Feb. 6, 2006

Reading, Writing and Representing

Many now consider the humanities to be facing a relevancy “crisis.” Partly because of the culture wars, the humanities — if not the whole university — appear to have lost their reason to be. To choose just one compelling example, Bill Readings argues in The University in Ruins that the primary role of the university is no longer to inculcate national culture, so it now resorts to rhetorically convenient but substantively empty and ideologically suspect vagaries like the term “excellence” to justify its existence. As one result, faculty in English and composition also suffer from what some recent publications are casting as a labor “crisis.”

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While the public grows increasingly skeptical of the nature and purposes of liberal arts education, academics generally, and we suspect English scholars particularly, have not been as effective as they could, should, and must be when representing the value of their work, especially teaching. In a colloquial nutshell, public criticism tends to follow some version of this reasoning: English departments aren’t teaching my kids to write and read well enough because they’re too busy trying to turn them into Marxists, feminists, homosexuals, or — worse — grad students. Meanwhile, our scholarship is derided as obtuse, cryptic, or absurd. It matters little that such descriptions are inaccurate, unfair, and often advanced in service of narrow-minded ideologies at odds with the democratic underpinnings of a liberal arts education. The fact remains that our work is nevertheless perceived at turns as irrelevant or threatening, a fact which directly and indirectly contributes to the deplorable state of labor conditions in English.

Because the value of work in English studies is so poorly understood, even among ourselves, negative stereotypes become entrenched in the general cultural psyche in the form of common sense: e.g., literature is boring, difficult to understand, and best left to experts who talk about it in ways that are also boring and difficult to understand. And the value of writing is often reduced to its correctness, which, to many, is valuable only to the extent that it earns, as in earns good grades and jobs. This leads (or likely will lead) to further decreases in the number of English majors (currently about 4 in every 100) and this, in turn, will lead to fewer tenure-track lines and increased stratification of faculty, in the form of part-time and other non-tenurable lines. For example, a 1999 Modern Language Association survey found that only 37 percent of English faculty members were on tenure-track lines. While jobs in composition, tenure-tenure track and otherwise, have proven more available than those in, say, 19th century American literature, such jobs often consist of administrative positions, or what both critics and reformers are now calling the middle-management class of faculty, wherein one or two tenured faculty are charged with supervising a large and shifting class of part-time faculty.

As faculty continue to stratify, it will become increasingly difficult to represent the purpose, direction, and value of work in English studies beyond the rudiments of business writing and the cultural capital afforded by cocktail party knowledge of Shakespeare or Melville. The vicious cycle can be simplified as follows: A managed and stratified faculty often has difficulty representing itself effectively in the culture wars, which in turn exacerbates the level of stratification, which in turn leads to increasing difficulty with representation. The consequences of poor representation and increased stratification harm all faculty and students in nearly every imaginable category, including infringement on academic freedom, especially in matters of curriculum design and assessment, as well as decreasing job security, inequitable pay scales, little or no benefits, high teaching loads, large class sizes, and pitiful office conditions.

James Piereson, writing in a recent issue of the conservative periodical The Weekly Standard reflects the views of many non-academics who haven’t been made to care or care enough about our problems and, in fact, resent academics for our seeming disengagement with their values. He writes: “When this year’s freshmen enter the academic world, they will encounter a bizarre universe in […] institutions that define themselves in terms of left wing ideology. […] which is both anti-American and anticapitalist.” Piereson approvingly refers to university trustees who (in his words) contend that “if their institutions are to be rescued, they dare not rely on faculties to do it.” Piereson’s variety of culture-war mongering and his apparent comfort with making outlandish claims without much more than scatter-shot anecdotal evidence, often lead to equally bombastic and antagonistic counter-statements, and so go the culture wars.

Citing findings from the National Center for Educational Statistics, Louis Menand points out in his 2005 contribution to MLA’s Profession that between 1970 and 2001 the number of English majors dropped, roughly, by a third; however, “the system is producing the same number of doctorates in English that it was producing back in 1970. These Ph.D.’s have trouble getting tenure-track jobs because fewer students major in English, and therefore the demand for English literature specialists has declined.” There are many theories about the causes of this discrepancy (e.g., students who would have previously majored in English are now turning to interdisciplinary programs, in, say, cultural studies, or students are driven by the increasing costs of college education to specialize in areas, such as, say, computer science, which have a reputation for more immediate financial pay off than does a B.A. in English). Regardless, more and more conversations in English studies seem to be focusing on ways to reinvigorate the work of English studies in the 21st century, so as to make it more relevant to the public, especially students.

The various strands of this already vast and quickly growing debate are difficult to summarize and properly attribute in the space that we have. For the moment, suffice to say that the main idea is that work in the humanities, both critical and imaginative, seems to be increasingly alien and perhaps irrelevant to the public. It is often said that scholarship in the humanities has become too insular for its own good. One possible solution to the perceived problem of insularity is often described with the phrase “going public.” In 1995, Linda Ray Pratt uses it in her contribution to the influential collection Higher Education Under Fire. In 1998, Peter Mortensen uses the phrase as the title to his article in the journal College Composition and Communication. More recently, it has been invoked in a Duke University panel on academic publishing, and Henry Boyte makes “going public” the focus of his 2005 occasional paper for the Kettering Foundation. If the catch phrase for the late 90s was “critical thinking,” the phrase for the early years of the 21st century may just be “going public.”

While we believe it is important to go public with academic work in the humanities, this phrase, however catchy, raises more questions than it answers. Go public with what, exactly? And what venues qualify as appropriately public? Further, Louis Menand invites us to consider the possibility that going public may not be as easy or as desirable as it may at first sound: “The last premise academic humanists should be accepting is that the value of their views is measured by the correspondence of those views to common sense and the common culture. Being an intellectual and thinking theoretically are going outside the parameters of a common culture and common sense.” (Menand’s emphasis)

This is to say that the duty of academics, be they physicists or humanists, is not to the public but to knowledge, dare we say truth. And the public is not necessarily concerned with either. Menand concludes: “Ignorance has almost become an entitlement. We are living in a country in which liberals would rather move to the right than offend the superstitions of the uneducated. As always, the invitation to academics is to assist in the construction of the intellectual armature of the status quo. This is an invitation we should decline without regrets.”

Here, Menand raises some valuable points of caution. In his line of argument, going public may mean caving in, stripping our ideas of nuance, and abandoning precision or critical thinking for the sake of public acceptance. Of course most of us agree that teachers who passively abide by common sense notions and status quo values are not acting like responsible academics, and none of us would endorse this behavior. However, as noteworthy as such cautions may be, the distinction between the academic and the public seems overdrawn here. After all, there are nearly 5,000 college campuses in the United States, enrolling more than 14 million students, with enrollments projected to increase through the year 2014. This is to say that the question of “going public” has already, to a very large extent, been settled: academic work is quite thoroughly situated in the public realm, and if the public considers ignorance to be “almost an entitlement,” then we are at least partly to blame for this state of affairs. Gerald Graff goes so far as to claim that the “university is itself popular culture — what else should we call an institution that serves millions if not an agent of mass popularization. But the university still behaves as if it were unpopular culture, and the anachronistic opposition of academia and journalism continues to provide academics with an iron clad excuse for communicative ineptitude.”

Going public, therefore, is a useful but not entirely adequate phrase, since it does not explain how more public exposure will improve the current state of the humanities or the public’s view of work done within it. Therefore, we would like to focus on improving the work which is, far and away, the most public and the most popular — that is to say, our teaching. It will be necessary for educators in English studies to make the case for the work of English studies. Increased and accessible public discourse about teaching literature and writing may be a first step, but one which would require more questioning of what we mean by teaching, to whom it is valuable, and why. As opposed to (re)fighting the culture wars with those like James Piereson, or resisting the public face of academic work, we might practice our discourse theories with the public, rather than merely attempt to report on them, even in jargon-free language. This assumes a dialogue that transforms not only the content of the humanities but also the participants of the conversation — especially, teachers and their students.

