Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
by Taylor Trussell, Stein | January 22nd, 2009As a follow-up to my last post about Fish’s and Donoghue’s predictions for liberal arts, there’s this from Charles M. Haskins’s The Rise of Universities:
By the thirteenth century…[professors of rhetoric] advertised their wares in a way that has been compared to the claims of a modern business course–short and practical, with no time wasted on outgrown classical authors but everything fresh and snappy and up-to-date, ready to be applied the same day if need be! Thus one professor at Bologna … promises to train his students in writing every sort of letter and official document which was demanded of the notaries and secretaries of this day. Since … such teachers specialized in the composition of student letters, chiefly skillful appeals to the parental purse, their practical utility was at once apparent.
January 22nd, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Funny.
One thing that should slow down the “demise of the liberal arts education” is that the majority of those who choose to obtain their doctorate and become professors at institutions that offer a creditable degree — one that commands respect in the business world — will be men and women who value contemplation. Those academians hold a good deal of power over the students who attend their classes.
I don’t believe that this statement holds truth: “Healthy humanities departments populated by tenure-track professors who discuss books with adoring students in a cloistered setting – have largely vanished. Except in a few private wealthy universities (functioning almost as museums), the splendid and supported irrelevance of humanist inquiry for its own sake is already a thing of the past.”
“Adoring” — maybe not. But “adoring” probably wasn’t an appropriate word for the majority of thirteenth century students either.
January 24th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
I’ve been quoting the Yale Report of 1828 in a number of contexts lately: “From different quarters, we have heard the suggestion, that our colleges must be new-modelled; that they are not adapted to the spirit and wants of the age; that they will soon be deserted, unless they are better accommodated to the business character of the nation.”
January 25th, 2009 at 11:57 am
First, Sherry, I would argue that 18 year olds typically have a difficult time grasping the value of the contemplative life. Some professors are very good at modeling intellectual engagement (and I agree that faculty at liberal arts institutions are ideally placed to do that), but the truth is that contemplation is something rare in academia. Scholarship and research aren’t necessarily products of contemplation. In fact, scholarship can be antithetical to contemplation. (I always joked that graduate school for me meant learning philosophy while lacking the time to think.) And faculty members are buffeted by competing demands on their time, just like anyone else.
But Donoghue’s point is that economic pressures render faculty influence moot. These pressures are and will continue forcing liberal arts institutions to compromise their commitment to knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Here I wonder if we’re not facing a situation that is markedly different from what RJ’s quote (or the one from Haskins) implies. It seems to me that it’s no longer only an issue of the some segments calling for more practical education, calls that could be ignored; what I find worrying is that we’re now looking at structural shifts–such as the growing reliance on adjunct faculty on financial grounds–that can’t simply be outlasted.
February 3rd, 2009 at 11:15 am
It’s all relative — the amount of contemplation we engage in or time we have for it. The most positive thing I can say is that we do live in an increasingly technical world, with jobs that call for specialized knowledge, and colleges had to adapt to that reality. The best colleges should be able to maintain a balance between the study of liberal arts and career preparation.