A reaction to Mark Taylor
Clint
written by Prof. Mary Taylor of Columbia. He laments the irrelevance
of Humanities departments in the US and offers some solutions, which
range from abolishing permanent departments to eliminating tenure. I
wrote a reaction essay, pasted below with a permanent link here:
http://www.whyweworry.com/blog/2009/06/25/restructuring-humanities/
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If your last trip to the video store taught you anything, it’s that
the cashier made a serious mistake by pursuing an undergraduate degree
in Philosophy. Sure, she spends her days near DVD copies of “Waking
Life,” but we imagine she’s probably unsatisfied.
She’s not the only one that can’t get no satisfaction. In the space
between Xzibit’s West Coast Customs and Lil Jon’s East Side Boyz,
graduates from the Humanities lament their decisions to study subjects
they were actually interested in, as they’ve found themselves with few
marketable skills. Some have been funneled into graduate programs,
but, for many, those require superhuman devotion to obscure, highly-
specialized topics.
A liberal arts program always succeeds in the sense that it exposes
students to the world and helps them think about it in new ways.
Unfortunately, two structural problems in particular prevent the
Humanities from producing even greater benefits:
First, departments have been separated from each other. We’ve divided
academics just as we’ve divided labor.
Second, application has lagged. Departments often produce a dearth of
practical, actionable research and outreach.
These two weaknesses play on each other. Specialization often produces
specialized language, which further separates departments. A lack of
practical application, on the other hand, means that your findings in
Political Science mean little to me over in Philosophy.
Departmental segregation, aside from being influenced by the division
of labor, reflects historical limitations in how we handled
information. According to Professor David Weinberger, print – formerly
the primary medium for information – had characteristics that shaped
how we conceive of knowledge, truth and, of course, information
itself. A book is self-contained, it’s limited in length and it’s
static. In the same way, a department in the humanities is self-
contained, it’s elite and it’s resistant to revision.
But, now, our capacity for information has been revolutionized. The
Internet, the new medium, actually rejects containment, permission and
stasis. A book on the Civil War would give me a concentrated dose of
information and analysis from some expert(s), and, five years from
now, that book will stay say the same thing.
Instead, let’s say I go to Wikipedia, where information is networked.
The improvement seems almost exponential. The Civil War article links
to innumerable related topics, it’s collaborated on by hundreds of
contributors/editors and, when new information emerges, it reflects it
quickly.
I don’t mean to say simply “do it like Wikipedia,” but rather I want
to show that this networked system seems generally superior for
advancing our understanding. The real world cannot perfectly copy the
Internet, but it can at least resemble it.
And what about the second problem – practical application?
Specialization clearly exacerbates these woes and maybe even underlies
them. I wonder too if it could be a leftover of the Greek
philosophical tradition, which saw knowledge seeking as leisurely and
worthy for its own sake. Knowledge was a realm for those who had free
time, and truth was treated as an internal possession.
This conception makes no sense now. We believe, as a society, that
education should be available to all, and, in practice, information
has been democratized and externalized (Weinberger again).
If it’s going to be beneficial for society, education must be
reformed. History has intrinsic value, and studying it for its own
sake is OK, but that should be secondary. Its primary purpose should
be to help us. So, for instance, we could organize departments around
problems, as Professor Mark Taylor of Columbia proposed in the New
York Times. Imagine a water shortage department featuring
collaboration by environmental scientists, political scientists, law
students, anthropologists and so on.
I only agree with Taylor this far, as the rest of his commentary
treats the university as if it was a failing brain factory that should
get an IMF makeover (i.e. a kick to the groin). Of the rest of his
proposals, some are irrelevant to my topic, and some are appalling.
For instance, he says permanent departments should be abolished,
retirement should be enforced and tenure should be abolished. Well, we
shouldn’t abolish an existing department unless somehow we can show it
lacks sufficient distinctness. His other two ideas, mandating
retirement and striking tenure, would surely injure academic freedom.
I imagine that problem-oriented departments would complement, rather
than replace, and their ultimate goal would be benefit, not profit.
The suggestion that we must define benefit as profit perverts the
ideal of free inquiry and threatens to transform universities into
corporate auxiliaries. If anything, we should point these departments
toward problems that don’t have profitable solutions. They are the
problems that need attention.
Short of hopefully solving some of these social problems, these
proposed departments should enable future video store philosophers
(err, “film” store philosophers) to develop a more widely-applicable
skill set, all while gaining experience with other disciplines, other
students and, of course, the challenges of the real world.
-----
Rowley
> Some of you might be familiar with a semi-recent op-ed in the NYT
> written by Prof. Mary Taylor of Columbia.
Mary or Mark?
> He laments the irrelevance
> of Humanities departments in the US and offers some solutions, which
> range from abolishing permanent departments to eliminating tenure. I
> wrote a reaction essay, pasted below with a permanent link here:
>
> http://www.whyweworry.com/blog/2009/06/25/restructuring-humanities/
>
> -----
>
> If your last trip to the video store taught you anything,
Who still goes to a video store to rent videos?.....
> it�s that
> the cashier made a serious mistake by pursuing an undergraduate degree
> in Philosophy. Sure, she spends her days near DVD copies of �Waking
> Life,� but we imagine she�s probably unsatisfied.
With trends like Netflix and Red Box kiosks.. real human clerks days are
numbered.... and even those will be replaced with video-on-demand via
the internet...
Martin
Clint
I'm told he's into cross-dressing, so the answer really depends.
> Who still goes to a video store to rent videos?.....
Those of us who don't pay for movie channels and don't want to wait
for NetFlix.
> With trends like Netflix and Red Box kiosks.. real human clerks days are
> numbered.... and even those will be replaced with video-on-demand via
> the internet...
Then I guess the philosophy graduate is even more screwed.
Rowley
Reminds me of a joke I heard awhile back.... "What the difference
between a high school drop out and someone with a philosophy degree?".....
One works at McDonalds and the other works at Starbucks.....
Martin