Taking up this point in his recent book, English Composition as a Happening, Geoffrey Sirc bemoans the dulling influence of academic routine, which has led many of us to (re)produce the sort of polemical prose and responses which have, thus far, not proven particularly effective tactics in the culture wars. Instead Sirc urges us, as educators and scholars, to define teaching and writing in ways that articulate the value of innovation and imaginative thinking. And we would like to see Sirc’s suggestion enacted both internally and externally, that is in forums such as this one and in public venues such as newspapers, periodicals, and community meetings, in short, any of a variety of venues that serve to establish dialogue among academics, students, administrators, parents, media members, and legislators. The better we are able to do this, the better we will be able to supplant negative and inaccurate representations of our work.

While critics such as Sirc and Menand are clearly influential here, we understand this task to be of particular importance to graduate students, not least of all because the future of work in the humanities is quite literally in our hands. Should we continue the tradition of predominantly insular and/or antagonistic discourse, our degree of leverage and relevance with the public will continue to decrease, as will our prospects for tenure-line work. It is incumbent upon us to open the lines of communication and to make known the good work that is already being done in our classrooms.

Scholarship on this issue is already underway. For example, at the 2005 MLA conference, Michael Bérubé and Cary Nelson spoke to issues of contingent labor; others such as Peter Mortensen and David Shumway attended to matters of representation. We regard these two issues as linked; that is, the better we understand and represent our work (especially teaching), the better our working conditions stand a chance of improving. For this, we conclude with the following proposals that take from and build on the work of these and other scholars:

1. Cultivate existing trends toward interdisciplinarity, such as linked or clustered courses, in ways that effectively demonstrate the value of English studies, particularly in terms of accomplished reading and writing.

2. Realize that the Ph.D., as a credential for teaching, requires civic responsibility and ethical action. The better we collectively attend to this fact and make this work known, the better we will be able to build a platform from which to argue for improved working conditions.

3. Accept and embrace the possibility of working through cultural debates in ways and venues that are accessible to the general public. This is not to suggest necessary agreement with the public, but to encourage a variety of discourse that holds the public in vital partnership.

4. Encourage hiring, promotion, and tenure committees to value the above efforts or else they simply will not happen, or at least not to the extent that they should. In other words, in order to improve the representation of our work, it will be necessary to appeal effectively not only to the public but also to our senior colleagues.

Peter H. Khost is a lecturer in writing and rhetoric at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Frank P. Gaughan is an instructor in English and first-year writing at Hofstra University. Frank and Peter are both doctoral candidates in English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. This article is adapted from a talk they gave at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association.

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Comments

A brave effort

Written bravely, if somewhat one-sidedly. Given (a) unbelievably lop-sided number of applicants (hundreds?) to available positions and (b) the empirically-proven fact that certain faculties are ideologically non-diverse –- doing something is better than doing nothing. Doing nothing only continues the downward, painful trend.

Imagination and innovation are new buzz-words, as the U.S. tries to catch up with Japan, Korea, China, Germany, and Asia. Note large number of articles in this well-known publication —

http://search.businessweek.com/Se...mp;skin=BusinessWeek&x=0&y=0

Now, if someone wants to produce the 2,500th PhD dissertation on some aspect of Shakespere –- great. They are free to fund it themselves. The masses are focused on keeping the economy afloat and their families.

Art D., at 9:40 am EST on February 6, 2006

Yee gods! If that’s the best you’ve got, quit now.

The world is rushing towards ecological collapse, with the oceans—the protein supply for most of the world’s people—becoming submarine deserts devoid of life. The atmosphere contains record levels of CO2 and even the coal industry is having to back away insistent denial of climate change. Persistent organic pollutants have caused cancer rates and birth defects to skyrocket. The world’s hyperpower is under the control of an unelected junta that sees the Constitution as just another piece of paper to be shredded if inconvenient as it kowtows to religious fundamentalists in every sphere of its activity. Population is at nearly 7 billion and is estimated to peak at at least 9 billion, billions of whom will subsist on something like $1 a day before succumbing to the resurgent infectious disease epidemics.

And a key contributing cause of all of that is that people in the humanities are proudly innumerate and ignorant of science, concentrating almost entirely on creating an introspective literature that is devoted solely to the glorification of their own egos and the triumph of feelings over rationality.

Your tedious essay fills me with despair for the future of academia and, indeed, the world. People doing relevant work don’t need to write long essays about the need to engage the public—assumed to be illiberal—in “discourse.” Good luck in your project, whatever it is, but, based on this essay, I suggest that you’d better have a backup plan.

JMG, If that’s the best you’ve got ..., at 9:40 am EST on February 6, 2006

I just finished my last comment when I chanced to read todays IHE piece concerning elimination of math and physics at a “liberal arts” college.

http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/02/06/wvwc

I predict that we will next hear about WVWC in an article describing the problems its graduates have finding jobs. We won’t ever read about the problems its graduates face in understanding the world around them, because journalism is dominated by people just like them.

JMG, Sad evidence, at 9:45 am EST on February 6, 2006

This morning’s “A Word A Day” missive contains this, which made me think of your essay immediately:

It does not require many words to speak the truth. -Chief Joseph, native American leader (1840-1904)

JMG, Last comment, at 10:14 am EST on February 6, 2006

Service

What service does your english department provide? That is what we need to be asking. It can’t be grammer or literacy: they are a mess. What about career prep (being able to read at the necessary level) — nope.

Instead, many of you live in a world where you pursue information that is irrelevant for all but a few likeminded individuals — yet expect all of society to contribute to paying for it.

You need to scrap your delusions of graduer, go back to the drawing board, and figure out what service you provide and why no one important outside of academia thinks you are providing it. Then you need to fix it.

Kevin, Undergraduate, at 10:41 am EST on February 6, 2006

More thoughtful and relevant than you give credit for

Yes, JMG, the sciences are also in crisis in Higher Ed (as WVWU—which is in trouble in sooooo many other ways, too), and Kevin, well, you’re being Kevin, as far as I can tell.

What is interesting is that your prior comments suggest that this article is spot on: that we in the humanities (and in writing, particularly) haven’t always done a great job of making our thinking accessible, and while that shouldn’t be the end-all-be-all (I certainly can’t make sense of my astrophysicist brother-in-law’s articles, despite being neither innumerate nor science-phobic), dialogue is a crucial concept.

And while dialogue is crucial, it is incredibly difficult: While even other disciplines in our own institutions decry the humanities as irretrievably liberal, our students are asked to think of us as authorities, and so we walk a fine line of introducing ideas (some liberal, some conservative) without seeming to endorse them, even when we do.

This is why writing pedagogy is so important. The writing classroom is a place where cross-disciplinary, even anti-disciplinary, thinking can take place, where dialogue should happen, where students should be encouraged to argue with their professors’ points of view (and feel safe that it will not affect evaluation of their performance).

While the humanities may no longer have the role of propagating a national culture, I think we do still have a role in preparing students for democracy. And while most treat the university for preparation for the marketplace, the democracy remains for me the most cherished, and American, of public spaces.

And so I applaud all four of your recommendations as ones that I have tried to deploy myself. And so I will continue to challenge disciplinary boundaries as artificial (literate thinking should be politically empowered and informed; mathematical thinking can and should be elegant and artful; economic thinking can and should be ethical and responsible, etc.). I will teach as a member of my community, and not as a protected member of a rarified class. I will tell my students my political views and reward them for disagreeing rigorously, and penalize them for agreeing thoughtlessly. And (having just made it into the tenure track myself) I will look for colleagues who are like minded in my methodological, but not necessarily my political, mindset.

