Living in a country full of old buildings is not the same as having an “appreciation of literature, music, art, philosophy”. My high school celebrated its 500th anniversary a few years ago. I don’t think that had any bearing on the amount of cultural education it provided. I certainly studied a lot less “literature, music, art, philosophy” than my kids in their US high school founded 50 years ago.
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I think that part of the issue is the push in recent decades for every kid to go to college, and the proliferation of degrees in various “Studies”. Sixty or seventy years ago, when many fewer students attended college, I suspect that liberal arts degrees involved a more well rounded education, which included more critical thinking.
Some colleges still do require critical thinking for a Humanities degree, though at many colleges, those courses don’t require much in the way of thinking. Multiple choice tests, a handful of “papers” of just two or three pages each, and gen ed requirements that one can fulfill with fluff courses - students leave college without any more world/work relevant skills than when they entered.
Perhaps there needs to be some sort of voluntary accreditation for degrees in the Humanities, or two versions of a degree, with the more rigorous version requiring more math and science, requirements of analytical essays and research papers, etc.
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“Studies” majors are often just a different way of organizing liberal arts subjects. Why would that (by itself) necessarily make the education less well rounded or require less critical thinking?
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How can the humanities evolve to remain relevant?
- Higher standards (K-12 and for coursework leading to a bachelor’s degree) so that the critical thinking, synthesizing, writing, and other skills associated with a liberal arts education are actual attained.
- Specific criteria (whether for a 1st year student, or classes at the 100-, 200-, 300- level, etc) in terms of what quality work looks like.
- Have faculty and courses spread across themes and disciplines (i.e. more interdisciplinarity). For instance, imagine a professor whose expertise is on the expression of the female experience in sub-Saharan Africa literature. That teacher might be involved in the following courses:
- Depictions of the modern female experience (whether in literature, news, film, etc)
- Survey on sub-Saharan Africa (or even just the continent of Africa, in discussing politics, literature, geography, experience/treatment of various populations, etc).
- Historical outline of how females depicted in literature (from biblical times through today…with various eras and areas included in the course)
So for those classes, there would be a lot more co-teaching with experts in the other areas (whether in literature from other parts of the world, or with historians, sociologists, political scientists, etc).
- Change the way that core/distribution requirements exist. Perhaps students need to take a survey class similar to @gouf78’s humanities class covering each (or a majority) of the following geographical areas: North America, South America, Asia, Oceania & Antarctica, Europe, and Africa.
- More classes can be developed around essential questions so that students see the purpose of the class (and gain more interest in it) and it can be linked to a variety of fields (whether co-taught or just taught through an interdisciplinary lens). Examples below pulled from source:
- How has the concept of utopia changed over time and/or across cultures or societies?
- What are the positive and negative aspects of both chaos and order?
- In a culture where we are bombarded with ideas and images of what we ‘should’ be, how does one form an identity that remains true and authentic for her/himself?
- What is art and its function in our lives?
- What are the essential liberties?
- In the face of adversity, what causes some individuals to prevail while others fail?
- How can language be powerful?
- If any, what are the boundaries of love and sacrifice, and where does one draw the line between them?
- More proactive about setting up internships and experiences that will help relay students’ skillsets to a job.
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Right. What we need is more offerings like AP African American Studies that will motivate more students to get ready for content that they feel is relevant to them, and excite them to go deeper in college. The population of high school students is already blacker and browner than the US population generally, and that’s where the demographic growth is. Existing high school humanities curriculums may not be inspiring to them. Tucson had a lot of success engaging students with its Mexican-American Studies program until the state banned it.
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Great ideas @AustenNut and @Hanna .
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IMO with the high cost of college many students need to be able to earn a living upon graduation. One thing that can be done is to more fully integrate humanities classes into a professional degree curriculum. My S got an undergraduate business degree from a Jesuit college with a huge core curriculum and I felt he got an excellent grounding in the humanities as well as a strong business education – free electives were sacrificed to do this but it was a worthwhile tradeoff for him.
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As time goes on it will end up plagiarizing itself.
I agree that just because a major ends in “Studies”, that does not by itself mean that the major requires less critical thinking than other majors. However, I think that sixty or seventy years ago there were few, if any, majors ending in “Studies”. These sorts of majors started to appear in the 1970s, and really picked up in the last 20 or 30 years.
I believe that you can make almost any major at any college a beneficial, academically valuable experience in which you use critical thinking skills. However, there are definitely majors where you can skate by and take “easy” courses. A lot of the “Studies” majors seem to fall in that category.
My youngest now sees why, if you major in something that can be “easy”, I encourage a second major. She will major in Anthropology. She remarked that only 10 courses in Anthropology are needed for the major, and these are not difficult courses. She will also major in Information Sciences, and is involved in some research in Anthropology where she is using the computer science skills.
