The other day I took a mid-day walk around nearby Waughop Lake with a couple of former colleagues. Since my retirement from college teaching, I have enjoyed shedding the responsibility of reading stacks of academic essays each week. Also, I no longer need to confront student plagiarism, nor fight the daily in-class battle against clichés, incoherent sentences and disjointed essays devoid of even a remote scent of freshness. Mind you, after 38 years of teaching literature and composition, I never became jaded, perhaps a little weary at times, but keen to get to work on Monday mornings. I remained hopeful and full of purpose to the end of my career. But I finally felt the relief of leaving the frontlines to the new recruits, those filled with youthful zeal and pleased to be riding on secure tenure track rails.
However, what I learned on my walk around the lake made be grateful that I no longer work as a frontline sapper in the war against ignorance. “You must be kidding!” I said when told that a contingent of the new hires fresh out of graduate school advocated a rewrite of the course outline for English 101, the composition course that is universally taught at most colleges and universities across the English-speaking world. “Really?” I said. “What do they suggest students write if not essays?” Though I did not get a straight answer to that question, I inferred that newbies promoted journaling, blog posts, reflective and informal prose, writing that gives the finger to the five-paragraph essay and to academic writing in general. Now I too am not a big proponent of the five-paragraph essay, but I am an advocate of essay writing in general as a way to organize thought and refine ideas. Writing is a foundation skill of a well-rounded education, and essay writing helps a student advance logical, organized, and coherent expression, more formal than talking or improvisational responses.
Come to think, isn’t that the curse of the world just now? People tweet judgements rather than develop ideas. People text bits of information because even writing an e-mail takes too long and requires concentrated thought. People summon Google rather than study the long and wide view found in proper research. Yahoos no longer want to enjoy the ride; they want to cut to the chase. Do it to it. NOW. Heck, folks do not even use words anymore. Why use language when with one click an emoji is available as a shortcut through complexity and ambiguity? Death to deep thought. Splat! Out with analytical thinking. Here is a frowny face, my totally heedless response to you and anyone else. Do you think I care? Take this smiley face as an answer. To hell with tight organization. LOL.
Another retired professor told me an even more galling account of what was happening at her former university English department. There, too, the freshly hired faculty were proposing new course outlines and seeking the removal of old courses. Change is good, right? Who doesn’t appreciate Hegel’s dialectic theory? That is a model for progress, isn’t it? Well, maybe not. The newbies made a case for purging most of the literature courses covering periods before World War I because these weathered courses, the new faculty purportedly claimed, were not relevant to the 21st century student. In short, out with Chaucer, bench Shakespeare, push aside period survey courses, and so on, all the seminal writers of our language. Chuck ‘em. Apparently, the Great Books of the Western World were not so great after all. Perhaps they were the Pretty Good Books of the Western World? Set those aside. The stale and moot writers of past generations, according to the New Wave, should be replaced with ethnic voices, literature from other cultures, LGBTQ voices, and Manga. Okay, let’s compromise. Include those fresh elements in literature offerings. They belong and are worthy, but do not place all the oldies but goodies in the attic where only intrepid seekers may appreciate their beauty and usefulness.
College enrollments and economics may have something to do with the devolution of English department course offerings. In some cases, such as in The University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point, proposals were made to drop programs in humanities and social sciences beginning in June of 2020 — including English, philosophy, history, sociology and Spanish — while adding programs with “clear career pathways.” The death of a liberal arts education hangs in the balance if colleges and universities across the nation adopt similar rearward policies.
I realize my generation of educators must pass the baton to succeeding, eager academics, but the retired and retiring professionals are being told on the way out the door that what we taught, what we believe valuable, what we stood for is now rot and must be thrown out with the trash. That’s how it feels, anyway.
Among all the other scuffles that face higher education, now comes the threat to all liberal arts. For decades higher education administrators have been paring music and art programs, but now comes a dystopian future for the liberal arts. Big money kingpins (Gates and Musk, among others) want to fashion education to prepare students for the work force. All well and good. I am all for it. A liberal arts education is still, I assert, the best preparation for lifting people toward a productive and meaningful life. The big money buttinskies have a narrow view of education’s purpose: job training. Having a wheelbarrow loaded with money does not make one an expert in education theory, nor should it allow the ultra-rich carte blanche to suggest social engineering according to their business interests.
The point here is simple: a good education is not solely job training.
Someone should write an essay about that.