RC, Asst. Prof. of English, at 11:42 am EST on February 6, 2006

The one and perhaps the only thing that distinguishes all great art is an underlying and basic concern for its audience. The great writer wants not so much as deliver a message as make life better. We all have concern for self, the great writer expands that self concern into concern for others. Hence when Strunk and White say “Omit unnecessary words” and Shakespeare says “Brevity is the soul of wit” they should be taken very seriously indeed, because they are masters and trying to help us to a better life. If English faculties only would get that one idea across they would be performing a great service. A market will always exist for persons whose concern for others informs all they do.

Randall, at 12:21 pm EST on February 6, 2006

Doesn’t take many words to prove a point

Was Kevin, the undergraduate, trying to be funny when he said “grammer” is a mess?

Publius, at 1:11 pm EST on February 6, 2006

What is literature for?

The comments of some on this board offer shining examples, not only of our failure to convey the significance and uses of our discipline, but the defiant resistance of today’s market-driven, anti-intellectual conservative elite—one that insists that all knowledge and learning should be economically “practical,” consumer-oriented, and most of all compliant with the values and material demands of students or parents, rather than the traditional values of liberal education. “Liberalism,” of course, is the dirty word here, despite the fact that the very existence of a literate and politically empowered middle-class in America is a result of that very intellectual tradition.

To understand that tradition, and the cultural values that it has reflected, resisted, and influenced over the last several hundred years, though, requires getting more out of your reading and writing than a good job essay, a pithy quote, or some flashy rhetoric that will impress your clients or constituents. It requires reading literature for something more than a good story, an emotional catharsis, or some conversational fluff. If this is all that readers like JMG and Kevin have learned in their literature classes, then the blame is as much their own as their professors’. Their attitudes reveal all we need to know about the depth and breadth of their a la carte vision of higher education.

Demonstrate to me the value of your “practical” education when it leads to masses of uninformed, uncritical, and unreflective corporate drones whose only real ambition is to please the boss and get a raise. If this is the kind of education in demand, then we in academia have every right—indeed, a responsibility—to resist it. The “dumbing down” of America isn’t the result of obscure scholarship or liberal bias in academia—it’s a result of the intellectually homogenizing pressures of a market society convinced of its own narrow vision of “value” and “usefulness.”

Earl Grey, English instructor, at 1:40 pm EST on February 6, 2006

Demonstrate to me the value of your “liberal” education when it leads to masses of uninformed, uncritical, and unreflective academic drones whose only real ambition is to please the dissertation committee and get tenure. If this is the kind of education in demand, then we in academia have every right—indeed, a responsibility—to resist it. The “dumbing down” of America isn’t just the result of obscure scholarship or liberal bias in academia—it’s a result of the intellectually homogenizing pressures of trendy academic disciplines that enjoy the fruits of wealth and leisure while making patronizing and condescending comments about the unwashed “public” who needs to be reeducated so as to properly appreciate the great value provided by the inscrutable and often incomprehensible theoretical discourse of the humanities elites.

JMG, at 2:43 pm EST on February 6, 2006

Response

Dr. Grey, perhaps you can tell us why you think you and your colleages deserve billions more of our money, seeing as you aren’t really providing anything of use to us as far as most people can see. You seem to typify the newer theory of education as some sort of end in itself with no use beyond its own subjective worth as assessed by a small group of self-selected “intellectuals.”

Kevin, Undergraduate, at 3:23 pm EST on February 6, 2006

your prose

If your floppy, edgeless writing is an example of what English departments are supposed to be teaching, no wonder we’re in trouble.

Charles Muscatine, Prof of English, emeritus, at 3:40 pm EST on February 6, 2006

From my bed of luxury...

I’m curious as to where JMG and Kevin get the notion that humanities professors are living a life of “wealth and luxury” while sucking away billions of dollars of taxpayers money? Have either of them ever been to an English professor’s house or compared the salaries of an average professor to that of say, a low-level legal clerk or middle-manager at any given American corporation, or even the most impoverished politician? I think they’ll be shocked by the comparative levels of “waste” in each of these professions. What’s more, they’ll learn that “paying the bill"— despite the assurances of the creepy corporate logo, “The King"—doesn’t always entitle the customer to “have it your way.” The fact that you do pay the bill suggests that I and my colleagues have something you want and need, and the expertise to provide it—otherwise I wouldn’t be on this side of the podium. I know my business, and I don’t need any theory of the “unwashed masses” to justify my professional existence. Indeed, I don’t hold any such theories.

What I do hold is a theory of the current conservative political culture that would rather see a cleaned-up mass of right-thinking, right-acting consumers and “loyal Americans” ready to sell their souls to the highest bidder or the most righteous ideology, and a deep resentment of those who refuse to do so.

Anyone who examines the role of liberal education, including the humanities,with any real depth of understanding or critical awareness can readily find what of value it has to offer: the tools to read beyond the literal surface meanings, not only of a poem or novel, but also of the important documents and cultural expressions of a given society; the ability to ask critical questions and offer creative and practical answers to those questions; the ability to think independently and freely while listening to the ideas freely offered by others; the ability to criticize without rejecting, or reject with full awareness of the consequences and implications of that rejection; the capacity to utilize the imagination as well as the rational and scientific mind to solve problems; the ability to tell the difference between rhetoric and intellecual content, or to use rhetoric to convey content more effectively...and I’m just getting started.

If this isn’t what you thought you were paying for when you went to college—SURPRISE! This is what education actually entails, and what I get paid to provide, regardless of your expectations. You can critize my ideas or my methods or my style of teaching—but can you with any seriousness claim that these aren’t the skills that I’m supposed to be teaching? If so, then you’ve proven the case of the original article.

Earl Grey, at 4:05 pm EST on February 6, 2006

The future is now

Okay, let’s put it in terms that the “consumerists” will understand: as one project literacy public service announcement said, “Read a Book and Take a Look at the TV in your Mind!”

That’s right! Books can teach you things too, and provide information and insight! Books were once the source of all the stuff that you think you know from watching FOX news and downloading soundbites and fact-blurbs from the internet. This knowledge will help you when you take your grand-clones to the company-sponsored American History U-see-um to show them how ancient Americans were once encouraged to think about things that weren’t connected to their gauge-reading jobs on level 5. They’ll listen in wonder as you relate to them how these primitives sometimes wasted whole hours contemplating, talking, writing, and doing something called “art” instead of spending that time wisely producing more data-chips for the good of society. You can amuse them with silly stories about sitting in classrooms reading funny rhymey words that the teacher said were meaningful, and then having to propose ideas of your own about what all those words could mean that wasn’t already “obvious.” Of course, by then, all language will have been reduced to a series of beeps and whistles that convey only what’s absolutely necessary for receiving instructions from “Those Who Reward Us” for our loyal service. Just think about your college education as a quaint exercise in historical re-enactiment, and don’t worry about getting your money’s worth—your new masters will gladly re-educate you as necessary for the jobs of the future.

Jack Trades, at 5:00 pm EST on February 6, 2006

”. . .the newer theory of education as some sort of end in itself with no use beyond its own subjective worth as assessed by a small group of self-selected “intellectuals.”

This quote is an excellent example of the desperate need for liberal education. For one thing, the concept of the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and not for some practical application is hardly new; rather, it has been around since at least the time of Plato.

The lack of historical and cultural knowledge and understanding that Kevin the undergraduate’s posts have exhibited, particularly today, might be all the evidence required to prove the necessity for a liberal education.