My other two kids earned two undergrad degrees each (plus a minor). They each got a B.A. and a B.S., in areas that could be useful when combined, which is one way to make Humanities (or some Social Science) majors more relevant. Taking graduate level courses in place of the equivalent undergrad course, getting involved in research, and being a TA can also lead to a deeper understanding and use of critical thinking skills.
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As your example suggests, majors defined by the traditional schema of subjects can be “easy” majors at some colleges (note: your example is a social science major, not a humanities major).
It is also rather likely that a specific major may be an “easy” major at one college but a “hard” major at a second college. And a different major may be “hard” at the first college but “easy” at the second college.
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I have not found that to be true. Physics and biochemistry are hard majors everywhere. Ethnic or gender or media studies are, compared to the other majors, usually among the easiest, along with sociology. Check what the football and basketball players major in ( not because they are not intelligent, though they tend to have lower test scores-more importantly, they devote enormous amounts of time to the sport and are often unable to carry a serious major).
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Ethnic studies is easier than sports management, travel and tourism, broadcast journalism? These three fields have very few analytical requirements, and are essentially trade school subjects spread out over four years. At least an ethnic studies major will be reading actual primary texts and using a theoretical framework in analyzing them.
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It varies by school, but the most common majors are generally not what I consider humanities. For example, the analysis at https://www.natcom.org/sites/default/files/publications/NCA_C-Brief_2016_October.pdf found the most common majors among Div I football players in a combined variety of conferences were communications, sociology, business, and general studies.
The highly selective private colleges that are emphasized on this forum, often show a different pattern. In many such colleges, economics is the most common major. This is even more true among athletes in general, rather than just football/basketball. For example, in the Harvard freshman survey 30% of recruited athletes said they plan to major in economics compared to 10% of non-athletes.
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Athletes at elite schools often come from elite backgrounds playing elite sports, such as crew and squash. It is not surprising that they would major in econ as a group. Certain IB firms on Wall St used to have specific recruiting for Ivy varsity athletes. Full disclosure-one of my relatives got her fabulous job that route.
I was referring to the majority of large public flagships with D1 football.
Yes blossom, I would include hospitality, sports management and broadcast journalism all in the group of easy majors, at any school. The point was that some majors are universally recognized as hard, others as easy.
As noted in my earlier post, these seem to lean more towards business and social sciences, rather than humanities.
It is not just “elite sports.” Harvard’s football roster requires clicking through to see major, but an older Crimson article lists the totals as, “one quarter of Harvard students will graduate with economics or government degrees, compared with over 37 percent of athletes and 65 percent of the football team.” Looking at Yale’s football roster, it appears that 42% of declared major football players are majoring in economics.
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Fantastic question and thread. I remember back in high school reading “Old man and the sea.” I thought it was amazing. I re-read it prior to medical school and its even better.
It’s superficially simple, but there is so much beneath the surface–like the sea, I suppose. Man strength in face of defeat, the old reminiscing about their past to derive dignity in their waning years, finding meaning in never-ending struggle, and above all the unique relationship between a mentor and mentee. I recall having the same relationship with my mentor when I did a master’s program and it’s unlike any other human relationship, in my opinion. It’s very unique–one not bound by family ties, romance, or friendship–but instead bound by a quest for an abstract goal.
Anyways, to learn more about this fantastic book, I read the literature critiques of it. We had in our library a number of such books. VIRTUALLY ALL of the critiques focused incessantly on sentence structure, word choice, arcane symbolism, etc. And I literally did not see ONE that focused on the broader meaning! Instead, I had to read youtube to get to the broader understanding of this work!!
Completely outrageous! It seems like the literary world is killing itself by focusing on arcane and trivial stuff, instead of the deeper meaning of a work!! Literature has so much to teach us, and literary department can do a lot of good by helping us learn, but they don’t!
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My children did not/are not majoring in the Humanities, and thus I could not use that as an example (and why I pointed out “some Social Science” majors later on in my post). Perhaps I should have used their minors - Creative Writing and French. I think at least the French minor was valuable, as that kid used French in her first job, as she needed to conduct some meetings in French. That is one example of remaining relevant, and there are many other examples I know of from other students, though I still would encourage going above and beyond if one majors in something seen as “easy”.
The Creative Writing minor kid would love to do this for a living, though she likes to eat. She has a B.A. in a Social Science with a B.S. in STEM, and is now in a doctorate program that combines those two degrees. She does hope that in the future, if she makes good money after she earns her PhD, that she might be able to support the writing habit.
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So, word salad.
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