Fifty years ago this June, I had to take my transcript to my academic advisor to be approved for graduation from Michigan State University.
He ran a practiced eye down the page, stopped, looked at me, went down the page again, more slowly, looked at me, and said, "You appear to have gotten yourself a liberal education. How did you do that here?"
"I sneaked around," I said.
One of my instructors in the first term of freshman year, the late Jean Nicholas, gave me the best advice I received in college. "Don't take subjects," she said. "If you want to learn subjects, go to the library and read about them. Take people instead. Find out who the most interesting teachers are and sit in their classes. One of the things you are here for is to learn different approaches to life, different senses of humor."
As an English major, I took most of my courses in English, but I embarked on courses on anthropology, religion, philosophy, art history, and more, while continuing to read broadly and avidly. On campus there were free screenings of films by Bergman and Fellini. The Chicago Symphony came around on tour every year.
Michigan State gave me a broad framework of general knowledge and the ability to analyze texts and reason about them. This, I think, is what education is properly meant to do.
But we see colleges and universities cutting back on offerings in the humanities, because we appear to think of education in a cramped and crabbed vocational perspective. Any course that does not immediately contribute to subsequent gainful employment is a waste of a student's time and all that expensive tuition.
This has been going on for some time now, as evidenced, for example, by the hordes of diploma-holding middle-class adults who fall victim to crank anti-vaccine theories, because they were never encouraged to develop critical thinking. The national survey of U.S. book reading statistics in 2022 found that about half of American adults had not read a single book in the past year. STEM is important, but the humanities help make us human.
I was fortunate to have parents who allowed me to chart my own course in college, teachers who offered unfailing encouragement, and an education (yes, a degree in English, of all things) that prepared me for a forty-year professional career and many satisfactions in life.
John, was it really 50 years ago? I never thought that being an English major was a bad thing when you were my roommate; as you remember I once made a joke about being "untimely ripped." I placed out of all the Humanities courses in my sophomore year so I didn't have to take them, because I had physics, chemistry and math to do. And I needed a year of a foreign language. I always could pass a multiple choice exam.
ReplyDeleteAs I approached the end of my degree in Zoology, I had credits to burn. I took a psychology course from a Freudian and never again believed in Freud. It was all about the professor. Another psychology course was rote memorization and the professor told me so when I asked him. But then, I took a course in Greek mythology and the professor was very much into thinking about it instead of simply learning the names and the myths. That was excellent. I remain a scientist at heart. I have to admit I'm not sure what you're talking about.
I don't know and I can hardly believe what I read about the college curriculum these days. My son went to a specialized engineering university ("cranked and crabbed vocational") and he has no trouble with the humanities. Since I don't understand engineering, we have to talk about books. I once told him to read all the Nero Wolfe novels and stories and everything that John D. MacDonald ever wrote... oh and Shakespeare, too. I'm sure he has.
What you are talking about, perhaps, is the limited degrees. I remember meeting several people in college who were majoring in "Packaging." WTF. Then there is Business Administration and the abhorrent MBA, both of which are for very tiny tiny people.
Cheers.
Eric
iwastrel.com
As an old English major myself, I endorse this post. I like the formulation of "Don't take subjects, take people." This is the first time I have seen it, but looking back at my idiosyncratic course of study, I intuited the principle. The modern belief that higher education is and should be vo-tech training is heartbreaking. It is still possible to get a liberal education, but they sure make it harder.
ReplyDeleteI very much enjoyed your wise and witty piece, John. Actually, I suspect 'Don't take subjects, take people' is a maxim that can be applied throughout one's reading life.
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