And on the subject specifically of literature: literary scholars are ridiculed and demeaned whether they investigate and teach literature from an aesthetic (I assume I don’t need to offer the alternate term, “artistic,” though perhaps I should anyway) or whether they engage in literary study from a socio-historico-cultural perspective. We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Are the people who demean and dismiss literary study as completely irrelevant simply terrified about not being able to understand it? Are they intimidated by literature? Or are their values and ideas so narrow that unless something yields some immediate, practical benefit to themselves it’s not worth the effort? Perhaps—are they, rather than the alleged liberal hordes of literary academics, the ones affected by a feel-good narcissism that insists that, if they actually read literature, they believe the only appropriate reaction to it is their own visceral response; that being encouraged to respond to a work from more than just their own emotional one—in other words, to think about it as a source of cultural expression in one or more ways—is an infringement on their inalienable rights?

CJO, at 5:45 pm EST on February 6, 2006

What do you imagine education is supposed to be?

It sounds as if some of the critics of traditional liberal education imagine wanting something akin to the kinds of educational systems that we see in Asia and some parts of Europe, where people are sorted early on according to their proclivities and offered a kind of one-track advanced vocational training, with no frills and no options. The goal is to make them “useful” to society and allow them to inhabit the social and economic position that they’re supposedly due by virtue of “natural ability” or some standardized test score. Where in this model, though, is the opportunity to change your mind, develop new interests, pursue different courses, think creatively, or improve upon the system that’s already in place? What happens to those who don’t have the tools or the opportunities to specialize early on, but develop those abilities and interestes later? How does such an education make you a better, more complete person?

Having a good job and a comfortable lifestyle is useless without the historical knowledge, philosphical insight, ethical and critical reasoning skills, or even aesthetic appreciation necessary to put that life to good (i.e. responsible) use. Why should you learn about these things in college? First, because despite the growing opinion among incoming college students that they already possess these tools, that opinion isn’t born out by my own observations or those of most educators who have studied the topic qualitatively or quantitatively. Secondly, because the impartation of technical skills without having the necessary rational, ethical, or philosophical discussions that accompany such knowledge is irresponsible and dangerous. Lastly, because no one becomes a teacher just to deliver facts and demonstrate procedures for performing tasks—a computer program (even a book!) can provide that without any human interaction whatsoever. Teachers are here to provide insight and experience, to ask questions, to challenge their students’intellect and imagination, to provoke discussion, and to encourage new ways of seeing and thinking about the world.

Is it that the critics don’t feel that they need these things, or that their teachers aren’t qualified to provide them? If it’s the former, then where do they imagine receiving such instruction and mentoring? Parents and pastors aren’t enough to provide such cultural knowledge since these people spend approximately 1/4-1/3 of the time with children that their teachers do. If it’s a matter of not trusting those of us who have devoted our lives and educations to this profession, then the reactionary cynicism and skepticism of the culture wars really has damaged our society almost beyond repair.

John Martin, at 7:15 pm EST on February 6, 2006

If you believe — act on your beliefs

Having lived in college towns, I’m used to those claiming to have “the answer.” My reply: if you really believe in what you say — act on your beliefs. Make something happen today — on your own, if necessary.

I think about real leaders who say, “this will happen today” — then they make something happen. They know, if you wait for the government to fund your dreams, get used to waiting — that line is very long. That is as opposed to this advocate —

http://www.press.org/abouttheclub/record/1999record/record-10-21-99.html

An adoptee, advocate for adoption, and liver cancer patient who, when brusquely asked about inter-racial adoptions, shot back: “whatever it takes.”

IMHO, talking rarely improves anything. Doing does.

A.D., at 8:40 pm EST on February 6, 2006

everyone’s fault but your own

Let’s be candid. The reason that you’ve found yourselves under such scrutiny is not because of Conservatives, nor an uneducated public; it’s because you’ve lost credibility within the academic and research communities. For nearly two decades you’ve been demeaning other fields of academic endeavor, claiming that your ‘discourse’ provides you with a privileged position from which to ‘deconstruct’ the ‘mystification’ of our work. At first we welcomed you to the table, as a courtesy. But it quickly became apparent that you hadn’t bothered to learn anything about our fields. Then we tried to engage you on your own terms, but it quickly became apparent that you either couldn’t understand what we were saying, or simply didn’t care. Your numinous discourse was claimed to provide a universal cipher by which to degrade all manner of human endeavor. And so we sent Sokal to determine whether this confusion was of good faith or simply a gratuitous attempt to exploit our earnest work. The experiment was more elucidating than we had expected. The reason that you believed that your discourse was superior to our diligence was because you didn’t actually comprehend what you were saying. You couldn’t differentiate between an obvious parody and a legitimate submission within your field. For me, and many of my colleagues, this was the last straw. After years of tendentious ‘critique’ it turned out that you were all just full of sh*t.

That’s why we don’t defend you any longer, and why we don’t care that your programs are regarded as no more than fetishistic diversions for the neurotic and trust funded.

Casimer, Good Luck with All That, at 9:25 pm EST on February 6, 2006

Please, Casimer, humanities and science people have been at one another’s throats since just after the salad days of the Enlightenment. And, hey, let’s not forget about your friend and mine, C.P. Snow. Science people can’t get over the fact that the “sh*t” being slung in the Humanities is unverifiable, cultural, etc. Whether said “sh*t” is being slung by Stanley Fish or Lionel Trilling is really besides the point for your science types. And somewhere in the distance consilience glimmers like a dim star...

Roger Mexico, at 4:55 am EST on February 7, 2006

The Phantom Menace

Who is the “we” that Casimir is referring to? What put this “we” in a position to allow or disallow anyone else at the “table” of free ideas and scholarly discourse? Who’s been “degraded” and “demeaned” by humanistic scholarship? Such empty accusations contain no substance or rigor—it’s just paranoid invective aimed at some phantom conspiracy. Scholars in the humanities are as much a part of the “academic and research” community as any other field of study—in fact, they are the foundation of those other fields. There is no science without philosophy, no law without literature, no politics without history. Whatever distinction you’re making between “credible” disciplines and the humanities is incoherent. That failure to integrate the various intellectual traditions represented by the disciplines is yet another sign of the sad compartmentalization brought about by this recent disregard for a wholistic, liberal education. If you see “theory” as somehow incompatible with “application,” or “critique” as incompatible with “discourse,” then you’ve failed to understand the demands of pure science as well as the social and human sciences. Rather than mocking or demeaning your colleagues in the humanities, you might make the same effort to listen and understand that you’re demanding in return.

Earl Grey, at 4:55 am EST on February 7, 2006

Response

Starting with yesterday’s comments, Dr. Grey, no one is under the impression that you live in wealth and luxury. However, we are struggling to find what use precisely your discipline serves to society.

To Jack Trades, all I can say is that your desire to live in a fantasy world doesn’t make your fantasy any more useful to those of us who have to deal with reality.

To CJO, I have two responses to the Plato comment. First, although Plato enjoyed the persuit of knowlage for its own sake, he made every attempt to show how philosophical knowlage could advance the mathmatics, politics, education, and military science of his time. Although for much of his life he taught, you likely have read of his work in Syracuse directly involving himself in political action. It is difficult to see how literary criticism would be nearly as effective as the Socratic method at finding or trying to find solutions to issues such as these. Second, if you wish to believe yourself Plato, then perhaps like most people throughout history who wished to pursue something not seen as useful, you should support yourself rather than demanding that society support your personal quest for useless knowlage.

“Having a good job and comfortable lifestyle is useless without historical knowlage” — really? Absurd. Why? Is life meaningless without your discipline, but has meaning because of it? How?

