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Fear of Being Useful, Paul Jay and Gerald Graff
"We believe it is time to stop the ritualized lamentation over the crisis in the humanities and get on with the task of making them relevant in the 21st century. Such lamentation only reveals the inability of many humanists to break free of a 19th-century vision of education that sees the humanities as an escape from the world of business and science. As Cathy Davidson has forcefully argued in her new book, Now You See It, this outmoded way of thinking about the humanities as a realm of high-minded cultivation and pleasure in which students contemplate the meaning of life is a relic of the industrial revolution with its crude dualism of lofty spiritual art vs. mechanized smoking factories, a way of thinking that will serve students poorly in meeting the challenges of the 21st century."
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"Historians Reflect on Forces Reshaping Their Profession," By Jennifer Howard. Howard reports on how historians at the American Historical Association's annual meeting were rethinking how to define their discipline and its value, especially with regard to employment and the digital revolution.
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In "The Future of the Humanities-in the Present and in Public," Kathleen Woodward provides an essential examination of current alternative initiatives: "There is a long historical tradition of
the democratic impulse in higher education in the United States, and we need to
reinvigorate that founding vision–it is
both noble and pragmatic–of service to
the public and work with the public." The article appeared in the Winter, 2009 issue of Daedalus.
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Christopher Newfield's 2008 book, Unmaking the Public University: The Forty Year Assault on the Middle Class, has turned out to be prophetic. Newfield updates his argument via the Harvard University Press site and again points out how the culture wars, often directed at the humanities, were used to undermine the egalitarian accomplishmetns of the public university in the last decades of the 20th century.
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Many people touting the value of a humanities degree underscore how it provides a global perspective for students who will be entering a global marketplace. But in "Why I'm Not Preparing My Students to Compete in the Global Marketplace," McKay Jenkins argues the global marketplace is a "dispiriting place." In his view globalization has simply brought us problems like global warming, environmental degradation, and uneven economic development. He urges his students to look for jobs in local economies instead. It's a provocative argument. Image by Michael Morgenstern for the Chronicle
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"We believe it is time to stop the ritualized lamentation over the crisis in the humanities and get on with the task of making them relevant in the 21st century. Such lamentation only reveals the inability of many humanists to break free of a 19th-century vision of education that sees the humanities as an escape from the world of business and science. As Cathy Davidson has forcefully argued in her new book, Now You See It, this outmoded way of thinking about the humanities as a realm of high-minded cultivation and pleasure in which students contemplate the meaning of life is a relic of the industrial revolution with its crude dualism of lofty spiritual art vs. mechanized smoking factories, a way of thinking that will serve students poorly in meeting the challenges of the 21st century."
_________________________________________________________________________________
"Historians Reflect on Forces Reshaping Their Profession," By Jennifer Howard. Howard reports on how historians at the American Historical Association's annual meeting were rethinking how to define their discipline and its value, especially with regard to employment and the digital revolution.
_________________________________________________________________________________
In "The Future of the Humanities-in the Present and in Public," Kathleen Woodward provides an essential examination of current alternative initiatives: "There is a long historical tradition of
the democratic impulse in higher education in the United States, and we need to
reinvigorate that founding vision–it is
both noble and pragmatic–of service to
the public and work with the public." The article appeared in the Winter, 2009 issue of Daedalus._________________________________________________________________________________
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