By Joan Baum
Once upon a time, college curricula consisted of requirements in basic divisions: the humanities, the social sciences and the physical sciences, including mathematics. Then, largely in response to political urging for broader societal inclusion and wider preparation for jobs — subjects that ostensibly would provide students with needed comfort and greater career opportunities — enrollment in the social sciences, including education, went up, along with courses and concentrations in applied science and technology. Introductory classes in the three divisions were revised in order to keep within the 128-credit graduation limit.
In the process, though, something important was lost: the idea that “education,” as its Latin verb root suggests, means “to lead out” — just the opposite of what various “studies” departments seem to emphasize as validation or redress. Increasing numbers of students began to study themselves.
Now there is little that connects college graduates. And little sense of how artificial intelligence may be a formative competitor in the marketplace.
The hard sciences and humanities suffered and continue to suffer diminution of core material, with universities (mostly public and without substantial endowments or big-time social networking) caught in budget battles with local, state and federal funding agencies.
In opposition to this trend, voices were raised about the humane importance of the humanities (sometimes referenced as the liberal arts, though, ironically, the original seven liberal arts — the quadrivium and trivium — linked disciplines no longer seen as related today: astronomy, arithmetic, geometry and music, and logic, grammar and rhetoric). The very repetition of the mantra that the humanities were essential suggests that students and their parents aren’t buying.
Tradition is suspect — sometimes with good reason, and especially as curricula, a matter of state standards, vary — and courses are often presented as prepared master lectures rather than as interactive, updated explorations for critical thinking. Assignments seem to be a matter of finished papers rather than critiqued steps in the research process, starting with the refinement of a topic.
Meanwhile, basic arithmetic and verbal skills depend increasingly on media devices not losing their power. As for geography — forget about it. Ignorance about our own country, not to mention other countries and cultures, is a disgrace.
Of course, the worth of college classes reflects teachers, too many of whom are inexperienced and underpaid, if not in thrall more to their own research than teaching. Teaching assistants and adjuncts typically lead required courses in the formative freshman year, even at the most prestigious and expensive universities. But too many teachers at all levels evidence little “faith” at the core of the word “professional.”
With the growing reliance of universities on adjuncts, these faculty understandably have little loyalty to or identification with the institution that employs them by holding office hours, taking an interest in activities, and getting involved in collegewide issues, such as those roiling campuses right now about partisan politics. Online is hardly the answer.
What to do? A couple of modest suggestions.
High school students should consider a gap year or two before entering college, and go to work, ideally in a field that seems to attract them — or find a position in public service and experience what it means to work, getting on with others and managing being alone, online.
For various reasons, students today seem more adolescent than ever, unprepared psychologically for work, or study. Perhaps this condition has been so for a while, but in economies when youngsters have had to go to work after graduating from college, or who go along, if grudgingly, with parental expectations and support and drift into graduate school, they don’t seem to respond to higher education as significant intellectually.
A possible corrective might be that introductory courses in the humanities and physical sciences once again become requirements for all. Also, majors might become more interdisciplinary, especially in the humanities, so that specializations become sub-majors.
For example, ethnic and gender studies could be addressed under the rubric of history: what was, what is, what may or should be, including investigation of what are advanced as confirming sources (what’s a fact? what’s an alternative fact?).
The goal? Knowledge and appreciation of the nature of argument, evidence, persuasion — and, finally, it is hoped, a growing sense of the humanity that connects us all.
Or must.
Joan Baum, a resident of Springs, is a retired professor of English at York College, The City University of New York. She reviews books for NPR and is an occasional contributor to The Express News Group.
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