The thought that academics are needed to teach the morality behind skills is also a rather interesting arguement. First, what would make you believe that I (or anyone else) sees a need for your morality? Second, what happens if we have different ideas of what is the correct use of skills? At this point, you aren’t argueing for your discipline at all, but saying that your job is to convince your students of your personal morality — the very arguement conservative critics have been making to so much disdain for decades.

Kevin, Undergraduate, at 11:45 am EST on February 7, 2006

Q.E.D.

Casimer, at 11:45 am EST on February 7, 2006

“[Y]ou aren’t really providing anything of use to us as far as most people can see...” Kevin

“Demonstrate to me the value of your ‘practical’ education when it leads to masses of uninformed, uncritical, and unreflective...” Earl Grey

“I will tell my students my political views and reward them for disagreeing rigorously, and penalize them for agreeing thoughtlessly. And (having just made it into the tenure track myself)...” RC

One of the things that we hope to accomplish in a good English writing class is to develop the ability to synthesize material within a logical framework. The student should, as well, recognize that logical synthesis is far more than just putting a list of quotations together, saying “‘A’ said...” “‘B’ said...” “‘C’ said...” and then declaring synthesis accomplished because the quotations occur within a sequentially numbered sheaf of papers. Let’s see where an attempt to synthesize these three quotes leads.

If Kevin is right that English teachers are not perceived to be providing a useful service, then it is likely that the abilities Earl mentions—to be informed, critical, and reflective—have not been engendered in those who perceive receipt of no useful service. Perhaps no effort was made to engender those abilities (more on this below). Or perhaps the efforts were unsuccessful, as these abilities require student effort, just like calculus does. Becoming informed requires doing research; being critical in the logical sense (NOT the marketplace sense of “Oh, I don’t like that!") requires training and exercise in logical and analytical thought; being reflective requires an entire set of psychological tools (the short list is metacognitive ability and the ability to be realistic and honest with oneself even when one is in error) that can be exercised through various assignments once one has them, but are no snap to engender.

I don’t think that conservatives can really argue that they oppose the teaching of informed, critical, and reflective—truly rigorous—thinking. This is central to the idea of higher education as it has been discussed over the centuries. But I don’t think modern conservatives can support both the teaching of such thinking and the activities leading to ecological collapse in the many forms mentioned by JMG in the second comment appended to this article. Fortunately for them, they can have their cake— complain that English teachers fail to teach rigorous thinking—and eat it, too—reap economic benefits from policies that obviously, scientifically, and documentably lead to destruction.

And this is because the type of teaching described by RC is difficult, time-consuming, and professionally dangerous for persons who are not yet on the tenure track. Not coincidentally, this describes the persons who teach the vast majority of the required writing courses in which we hope students learn how to be informed, critical, and reflective.

Some students _will_ bring in their parents to defend them when they are caught plagiarizing. And some students will use connections to administrators to bedevil you if you try to make them learn when they don’t want to ("How can I fail the course if I never took any of the tests?").

You get lots of screaming when you honestly say that a particular anti-abortion paper is weak because it contains only emotional arguments and no appeal to logic at all (and lots of work if that student does take you seriously and rewrites to address the weakness; the satisfaction of finally getting a solid paper that opposes your own viewpoint is somewhat mixed, too). But good argument has to go beyond mere preaching to the choir, and making good argument happen when it isn’t the first product takes honesty and time.

If you’re not yet on the tenure track, your efforts in trying to teach rigorous thinking may be rewarded by being dismissed simply to avoid students coming to the office to complain that you expect them to think or because of student evaluations that department chairs use to avoid the trouble of thinking when evaluating teachers. Whatever time you spend fact-checking questionable items, making explanatory comments on student papers, talking to students in the office and by email, etc., is time you’re not spending doing your own research and writing so that you can get that tenure-track position.

And, especially if you’re at a private university (say NYU), the administration may undermine everything you try to teach by declaring that you’re not a “real” teacher anyway, but just a grad student who’s “practicing” in hopes of someday becoming “real.” It is very significant that the courses that deliver those products of English departments that nearly everyone can agree are essential are courses that are largely taught by those with the least experience, the least job protection, and the least rewards for doing a quality job.

Indeed, if one’s concerns are purely capitalistic, the rewards of doing a shoddy job are arguably much better than the rewards of doing a good job.By taking the following sage advice, one can teach a dozen writing courses a semester (by teaching at more than one college) without much stress: “Don’t make ‘em write much, ‘cause they don’t want to, and you don’t want to grade it, and give everybody _A_s or _B_s, because that’s all they care about; you’ll get good evaluations and everybody will be happy.”

Of course, if you follow that advice, the students may profit slightly in grade-point, but they’ll profit none at all in terms of skills. The department, college, city, society, world will profit none whatsoever in terms of quality thinking and quality thinkers, either. But the individual who’s teaching can gain quite a bit in terms of both money and free time—as long as s/he doesn’t run across too many curmudgeonly department chairs who expect students to actually earn their grades by developing skills.

What do you think, Kevin? With your focus on the material value of what’s received, can you honestly say that a graduate student or part-time composition teacher logically should put in the effort and take the risks associated with actually trying to teach people to think more rigorously when those people might deeply resent having the lack of rigor in their thinking pointed out?

Thane Doss (I’m an “Earl,” too—all the Thanes became Earls a long time ago in England)

Thane Doss, at 12:41 pm EST on February 7, 2006

Thane Doss

Dr. Doss, I notice that in your response you still haven’t even tried to explain why we need 1) the “critical thinking” that literary theory proports to teach 2) why that could not be obtained just as easily elsewhere were it desirable. Instead, it appears that you have run together several complaints about other subjects ending with an excuse for laziness — if indeed you have something as important and significant as has been claimed, surely it would be worth imparting to people. However, it appears from much of your arguement that “critical thinking” is equivalent with accepting several political stances that are opposed to current conservative thought, which is really a position itself, not a skill.

Kevin, Undergraduate, at 3:20 pm EST on February 7, 2006

Everyone else is wrong

I find this article obtuse, cryptic, and absurd. This must mean that I am inaccurate, unfair, and advancing a narrow-minded ideology that is at odds with the democratic underpinnings ...

“Meanwhile, our scholarship is derided as obtuse, cryptic, or absurd. It matters little that such descriptions are inaccurate, unfair, and often advanced in service of narrow-minded ideologies at odds with the democratic underpinnings of a liberal arts education.”

Brian Gratton, Professor, at 3:21 pm EST on February 7, 2006

Reading carefully

“The thought that academics are needed to teach the morality behind skills is also a rather interesting arguement. First, what would make you believe that I (or anyone else) sees a need for your morality? Second, what happens if we have different ideas of what is the correct use of skills? At this point, you aren’t argueing for your discipline at all, but saying that your job is to convince your students of your personal morality — the very arguement conservative critics have been making to so much disdain for decades.”

Those above who question your close-reading and interpretive abilities may be onto something. Nowhere do I suggest teaching my personal morality or requiring agreement with any personal perspective from my students. If this is what you took from my earlier comments then you aren’t engaging in the kind of careful reading or critical thinking that I or any other professor would expect or reward.

What I said was that college is not only an appropriate place, but a necessary place for engaging in philosophical, ethical, and critical reflection, and that this is precisely what the humanities has always offered. Facts, dates, and formulas do not an education make—questions, ideas, discussions, debate, speculation, and imagination are also required. My students DON’T need my perspective, they need their own—but their own should be informed by exposure and direct dialogue with other people’s, including mine (along with the rest of their teachers’, classmates’, their culture, and those of history). College is where they’re supposed to receive that exposure. Suggesting that an eighteen-to-twenty-two year old already has all the humanistic education that they require from parents or high school or religious instruction is simply naive and lazy—intellectually and morally. If you didn’t come to college to recieve this, then you came to the wrong place—what you’re looking for is a trade school or vocational training, perhaps even a correspondence course that doesn’t require face-to-face interaction. But our society, so far, expects more from those who recieve a college or university education.

