After reading several essays with variations on the theme "the Spanish conquest was necessary to create our wonderful modern world" with a range of kickers like "if the natives hadn't resisted Christianity, there would not have been the need for so much bloodshed," I have a few reactions.
I teach math for the GRE and GMAT and verbal/reading/writing skills, as well as logic problems for the LSAT, and I am well acquainted with the feeling when a student doesn't grasp a concept or can't seem to learn it in the way I would prefer. It can be frustrating, but it's not taxing in the same way that reading crap like that is or attempting to find a response to it that will actually challenge the student to learn or open their mind a crack. There is a real difference in the nature of the work, and it is rarely addressed in the academic community.
This reminds me of a conversation I had a week ago with a friend who teaches Ethnic Studies at the local community college. She commented that she often feels like she should be getting hazard pay for the personally grueling work of having to (as a woman of color) teach the mostly white classes of hundreds about racism or sexism or classism. I'm the last person to get on board with a "grad students/professors' lives are so haaaard"-fest, because we are incredibly privileged, comparatively, but the treatment of the humanities in relation to the sciences is pretty disturbing. What is our real goal in providing an education? Frankly, I enjoy math and I may like getting a faster computer every few years but I wouldn't really give a damn if everyone in the world completed their education unable to calculate the area of a cylinder. Especially if they did graduate with a comprehension of their privilege or the resources to organize resistance, an understanding of the implications of their choices, and enough knowledge of the history of capitalism, imperialism and oppression to make different choices in the future. If we actually graduated people that had become better human beings with empathy and a comprehension of their position in a larger community, I wouldn't care if they couldn't chart formal logic problems or reverse-FOIL a quadratic equation. The first set of qualities is simply more important.
But creating better and more socially responsible human beings is not our goal. So the humanities teachers -- who do the actual work of making citizens, as best they can -- not only don't get supplemental pay to recognize the importance of that work, they actually get astronomically less funding and resources than the sciences. And as per the comments from A. yesterday, with the current funding situation all we can do is teach giant lecture courses that are by nature designed to limit or destroy any possibility of critical thinking. Again, I'm not trashing the sciences. But our priorities are all kinds of fucked-up if this is the kind of "education" we think is the most important to provide. I seriously question whether it is possible to work towards revolutionary change while also working within an education system that is designed to maintain the status quo.
Don't even get me started on the grade inflation and consumer commodification of education that means that these racist or otherwise narrow-minded students will still graduate with a degree in liberal arts having never opened their minds an inch.
4 comments:
Two problems:
1. The humanities, plural, don't share any kind of stated goal. Even "creating better citizens" doesn't work because no one can agree on what a "better citizen" is. Is it someone aware of capitalism's pernicious inner logic, or is someone who works hard, pays taxes, votes every two years, and buys an RV when they retire? It would be almost impossible to reach a consensus.
2. The sciences "get results" that are publicly comprehensible and useful, while most of what the humanities really *do* is restricted to the academy.
It pisses me off, too, but I think a lot of what-to-do rests on the individual instructor, because she or he isn't going to agree with her or his colleagues on everything.
I often wonder why we don't get more respect. After all, history is the best discipline in which to teach critical thinking - plenty of examples to choose from - and yet we're seen more as pariahs in education than as doing some of the most important work. I was talking to an Astronomy prof who said that the sciences made it possible for me to have my GTF. That's just sad - and doubly sad that they feel the need to point it out. And astronomy?? I read an article recently about how public schools are now adding 'citizenship' courses, either more or for the first time, to their curriculum across the first world because so many countries believe that students aren't getting a true enough appreciation for where they're at. Taught by - you guessed it - history teachers.
On the fickle side of things, I love the pic you posted, Diego Rivera, correct? I just put up two postcards of his murals in my new place.
Yeah, he produced some nice murals. They're even unique-looking when seen outside Mexico City, since they are to Mexico City what cathedrals are to Vienna.
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