New at Reason

David Weigel | April 28, 2006

Nick Gillespie discovers the meaning and usefulness of the arts.

Comments

|4.28.06 @ 4:12PM|#

i've considered the decline in english/lit majors to be more a symptom of the shift of college education away from any goals of well-roundedness toward a more narrow job-training focus.

another possiblity, with the explosion of so many highly specialized majors - are the number of students majoring in english down because they have been chased away by the departments, or rather lured away to new ones where students can study their interests at a level of detail not offered by such a broad major as english?

|4.28.06 @ 4:23PM|#

Downstater-I suspect it's the factors you mentioned and more. College is also getting more expensive, and it makes little sense to go deeply into debt to obtain a degree that entitles you to starvation wages. Also, since college degrees are ubiquitous now, it's more important to have a degree that sets one apart and indicates some sort of employability.

|4.28.06 @ 4:31PM|#

I might pick that one up.

Esthetics is that part of philosophy I've totally given up on as an intractable problem. Ethics is right behind, although I think there at least you can say some things that are true.

It seems to me that for all we want to get rid of high culture / low culture distinctions and those things that define away some works as non art, there is a problem to be addressed. Is there really no qualitative difference between David and a pile of sand? If I have a category of Art that includes random pixelation on a piece of paper, cubism, and impressionism, I can't help but think I've built a useless category.

I minored in lit, which is no great feat, mind you. While doing so, I was struck by the notion that there is an elusive quality of what people referred to as literature to distinguish it from other books on the shelf. I keep thinking of the Gertrude Stein comment on LA that "There is no there there." There is, if nothing else, something to find in literature that does not exist in junk. Meaning? Relevance?

There is an act of engagement when reading some material that simply is impossible to mimick when reading other types of material.

I dunno. All I'm saying is whatever theory of lit crit or esthetics that is out there, I need it to acknowledge that distinction or explain to me why it is so visceral if it is my imagination.

R C Dean|4.28.06 @ 4:49PM|#

downstater, I suspect you are largely correct, but I would expect at least some of the decline in english/lit majors to be attributable to the infatuation many of these departments have with the latest multi-culti/pomo fads, and consequent hostility to male students. Well, straight male students, anyway.

Jason, your act of engagement is wholly subjective. Books that you will engage with in this fashion will put others right to sleep, and vice versa. Just because its subjective doesn't mean its not real, but yeah, its your imagination.

VM|4.28.06 @ 5:06PM|#

"it makes little sense ... to obtain a degree that entitles you to starvation wages."

hmmm. i don't really agree with that. the general myth of undergrad degrees: "what are you gonna do with your life/ what can you do with that"

sure there's stuff one can't do with liberal arts, but there's stuff that can be done. and it pays well for entry level jobs, too.

but i've not seen any good reason to believe that the undergrad degree is good for anything else but the next intellectual building block.

but just because it's difficult to explain in 10 seconds what one can do with a BA in English (or at least people pretend they do know what a BS in Accounting could do), or people don't understand "the point" of studying anything other than "business".

but what do you do with an undergrad in "business"? undergrad degrees aren't the ticket into working world, anymore. do the intellectual building blocks first, then go for the specialized professional training advanced degrees/ certifications!

(now grad degrees... that's another story, where we're in total agreement with your assessment!)

|4.28.06 @ 5:12PM|#

RC:

You ever read a Mac Bolan book when you were younger? I'm taking the view that no matter how hard you try or how much insight you have, you will not find anything meaningful in one of those books. Reading such a critter is an entirely passive experience - for anyone who knows how to read.

Reading, say, Eco, is not a passive experience - for anyone who knows how to read. It may not be interesting to everyone, and I acknowledge that interest is a prerequisite for engagement, but if you are interested enough to engage, there is something to engage with.

|4.28.06 @ 5:13PM|#

"but what do you do with an undergrad in "business"? undergrad degrees aren't the ticket into working world, anymore. do the intellectual building blocks first, then go for the specialized professional training advanced degrees/ certifications!"

My view, exactly. I am an advocate of the liberal arts undergrad experience.

|4.28.06 @ 5:20PM|#

I think that Gertrude Stein thing was about Oakland.

|4.28.06 @ 5:20PM|#

As a graduate student in literature (at a middling university, no less) I know very well how crappy and unappealing the propects for a job are. That's why I'm going to do library science as well. But, I will say that a deep engagement with literature, especially poetry for me, has been the key experience of my life-- and, of course, that means a deep engagement without literary theory. I couldn't defend it in any other way, though. To quote (loosely) Northrop Frye:

"anyone who doesn't like Hamlet because he doesn't believe in ghosts clearly has no business reading Shakespeare."

|4.28.06 @ 5:27PM|#

do the intellectual building blocks first

Isn't that what high school used to be for? Granted, an undergraduate degree in anything is better than just a high school diploma, but try explaining to a burned out undergrad who's $40K or $50K in debt that his education so far has just been "building blocks" for yet more, graduate, work.

|4.28.06 @ 5:46PM|#

Jason,
The first few original Mac Bolan books actually written by Don Pendleton were an engaging escapist experience.

I was in a film appreciation class watching High Noon and someone remarked about a cliche. The instructor pointed out that it was only the overuse by imitators that made it a cliche and should not be held against the original work.

R C Dean|4.28.06 @ 5:57PM|#

Jason, I'm sure you're right, but none of your observations introduces an element of objectivity (in the strong sense) into the study and classification of literature. The sense of engagement is entirely subjective, and so, yeah, it is your imagination.

Nick Gillespie|4.28.06 @ 6:09PM|#

If the decline of the English major remains a bit of a mystery, so does its rise in the '60s, I think. Go here for data on the subject. Any ideas on why it took off then?

English is still a popular major, btw--it ranks 10th (go here and get to chart 289 for details).

|4.29.06 @ 7:59AM|#

Is there really no qualitative difference between David and a pile of sand?

The guy who makes a statue is more likely to get laid than is the guy who makes a pile of sand.
"Colorful plumage."

|4.29.06 @ 4:24PM|#

Years ago I used to advise my younger college-bound acquaintences to major in whatever the hell they wanted. More to the point, "find something you're at least halfway passionate about and make that your major. Worry about the job thing later."

My advice today, after years of experience in the real world, would be exactly the same.

|4.29.06 @ 8:31PM|#

The guy who makes a statue is more likely to get laid than is the guy who makes a pile of sand.
"Colorful plumage."

Mr. F. Le Mur,
As a bird watcher, I think you are referring to the activities of a bower bird.

To everyone else, you are going off on a tangent as usual.
The money quote from the review is:
"Literature gives you ideas to think with."

Jim Walsh,
To put a finer point on what you said:
"If you aren't enjoying a learning experience at college, stop doing it."
That was my advice to one and only daughter, and she did amazingly well.

|4.30.06 @ 10:26AM|#

"Literature gives you ideas to think with. It stocks your mind. It does not indoctrinate, because diversity, counter-argument, reappraisal, and qualification are its essence."

Sure, but the same could be said of history or philosophy or just about any of the other traditional liberal arts and sciences, properly taught and studied. So, for that matter and as others have suggested, about a decent college prep high school education. So, in fact, about any education, formal or not, that led the student to be able to read, write and think critically, analytically and open-mindedly.

It is worth remembering that a liberal arts college major of any sort is typically at most a sort of pre-specialization. That is, as philosophy professor David Velleman once wrote on his blog Left2Right, an undergraduate major in philosophy does not make one a philosopher. (He might have meant it is insufficient; I might have responded it is unnecessary.) Even pre-professional majors should be understood primarily in terms of the breadth rather than the depth of the curriculum. For example, I am told that religious studies majors have an unusually high success rate in medical school admissions.

There is was an interesting recent discussion in the Becker-Posner blog about the extent to which the investment value of a degree from a selective college was more a matter of the education received or of signaling to potential employers. Clearly, for example, the value of a degree from, say, Princeton is at least as much the result of the student having gotten in (and, once in, fairly easily through) the place as is whatever he studied there. That is, the sort of student capable of gaining admission to one of the most selective schools has thereby already signaled that he is likely to be successful in the workplace.

Finally, and aside from its sorting and signaling value, the traditional, residential liberal arts education may be little more than an expensive luxury good. So what? Personal intellectual enrichment is damned close to a per se good, and that is in the end what really distinguishes education from mere training.

|4.30.06 @ 1:31PM|#

D.A. Ridgely,
As Mary Poppins might say, literature provides the little bit of sugar that make the ideas go down.

Ivy League colleges seem to dispense to their students geese that lay golden eggs. The sad thing is that they are perceived to have a near monopoly on said geese.

Which should come first, the goose or the egg?

|4.30.06 @ 4:21PM|#

"It is worth remembering that a liberal arts college major of any sort is typically at most a sort of pre-specialization"

The assumption here seems to be that we all must go on to specialize. I don't know that is the case. The case for going on to an MBA in the business world is very thin indeed.

I would recharacterize what I'm taking to be the slant and say that the liberal arts education is a platform for growth in any direction one may choose.

No, K-12 doesn't do the same thing.

|4.30.06 @ 10:47PM|#

Ivy League colleges seem to dispense to their students geese that lay golden eggs. The sad thing is that they are perceived to have a near monopoly on said geese.

Not only sad but ironic. WaPo reporter Jay Mathews has written about this on a number of occasions citing some research to the effect that comparably qualified students who, for whatever reason, choose comparatively less selective colleges nonetheless go on to have comparable incomes and other indicia of post-college success. The Ivys and their equals don't produce high achieving students, they accept high achieving students who would continue to be high achievers wherever they went to college.

Of course, one must acknowledge that the massive wealth and long standing alumni network these schools enjoy give their graduates a comparative advantage opening certain doors immediately after graduation (including to graduate and professional schools), but that advantage probably fades fairly quickly for those Ivy graduates who fail to produce.

I suspect the entire system of higher education in the U.S. may be starting to collapse under its own weight. Distributed education is cheaper and more convenient and there is already a movement afoot to produce standardized, nationally available tests for college courses similar to the high school Advanced Placement tests. How the market will react to these alternatives remains to be seen, but the de facto role of social stratifier that universities now enjoy is unlikely to endure.

|4.30.06 @ 11:05PM|#

I would recharacterize what I'm taking to be the slant and say that the liberal arts education is a platform for growth in any direction one may choose.

I agree entirely. What I was trying to articulate was how the college major itself functions in the overall undergraduate career. Most undergraduate degree programs require a major not because a B.A. in history makes the graduate a historian or a B.S. degree in physics makes him a physicist, etc., but because some greater depth in the context of the overall breadth of the liberal arts curriculum is an integral part of that learning experience. In some fairly rare cases such as the undergraduate who intends to pursue a Ph.D. in history or physics the undergraduate major can be seen as "at most a sort of pre-specialization," but that's all I meant.

I've never darkened the door of a business school, so I am unqualified to speak to the educational value of an M.B.A. But I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that its major value to the student is the market signaling and sorting value about which I wrote above.

I'm not sure I know what your K-12 comment was intended to address. My point was only that "a decent college prep high school education" could produce students who were "able to read, write and think critically, analytically and open-mindedly." There is evidence that earlier generations of high school graduates received such an education just as there is abundant evidence that many graduates of many colleges and universities today lack those abilities.