Or to put it in the economic terms that you seem to value: I certainly don’t want to do business with a doctor, lawyer, or business-person whose humanistic education ended with their high-school world literature class or their religious catechism. I would question his competence, maturity, and capacity to make informed decisions about his work or my treatment as a client, patient, or customer. I need a doctor that’s learned his trade AND developed an informed ethical stance, a lawyer that knows the law AND the social and political history behind it, a businessman who understand finance AND the human equation behind the dollar signs. Without that perspective, their degree isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

John Martin, at 3:21 pm EST on February 7, 2006

an example of the failure to matter

At the university where I work the humanities institute has been highly lauded for doing valuable public outreach work, bringing the humanities out of the university and sharing it with the community.

Except that it hasn’t. It’s replicated more of the same.

It gives fat fellowships to other academics. It sponsors lectures — on campus — about flighty elitist topics, such as the most recent opera performance. Its most visible project was one in which it asked people in the city to write about their lives, then it culled the contributions according to its own elitist standards.

If you want to make the humanities matter, this isn’t the way you do it.

Frankly, framing the the argument as “knowledge for its own sake or for some practical purpose” is a canard, because it ignores the personal investments and goal-directed behavior of the most wild-haired garrett dweller, and it ignores the beauty and truth that’s present in practice. I prefer to frame the problem in this way: how do we make this knowledge matter to as many people as possible, not just to the corporate interests, or to the elitists, or to the purveyors of titillation? Sometimes you have to have lectures on campus, yes. But other times you have to have other strategies. Humanists fail when they fail to see that other strategies are needed — and when they automatically react to any call for other strategies with the epithets of “corporatist,” “practical,” “capitalist.”

MJE, at 3:21 pm EST on February 7, 2006

The following would seem to support Casimer’s, somewhat antagonistic, argument — at least its conclusion.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/27...&en=9fe840492338c5dd&ei=5070

The NYT is hardly a bastion of conservative crypto-fascism. And I can assure you that these sentiments are shared by many of the highly educated, quite liberal, people I know. The claim that these criticisms are solely the work of culture warriors and unwashed heathens is frankly disingenuous. Chomsky has lodged similar complaints, as has Rorty. IMO the predicament does stem from a failure of confidence — perhaps among Lit/Eng/Humanities scholars themselves.

I notice that many of the pro-Lit rebuttals seem to regard English Studies as anything but the study of english and literature.

Is this because the study of literature is actually a dead field ?

Why is it that such ‘discourse’ always seems to endorse obscurantist political theories — could this be why people think that it’s just a show pony for Marxism ?

I hope that Lit does survive and finds a role for itself in the future, but the article and elitist nature of the rebuttals within the comments does not bode well IMO.

*also, Mr. Snide LitMeister , aesthetic does not principally mean ‘artistic’. You might want to check your definitions before mounting your high-horse.

Amir, nothing to see here, move along, at 4:50 pm EST on February 7, 2006

“Character is higher than intellect”

“Of course, there is a portion of reading quite indispensable to a wise man. History and exact science he must learn by laborious reading. Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office—to teach elements. But they can only highly serve us when they aim not to drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame...Forget this, and our American colleges will recede in their public importance, whilst they grow richer every year.”

“The so-called ‘practical men’ sneer at speculative men as if, because they speculate or see, they could do nothing...As far as this is true of the studious classes, it is not just and wise. Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential...The preamble of thought, the transition through which it passes from the unconscious, is action.”

“Character is higher than intellect...a man shall not for the sake of wider activity sacrifice any opinion to the popular judgments and modes of action.”

Ralph W. Emerson, The American Scholar, at 5:35 pm EST on February 7, 2006

Literary Connection

Well, now we are getting somewhere, sort of.

What is the necessary connection between literary criticism and open cultural discussions? It seems that, assuming I feel a need for your further ethical critical thinking, I could take a course on legal ethics or medical ethics or business ethics — in fact, even if I don’t, it may be required for the degree in whatever field is entered.

If cultural debate in a formal context is something necessary for sucess, and if it were to be free and open as claimed (two rather large ifs), why not simply have a moderated open discussion class called “Issues in the modern world” or something of that nature? Where is literary criticism a needed part?

You made a rather black and white stale case for liberal cultural examination, but still don’t seem to have touched on literary criticism.

Kevin, Undergraduate, at 5:35 pm EST on February 7, 2006

No law without literature

I would suggest, Kevin, that you can have no adequate understanding of the Constituion, the law, or any other important cultural text without learning the elements of literary analysis and interpretation, since the history of hermeneutics (biblical, legal, and literary) is the same. Certainly, all of us with literary backgrounds could convert our field of study to some applied coursework in law, business, or medicine—but why should we? My interest is in literature, and when you take my class, that’s what you’ll read and learn. It’s YOUR responsibility to apply it to your own field of interest, not my duty to adapt my classroom to your need. Other students have other needs, and fortunately, the skills that we practice together can be adapted by them as well. In addition to those skills, you’ll gain something from the reading of the literature that you wouldn’t gain from simply learning how to read legal texts—like an appreciation for creative storytelling, and understanding of the uses of metaphor and figurative language, the structures of narrative, the ideological functions of language, the social history of those laws and documents that you want to understand, the ability of stories and myths to influence or reflect public opinions and attitudes, the development of particular ideas in their cultural context, etc.—all of which can also be applied to the study of law and legal texts. You don’t have to be interested in the literature or authors themselves to gain something from reading them. As others have said before, and I’ll say again, the classroom is a collaborative setting where my interests and my students can meet and inform one another—not a place where I’m supposed to meet their demand with a tailored product. I’m bemused and befuddled by where you and others have developed that expectation about your education—it’s neither practical nor just. (Oh yes, “justice” is another concept that goes beyond legal definitions, and could benefit from the study of philosophy, literature, and religion).

John Martin, at 8:55 pm EST on February 7, 2006

English tutors via ‘Net from India?

My, my. You’d think, with all the high-falutin’ verbage here, U.S. students would be high performers.

WRONG! IHE has recently had stories on problems from K to 16. People — it is basics first, then Marx and Engels — not the other way around.

The masses (e.g., taxpayers) know they are being played for saps by the faux-ethnic, psuedo-intellectual “critical thinking” crowd. How soon will English lit be outsourced from India? See the following —

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07...&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

Could not be any worse than existing situation, IMHO.

Bart J., at 8:25 am EST on February 8, 2006

‘AND’ vs. ‘OR’

David Putnam, now Sir David Putnam, who in the middle of a distinguished career as a serious filmmaker, became CEO of Columbia Pictures in the U.S., wanted to make both socially/culturally meaningful films that would be both accessible and erudite. He lasted a few years, then resigned under pressure because he wasn’t Hollywood enough. When he announced his resignation to the Columbia Pictures staff, people cried. His simple statement was that he wanted to make ‘AND’ films, not ‘OR’ films, that is, films that were creative and sophisticated but that would also raise serious social, historical and cultural questions. Hollywood evidently didn’t go for it. Putnam is now Chancellor of a University in Great Britain, where his simple ‘AND’ philosophy hopefully can take hold. That literature and writing studies cannot be both a practice that elevates and challenges while also encouraging social action and participation is a mystery to me. I have taught Shakespeare at a university and I’ve worked with migrant farm worker groups at the same time. Each complemented the other, and the experience of one helped in appreciating the other. We need more ‘AND’ people in the humanities. It’s as simple as that, isn’t it?

ag, writer, at 10:40 am EST on February 8, 2006

re: literature a ’social action’

No it is not so simple. I sense a disingenuousness in these arguments for social advocacy. They treat political awareness as though it were a uniform set of positions and assumptions, not a social (i.e. mutual and pluralistic ) understanding. There is no singular definition of ’social justice’, and the attempt to compel one has often inspired a state of affairs within the academy which is neither social nor just.

