and solving math problems is a distant third.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse[Not only do the humanities teach “critical thinking,” says Herbst, they also “teach us how we’re supposed to live.”]
1). Yeah, because none of the engineers I know use critical thinking.
2). I'm completely uninterested in living the way some wooly-headed humanities professor thinks I should live. I think William F Buckley made a similar comment 50 years ago.
3). What passes for the "Humanities" has become so watered down, it's practically useless. Rigorous study of Latin and Greek has become a parade of Grievance Studies courses where there isn't actually a right answer - other than white men are evil.
After I realized how hard it was to make a living with my English Literature degree, I went back to school to become a CPA.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse[Not only do the humanities teach “critical thinking,” says Herbst, they also “teach us how we’re supposed to live.”]
1). Yeah, because none of the engineers I know use critical thinking.
2). I'm completely uninterested in living the way some wooly-headed humanities professor thinks I should live. I think William F Buckley made a similar comment 50 years ago.
3). What passes for the "Humanities" has become so watered down, it's practically useless. Rigorous study of Latin and Greek has become a parade of Grievance Studies courses where there isn't actually a right answer - other than white men are evil.
After I realized how hard it was to make a living with my English Literature degree, I went back to school to become a CPA.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"white men are evil."
STRAIGHT white CHRISTIAN EUROPEAN GENDER-NORMATIVE men are evil.
Fixed that for ya.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Not only do the humanities teach 'critical thinking'...
I don't think most humanities departments have taught critical thinking in decades. Further, I'd be at a loss to name five major things the culture would miss if every humanities department in the country had burned to the ground in 1971.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Not only do the humanities teach 'critical thinking,' says Herbst, they also 'teach us how we’re supposed to live.'"
Having spent 5 years in the Romance Studies PhD program at Cornell, I can assure you that Plain English is not being used here. Lemme translate:
Critical Thinking = How to rewrite every text ever written as a Marxist tract
How We're Supposed To Live = To become entrenched left-wing activists
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse