Rescuing the Humanities

It's become something of a pastime among members of humanities faculties to bemoan the decline of the humanities in our institutions of higher learning, and it certainly is ironic that although most universities were founded to instill in students a love for literature, an appreciation of history, a facility with philosophy and so on, they have over the last few decades evolved into factories for turning out students with skills in the STEM disciplines.

Meanwhile, humanities enrollments have shrunk, and administrators are dropping humanities majors because they can't afford to keep idle faculty on the payroll.

Part of the reason for this unfortunate state of affairs, of course, is that a humanities degree doesn't reward a student up to her ears in student loan debt and trying to start a family (Joke: What's the difference between a history major and a large pizza? The pizza can feed a family of four.), but there are other reasons why the humanities have lost their way in our colleges and universities.

Notre Dame Sociologist Christian Smith unleashes a passionate rant against what he says is the BS (it means what you think it does) that's drowning higher education and includes in his indictment a number of reasons which apply specifically to the humanities.

BS, Smith declares, is, inter alia:

• the university’s loss of capacity to grapple with life’s Big Questions, because of our crisis of faith in truth, reality, reason, evidence, argument, civility, and our common humanity.
• the farce of what are actually "fragmentversities" claiming to be universities, of hyperspecialization and academic disciplines unable to talk with each other about obvious shared concerns.
• the ideologically infused jargon deployed by various fields to stake out in-group self-importance and insulate them from accountability to those not fluent in such solipsistic language games.
• a tenure system that provides guaranteed lifetime employment to faculty who are lousy teachers and inactive scholars, not because they espouse unpopular viewpoints that need the protection of "academic freedom," but only because years ago they somehow were granted tenure.
• the shifting of the "burden" of teaching undergraduate courses from traditional tenure-track faculty to miscellaneous, often-underpaid adjunct faculty and graduate students.
• the fantasy that education worthy of the name can be accomplished online through "distance learning."
• the institutional reward system that coerces graduate students and faculty to "get published" as soon and as much as possible, rather than to take the time to mature intellectually and produce scholarship of real importance — leading to a raft of books and articles that contribute little to our knowledge about human concerns that matter.
• the grossly lopsided political ideology of the faculty of many disciplines, especially in the humanities and social sciences, creating a homogeneity of worldview to which those faculties are themselves oblivious, despite claiming to champion difference, diversity, and tolerance.
• the ascendant "culture of offense" that shuts down the open exchange of ideas and mutual accountability to reason and argument. It is university leaders’ confused and fearful capitulation to that secular neo-fundamentalist speech-policing.
• the invisible self-censorship that results among some students and faculty, and the subtle corrective training aimed at those who occasionally do not self-censor.
• the anxiety that haunts some faculty at public universities in very conservative states about expressing their well-considered but unorthodox beliefs, for fear of being hounded by closed-minded students and parents or targeted by grandstanding politicians.
• the standard undergraduate student mentality, fostered by our entire culture, that sees college as essentially about credentials and careers (money), on the one hand, and partying oneself into stupefaction on the other.
• the failure of leaders in higher education to champion the liberal-arts ideal — that college should challenge, develop, and transform students’ minds and hearts so they can lead good, flourishing, and socially productive lives — and their stampeding into the "practical" enterprise of producing specialized workers to feed The Economy.

Mark Bauerlein at First Things also laments the decline of the humanities, but from a somewhat different angle:

This (the declining interest among students in humanities courses) puts humanities professors in an uncomfortable position. They must become entrepreneurs, and they don’t know how.

You know that’s true because of the directions the humanities have taken over the years. Does anybody who isn’t a true believer think that intersectionality theory is going to increase enrollments? How many nineteen-year-olds will be drawn to Queer Theory? When a student who loved Jane Austen in high school enters English 200 with great expectations, only to be hectored about imperialism and sexism in Victorian England, she likely won’t come back. Or, to take another popular claim among the humanists, how many students will say in earnest, “Hey, they teach critical thinking over there—that’s exciting—I’m in!”?

Bauerlein's right, of course. The proliferation of boutique courses that appeal mainly to disaffected students and which are "taught" by radical professors who actually despise the traditional humanities disciplines are like bad money that drives out good. More than that, the better students don't want to take classes which will do nothing to make them more marketable and will often only embitter them toward that - values, country, race, gender, or religion - which they're hectored into believing is oppressive and unjust.

Bauerlein goes on to say this:

Humanities professors have forgotten the first principle of undergraduate study in the humanities: inspiration. Students come because the material compels them. They may love modern novels, or a high school teacher may have turned them on to Renaissance art or the Civil War. They want greatness and beauty and sublimity. Professors should tell students that they have on their syllabi the works of the ages.

Why not play up the classics? Forget critical thinking, workplace readiness, and verbal skills. Highlight Hamlet, Elizabeth Bennet, and the Invisible Man. Reach out to freshmen with an invitation to the Pantheon of genius and talent. March in to college curriculum meetings and announce that everyone must take a course in Shakespeare, Michelangelo, and Mozart. Take students to dinner and pass along your enthusiasm in a non-class setting....

That’s what it will take to reverse the slide, and I hope my colleagues realize it.

I hope so, too. Nothing enriches a student's mind and stirs the soul like good literature, history and philosophy taught by someone who deeply loves his or her discipline.