How many of you work in institutions which have imposed illiberal restrictions on speech and association, force students to submit to psychological examinations for infractions thereof, involuntarily segregate them by gender and race, and which require students to participate in extra-judicial disciplinary processes offering no recourse to counsel or the competitive examination of evidence and testimony? In many cases our ‘best and brightest’ are educated in environments which don’t meet the most basic standards of human rights.

If you will tolerate this, and still insist that your mission is compatible with just social action, then I must conclude that you are the enemy of any form of social justice that I will endorse.

Amir, at 3:14 pm EST on February 8, 2006

Public work for change

“A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.” Saul Alinsky wrote this (in 1971), and it can serve as a basis for the very work that Gaughan and Khost say can’t happen because of the current structure of academe. Yes, absolutely, we should work to change discussions about the humanities. (A part of that change work, incidentally, might be to clarify the role of writing studies – it is not, in fact, a gateway to an “English major,” as the authors have defined it.) Yes, also absolutely, university classes should be taught by tenure-track faculty – and one can look to James Sledd’s composition program-as-plantation argument for a compelling (and convincing) critique of the problems with this structure.

But until that happens, we can use Alinsky’s strategy as a principle for action within programs as they are currently structured. Faculty – and here I refer to all of those who teach, regardless of classification or rank – don’t have to be “managed and stratified.” Instead, they can work as a collaborative unit to affect discussions about our work and our students, whose talents and intelligences (particularly when they are different from our own), are so often dismissed or devalued. Together, they (we) can develop tactics that we and our students enjoy and use these tactics to change public perceptions.

In the program where I work, we (faculty, graduate instructors, full- and part-time lecturers, students) have developed a number of ongoing initiatives that foster discussions about writing – not as a bastion of “correctness,” but as a series of strategies that facilitate and enable learning – and highlight the outstanding student work that is produced from such an approach to writing. How do we know they “work?” Because across our campus, people are talking about writing in ways that they didn’t before; because kernels of discussion rooted in the writing and WAC programs have spread far and wide across campus. Of course, we’ve enjoyed it – we love talking and thinking about these issues. But by working collaboratively within (and outside) of our program, others have found that they enjoy these discussions, and that there are “truths” (as the authors have defined them from Menand) from which we can together work for public change.

Linda Adler-Kassner, Writing Program Administrator, at 1:45 pm EST on February 9, 2006

Am I missing something?

In coming to this discussion late, I feel like I’ve entered a room full of people shouting towards each other with no real hope of (or effort at) reconciliation. Linda Adler-Kassler’s comment makes the first move in that direction though. Writing across the curriculum and other kinds of interdisciplinary collaboration in TEACHING is the place to start.

Just to give one example, the integration of writing into the engineering curriculum has proven successful. And engineering departments are not attempting to do this on their own—they are collaborating through WAC with English department faculty.

One reference is Jay Stanton Carson, John R. Hayes, Thomas Marshall, and Patricia Wojahn. “Design, Results, and Analysis of Assessment Components in a Nine-Course CAC (Communicating Across the Curriculum) Program (2003).” Language and Learning Across the Disciplines: A Forum for Debates Concerning Interdisciplinary, Situated Discourse Communities, and Writing Across the Curriculum Programs. 6(1). 30-61.

It’s not that some cabal of leftists has conspired to make undergraduates take writing courses. The field of engineering, led by the Accreditation Board for Engineering Technology (ABET), has recognized the importance of communication skills for its college graduates and professionals. Criterion 3 of the 2002-2003 engineering accreditation criteria states that “engineering programs must demonstrate that their graduates have. . . an ability to communicate effectively.” While this language is a little vague, it at least acknowledges communication as a necessary component of an engineer’s education. Some of the other criteria make it clear that ABET is not just talking about being able to spell-check and format a paper. Engineers, it says, should gain “the broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global and societal context” and “an ability to function on multi-disciplinary teams.” Teams that cannot communicate are not teams, and writing is a primary form of communication in most engineering projects.

Engineering departments are not known for their cultural liberalism. They are interested in practical knowledge, they collaborate closely with industry, and they want to produce students who can do the work companies want. And guess what? They engineering departments choose to collaborate with scholars who are trained in the teaching of critical reading and writing.

It’s not that we in composition studies and other fields in the humanities have to invent some kind of relevance for ourselves. But we do need to reach out for those connections.

To insist that making such connections impoverishes our scholarship or disciplinary integrity is just silly. Do physicists cringe when an engineer or medical researcher employs one of their formulas or asks for their expertise?

By the way, anyone talking about the waste of “taxpayer dollars” in the humanities is should take a look at the ridiculous pork-barrel spending in recent US federal budgets. If you want to talk about relevance, does the United States Navy really need eight carrier groups when our proclaimed military enemies are either blowing up US soldiers with roadside bombs or hiding in the desert?

“PERCHANCE he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that.” —John Donne

Jorge, at 4:35 pm EST on February 9, 2006

Sorry to get back so late.

Kevin—you fail to answer the question I put to you in any way. Instead, you insert your own disparaging definition of critical thinking in response to nothing whatsoever in my post. The simplest definition of critical thinking is the ability to consider a proposition from differing perspectives. This is often accomplished by asking how changing one’s position in time or space might affect how one perceives something, but it can also be a matter of considering how changing one’s position on the political spectrum might alter one’s perception.

I don’t think my conception of conservatism is wildly off-base when I say that I don’t believe conservatives can say they oppose intellectual rigor, and that’s no criticism of them. At the same time, I don’t think there is any position on the ideological spectrum that can deny that a strong current of modern conservatism opposes most atmospheric research because it keeps coming back with strong evidence of global warming, and people who oppose any action to prevent global warming are very generous supporters of political causes. Facts (who contributes money; what programs are defunded) do not change with movement in time, space, or political ideological. [Taking that a step further, the charge on an electron doesn’t change, whether you believe in electrons or not, and the decay rates of radioactive species don’t change, either—meaning no matter how much one loves Bishop Ussher, he’s wrong.]

Most literature courses are electives. Most students have required writing courses,and those courses have been the generally accepted place for the teaching of the basics of logic and rigorous thinking. Therefore it’s the writing courses that I’ve focused on, courses generally taken in the first year of college, largely taught by adjuncts and graduate students who often find themselves vulnerable to the political whimsies of a wide range of people. Certainly it’s possible to teach logic and rigorous thinking in other courses, but have you TRIED reading Bertrand Russell’s _Principia Mathematica_, in which most of rhetorical logic is expressed in mathematical form? If you’re going to try to teach logic and rigorous thinking in some course where they have generally been presumed, rather than made the focus of study (as in a serious composition course, or in the _Principia Mathematica_), then you’re going to take time and attention away from whatever that course is actually designed to present.

By default, you’re basically left with English composition as the place where you’ve got to learn about causal chains, problems of faulty linkage, deductive and inductive processes, etc. It’s also there that you’ll have to learn that circular reasoning, red herrings, straw men, slippery slopes, etc. are mental traps, not just neat tricks to win arguments you can run away from before the holes in your logic are pointed out. Your business ethics course, for example, will be too busy teaching you the modified Milton Friedman reasoning that if the fines are smaller than the potential profits, it’s unethical NOT to break the law, because you’re not maximizing shareholder value.

