This is an op-ed I would have agreed with unquestionably before I began working in writing centers five years ago. It provides interesting statistics on the numerical decrease in English majors. My heart did sink that only 62 students at Yale studied English. My undergraduate major was not only English; it was Creative Writing. For the most part, the ideas expressed here resonate with my experiences teaching undergraduate and graduate students. What I want to offer is a possible step forward to reverse the larger trends the op-ed identifies, one that the title and the framing of the issue by English major numbers does not do justice.
I agree that not knowing how to engage with texts, to think, to 'write into the unknown' - to discover tension - is a weakness. But students don't have to do this via the 'humanities' alone, as staunch a supporter I am of those. They can do this as scientists, economists, businessmen if they learn to write, to think. And the place of writing should be in every department. It is the engine of all knowledge, as it is the public manifestation of thought. The greatest obstacle is that academia has been slow to understand writing is a craft and discipline. Professors without training in it often give unproductive feedback to students: feedback that does engage with the student's project or attempt to grasp at what aspect of humanity is being wrestled with. These professors never learned to write, either, despite being subject experts. The texts students have to read to learn subject matter are often poorly written, bad models that students try to emulate, repositories of information absent of the questions we consider the terrain of 'humanities', vehicles that do not move thought.
Into this world, enter the Writing Center. The way I have seen students of non-humanities independently realign their writing to extend meanings, after interacting as readers and writers with other students outside their discipline, is astonishing. It gives me hope that the next generation of knowledge creators know& value their work explores the meaning of life, too - or can if they frame it so, if they think about its ramifications, a process writing facilitates.
Literature, we have seen science prove, does make us more empathetic. But we don't all have to be English majors to be good people. The fact scientists conducted this study shows they have a capacity for forming clear, profound studies. And there can be a difference between the study of literature's content and the study of rhetoric. My reaction to this essay is one of deep appreciation for its valid fears, but also a desire not to place other disciplines as marginal explorations of humanity. There's a danger in that, too. I know they don't have to be, because my students have taught me that.
Why didn't I know this earlier, in the deep-in-my-bones conviction sense I do know as a professional who engages in the study of how people learn to write, despite the best education anyone could buy? I suspect it is because my college allowed us to 'place out' of the first-year writing course based on test scores. I have no idea of the work that happened in that course, and this creates a separation on campus, a false idea that technical skills of some high schools represents a level of development as writers as agents of their ideas that few high school students have. It's a process that all college students should engage in together, as the only way to participate in a conversation is to be confident enough to speak up. That's a simple way to describe what you might miss by not having a writing course for all students - where engineering students are next to future poets. This is process of standing on the shore and pondering humanity that Verlyn Klinkenborg describes as the purpose of humanities. Isn't that pondering - leading to action in thought or deed - what the purpose of all disciplines should be? After all, we are the ones studying. Any topic we study is necessarily concerned with our methods for conceiving of it, or should be.
Klinkenborg says
What many undergraduates do not know — and what so many of their professors have been unable to tell them — is how valuable the most fundamental gift of the humanities will turn out to be. That gift is clear thinking, clear writing and a lifelong engagement with literature.
Yes. What I'd argue is many professors have been unable to transfer to students the mechanisms of clear thinking and writing that lead one to a lifelong engagement with literature. But I don't mean this in the sense he does - literary. Rather, what I would seek is for students to develop a lifelong engagement with deep writing about ideas, literary or not. I would expand the definition of 'literature' and use it in the sense that scholars in the 'non-humanities' do when they write the literature reviews in their work. In these sections, they explore what other thinkers have said, asked or concluded about the topic the student is now approaching. Inquiry: this is the gift we need to give students. I am not convinced it must come from literature. I find myself shocked to write this, as I do believe literature is how we learn about what we do not experience ourselves. But I am convinced literature is the body of written knowledge humanity produces, whether it be a study of economic principles or of themes in poetry.
And here's where Klinkenborg's essay falls apart for me, or where I diverge most firmly.
Writing well used to be a fundamental principle of the humanities, as essential as the knowledge of mathematics and statistics in the sciences. But writing well isn’t merely a utilitarian skill. It is about developing a rational grace and energy in your conversation with the world around you. No one has found a way to put a dollar sign on this kind of literacy, and I doubt anyone ever will. But everyone who possesses it — no matter how or when it was acquired — knows that it is a rare and precious inheritance.
Writing well has not always been a fundamental principle of the humanities if we define it as clarity. Have a look at the assignments students in the humanities close-read multiple times to understand what the professor wants them to do. These assignments are written by some extremely bright individuals, widely published in the humanities. But can they form a cogent explanation of a writing task? Not always. Let's move to the next clause of that quote's first sentence. Writing well must become a fundamental principle for mathematicians and scientists. How else will the 'humanities' folks be able to realize the value of what these disciplines do? Maybe Klinkenborg is suggesting everyone should have "rational grace and energy in ... conversation with the world."
But why the emphasis on declining numbers of majors? Spending one's entire academic career in English is not how to acquire this ability, and must not be limited to humanities. Rather, we have to recognize that the technical aspects of writing are partg our thinking. And this must be taught as writing, ideally in writing courses and in every course. The subject can be economics. The subject can be business. If we approach the non-humanities and introduce all students entering them as people who are also standing on the coastline, looking at human existence, we will do much to alleviate the false dichotomy between a major that casts you as someone who has no soul, and one that casts you as someone who has no practical concerns or desires for an income.
No one has found a way to put a dollar sign on the literacy in this article because it is understood as a inheritance that is rare, reserved for one domain. It may be an inheritance, but it takes practice and time to acquire it. I don't think we can ever say we possess it: it is a constantly evolving skill, not a static object to hold or claim as complete. Only when we properly shift our thinking about where and how 'studying what it means to be human' can take place - through the ability to convey ideas in language - will the dollars to fund this start to flow. How far we have to go in doing this can be seen in how little our best universities invest in the very places were students go to engage deeply in engaging clearly with their ideas.
Inheritances that are shared are no less precious than if they are rare. Rather, they are even more valuable for their collective nature. This is what gives them power.
-CMMOB, 6/23/13
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