Thoughts on the depths to which they’ve plunged, by classics professor Victor Davis Hanson:
…classical liberal education—despite the fashionable critique that it had never been disinterested—for a century was largely apolitical. Odysseus was critiqued as everyman, not an American CEO, a proto-Christian saint, or the caricature of white patriarchal privilege. Instead Homer made students of all races and classes and both genders think twice about the contradictions of the human experience: which is the greatest danger to civilization, the Lala land of the comfortable Lotus Eaters, or the brutal pre-polis savagery of the tribal Cyclopes? Telemachus was incidentally white, rich, and male, but essentially a youthful everyman coming of age, with all the angst and insecurities that will either overwhelm the inexperienced and lead to perpetual adolescence, or must be conquered on the path to adulthood. Odysseus towers among his lesser conniving and squabbling crewmen—but why then does his curiosity and audacity ensure that all his crewmen who hitch their star to the great man end up dead?
In the zero-sum game of the college curricula, what was crowded out over the last half-century was often the very sort of instruction that had once made employers take a risk in hiring a liberal arts major. Humanities students were more likely to craft good prose. They were trained to be inductive rather than deductive in their reasoning, possessed an appreciation of language and art, and knew the referents of the past well enough to put contemporary events into some sort of larger abstract context. In short, they were often considered ideal prospects as future captains of business, law, medicine, or engineering.
Not now. The world beyond the campus has learned that college students know how and why to take a political position but not how to defend it through logic and example. If employers are turned off by a lack of real knowledge, they are even more so when it is accompanied by zealousness. Ignorance and arrogance are a fatal combination.
Ignorance and arrogance is a deadly combo, as demonstrated by the current occupant of the Oval Office.
I think this is an excellent point. The humanities used to be viewed as universal. And, in many ways, they really have to have been for these works to have survived until now as they have.
I can enjoy Michelangelo’s works today without being a Florentine, a 15th century Catholic, or anything else that limited. Sure, much of what is studied in the U.S. has a western bias, but that is, after all, our cultural base and undeniably a critical one in modern world culture.
That loss of the view of classics as universal, either by twisting them into modern politics or in viewing them as corrupted by the failings of their age, is a major one. We lose something critical in not being able to stand outside the age we live in once in a while.
Far too much of what passes for the humanities today is comprised of grievance or “angry” studies. I doubt many graduates of such programs find much in the way of gainful private sector employment. Who would want to bring a credentialed malcontent into their company? About their best hope is to get a government job, work for some non-profit, or a job at a university.
VDH makes some good points but IMO, the problem with liberal arts majors in the workplace is that the education is too broad and superficial. Students would benefit from a fifth year of study dedicated to a more in-depth understanding of their chosen field and providing some practical skills people use in any job. At this point, people are better served by going to a community college and then using the internet to satisfy their intellectual curiosity. The exception is for people who are in the hard sciences but maybe not all STEM fields.
Work experience and certifications from professional organizations trump a four year degree. A person may require a BA or masters to advance in their career but aside from the cost, acquiring either is trivial and people might do better if they put it off until later in life. Their company might even pick up the cost.
I know that the Armed Forces in the U.S. have had their ups and down and there remain the combat veterans offering criticism of the “perfumed princes” who game the system for promotion into the upper ranks.
But I get this vibe that if you consider various institutions — the university, the corporation, the government bureaucracy, the main-stream media — the military is probably the one institution left based on virtues of truth and individual honor.
There is no social promotion, or at least very little. You either have the ability to fly a jet and they train you to fly a jet, or you “wash out” of flight school, and your parents don’t come to your C.O. complaining about why you are not allowed to be a pilot. Yes, there were some politically driven exceptions, but these are exceptions.
The military places a very high value on higher education. You need a college degree or equivalent for the officer ranks, and the high officer ranks require a serious level of graduate education. Many get degrees in Engineering, but many scholar-warriors get degrees, and even graduate degrees, in the Humanities.
If a humanities education were valueless in leadership training, you think the military would have long pulled the plug in supporting their officers on the track to become generals to get humanities degrees?
That reminded me of a story I read a few days ago.
Fox News link
It goes on, but much of what we assumed were required classes for a liberal education just aren’t required anymore, so you could have an Ivy League liberal arts graduate whose last brush with American history, civics, or economics was in high school.
There’s an old joke in the military that rank * IQ equals a constant. It’s one thing to get a humanities degree in serious Middle East or Asia studies as a military professional. A serious degree in those subjects can give a senior officer a deeper understanding of current or potential areas of conflict. I doubt you’ll find very many senior officers going for degrees is Women’s Studies, Gay Studies or any of those other worthless grievance courses.
” I doubt you’ll find very many senior officers going for degrees is Women’s Studies, Gay Studies or any of those other worthless grievance courses.”
Although maybe some should in order to better understand and communicate with their political minders.
“Improvements to the ballistic codpiece wont just benefit cisgender but transgender as well.”
This drops below the college level as well.
At high school, instead of Hamlet, Macbeth, Merchant of Venice, etc., my eldest is getting “Thirteen Reasons Why” (a really depressing anti-suicide screed), “My Life as a Part-Time Indian”, and a couple books whose names escape me at the moment, but focused on reveling in the rampant victimhood of the trangendered.
The school -built- a globe theater for production of more Shakespeare in the electives (outside of the actual English class), but even there they’ve shifted off of the actual classics into pop-cultural plays.
I enjoy Sherman Alexie. He is great in person. Saw him once ages ago in high school and he told a really funny but slightly racist story about the creation of white people. Turns out they come from coyote toe nail clippings. Moral of the story is: Always pick up your toe nail clippings lest the fall on the ground and grow into white people.
Another story he told was about a trip to NYC for some publishing party. The snobby liberal elite schooled industry people were a bit dickish and looked down on him. He was challenged to prove he was a good writer who knew his craft. In order to prove himself, he had to write a poem in iambic pentameter on the spot (or something like that). He did, and as the story goes blew them away.
But would students today have both an understanding of authors like Alexie and the Western classics?
Including authors like Sherman Alexie and Zora Neale Hurston was intended to expand literary cannon but in practice, they are sometimes used to replace and exclude other great writers.
If you want to see how much of a joke the education system has become, ask an 18 year old to add two 2 digit numbers in his head – no calculator! You will be hard pressed to find a current high school grad who can do that simple addition.
To mess with the kid next door when he was complaining about having to memorize some short little nothing, I started reciting the Iliad to him (At one point I could go for about 40 minutes without an error from the Fagles translation). Some of the top students still produce some amazing feats of learning, almost always on their own, though. In a lot of areas the curriculum will soon be little more than what drunk college kids say when they’re playing FIFA soccer on XBox.
Let me guess . . . that kid next door offered you a face-to-face encounter with that part of the sidewalk where someone didn’t clean after their dog?
“To mess with the kid next door when he was complaining about having to memorize some short little nothing”
He could be dyslexic.
“In a lot of areas the curriculum will soon be little more than what drunk college kids say when they’re playing FIFA soccer on XBox.”
Hey, FIFA can teach a lot about soccer though. Like if you are running a 4-1-2-1-2 with a CDM and CAM, you want your outside defenders to attack on the wings.
I had him going for three or four minutes. 🙂
Of course this is the same kid who I once convinced to help me dig out our old septic tank, paying him a single dollar for his efforts. He thought it was cool because shoveling decades old poop was like something they’d do on “Dirty Jobs.” Tom Sawyer couldn’t top that one!