The previous sentence is something of a straw man, for example, but it does illustrate how the teachings of other fields concerning expediency can impact what we try to do in writing courses. In terms of time, it’s far easier to purchase a paper from someone else than to write one, and if your parents are the types who’ll come in and raise hell with the department head in the event that you get caught and are threatened with having this on your record, modified Milton Friedman can easily tell you that cheating is the “right” thing to do.

Please note that I don’t really value modified Milton Friedman very much, and I never subscribed to “Don’t make ‘em write and give ‘em all _A_s and _B_s.” Otherwise, I would have a much smaller set of experiences than I do with the hassles that can come from trying to teach things to people who deeply resent the idea that simply because you’re a lot older and have studied longer than they’ve been alive, you might actually know a couple of things that they don’t.(If nothing else, having already gone through an undergraduate, I do have a more complete understanding of how the “Why do I have to know this?” attitude gets in the way of maximal learning.)

As the literature classes go, unless you want to be an English or foreign language major, you’re unlikely to have to take more than one or two. They are dandy workshops for using the logic and critical thinking skills we hope you picked up in your composition courses. If you were a woman without means in the 18th century, could you understand the choices Moll Flanders makes? If so, does that in any way relate to the problems of modern sex tourism and/or human trafficking? If gender and sexuality make it too difficult to make connections to modern times, let’s make it a person of no means getting involved in drug trafficking instead. If this stuff is all still too far afield for you, then where do live, where there is no organized crime at all?

The collapsing binaries of deconstruction are at work in every dualism you can think of—male/female, black/white, rich/poor, Democrat/Republican, Muslim/Christian, etc. And the problem of trying to reduce multiplicity to either/or shows up the moment you try to place a libertarian as either Republican (no gun control!) or Democrat (reproductive freedom!), or when you introduce Hinduism and the Tao to the Muslim/Christian equation (one hopes that you recognize “Are you Muslim or Christian?” as the rhetorical fallacy called “complex question” from your writing or other logic classes).

If you don’t do some mental exercise with these types of logic in your literature courses, where else can we be _certain_ that you’ll get that mental exercise? And if you don’t get that exercise, are you going to be able to follow the _NYTimes_ when it talks about red herrings and straw men (even though the examples following its lists of logical fallacies don’t always follow the same order)? And if you haven’t gotten your red herrings, circular reasonings, and straw men sorted out yet, how the heck are you going to distinguish a meaningful political statement from mere emotional manipulation?

We hope you get the reasoning skills somewhere. We hope you stop arguing against critical thinking long enough to find out what it actually is and to make good use of it. But if you don’t, and you keep believing “I’m going to lower taxes, raise expenditures, and balance the budget—it’s those OTHER guys—the ones who had a budget surplus—who can’t control their spending,” then we all pay the price for failing to teach you critical thinking (or arithmetic).

Thane Doss, at 4:35 am EST on February 10, 2006

Critical thinking

So critical thinking consists (at least in part) of believing in global warming, disliking the budget deficit and blaming it on the Republicans, and so forth? These are just a set of political opinions. If “critical thought” is just a “code” for a certain political view, then it is unsuprising that those who do not share your opinions do not wish to fund you.

Indeed, that is what happens often (though perhaps not often enough) when opinion become conflated with educational convention — funding is cut to those programs accordingly. Everyone has opinions. Most of us see little need to pay to listen to your particular opinion.

If critical thinking is “the ability to examine propositions from different perspectives,” then yes, most disciplines include an element of considering options and perspectives prior to action. This doesn’t seem to begin to show the need for a particular area of critical thought, in literature, as opposed to the subject matter being studied including it.

Jorge, comparing something is not over or underfunded based on the amount we spend on it, but for what we get relative to that spending. That includes the military, which, whether you dislike them or not, work rather inexpensively for what we get from them. On the other hand, we get little (that I or most Americans can see) for our funding of literary criticism.

Engineers need to be able to understand and interact with people who are not engineers speaking in the English language; the english department can handle literacy better than the others, so it makes sense to turn to them. This is not some pursuit of knowlage for its own sake.

Kevin, Undergraduate, at 5:30 pm EST on February 10, 2006

Kevin

It’s interesting that you assume any person in this discussion who does not explicitly agree with you is against you. That is a fallacy.

I, for one, am perfectly willing to admit that resources are often misallocated in academia. Why are you unwilling to admit that the United States military also wastes a lot of money (and on a much larger scale I would add)? Contrary to what you say, there is a LOT of waste in our military, and there is a lot of evidence for it. I’m talking tomes of evidence of all kinds, Republican, Democrat, and non-partisan. I also know a lot of military personnel and they tell me the same thing. I’m not singling out the military; I’m just saying that if you are going to point out misallocation of resources in academia, you should be fair and admit when it exists in other places as well. I don’t understand why that is so threatening to you.

And finally we come to foundational argument why English departments are so important, your comment: “The english department can handle literacy better than the others, so it makes sense to turn to them.”

The second part of your comment doesn’t make sense though: “This is not some pursuit of knowlage for its own sake.” That fact that the study of literacy can actually be useful to various folks does not mean that it cannot also be a pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. That’s like saying that the math department can handle numeracy better than others but that mathematics is not a pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. The fact that a mathematical knowledge or knowledge about literacy can be applied by all kinds of people does not make these pursuits less scholarly.

BTW: The budget deficit cannot be laid completely at the Republicans’ feet, but it is interesting that our President has not vetoed a single spending bill, from a Republican congress while signing numerous tax cuts into law and proposing a bloated Medicare drug benefit. Again, I am not the only one who “believes” this. A lot of Republicans believe it too. Again, why is this argument threatening?

Jorge, at 5:10 am EST on February 11, 2006

What?! Uh-uh ..

” .. it’s those OTHER guys—the ones who had a budget surplus—who can’t control their spending,” ..

Why, yes .. Reagan’s tax policies, rise of the Internet and the Information Economy, deregulation, favorable demographics, Alan Greenspan, plentiful oil, etc., had absolutlely nothing to do with the 90’s economy .. and, of course, increasing taxes, as well as conveniently leaving office just in time to miss the recession of 2000-2002) ..

Dang .. what other “mainstream media lie” will be uncovered? That Ward Churchill is really a caring, sensitive, intellectual? Dang ..

Lil’ Jon, at 7:30 am EST on February 11, 2006

Response

As for the military, I will admit there are some misplaced spending priorities and overspending in some areas. However, relative to the size of the military budget overall, these are not large expenditures.

The english departments, by contrast, spend a large part of their time, energy and budget on things that, unlike literacy, are not of much use to society at large, and in fact, are of little use to anyone outside their professional area. My implicit arguement in the last post was that they should refocus attention on literacy and real-world writing (ie corporate communications and newspaper writing, not just research papers), rather than continuing to spend their energy pursuing knowlage that is not useful.

Incidentally, pork elsewhere doesn’t justify it existing here, and vice versa.

Kevin, Undergraduate, at 12:00 pm EST on February 11, 2006

Public work for change

Yes, also absolutely, university classes should be taught by tenure-track faculty – and one can look to James Sledd’s composition program-as-plantation argument for a provocative critique of the problems with this structure. But until that happens, we can use Alinsky’s strategy as a principle for action within programs as they are currently structured. Faculty – and here I refer to all of those who teach, regardless of classification or rank – don’t have to be “managed and stratified.” Instead, they can work as a collaborative unit to affect discussions about our work and our students, whose talents and intelligences (particularly when they are different from our own), are so often dismissed or devalued. Together, they (we) can develop tactics that we and our students enjoy and use these tactics to change public perceptions.

Linda Adler-Kassner, Writing Program Administrator, at 5:20 pm EST on February 14, 2006

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