Learning to formulate a critical argument, and then also being able to articulate it effectively in writing, is a lot harder than most people give it credit. My students, who are all quite intelligent young women and men, struggle quite a bit with grasping these basic skills. Writing, discussing, and receiving criticism is a necessary part of the learning process in the humanities.
"If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."
- Margaret Atwood
Yes, it also amazes me that people still think we study one subject in isolation from the world. Knowledge is knowledge and I wish people would give over with hierarchy business and understand that knowledge and learning enriches all society.
I don't think the comparison works. The greatest writers (Shakespeare, Dickens...) didn't go to University. So, with the Bard and Boz in mind, it appears that you get the greatest value from not going to university! Maybe an 18 year old who has great writing talent should forget about University, strike out for London, Paris or NY and work in theatres, do freelance Parliamentary reporting, etc.,... The university of life has worked better in the past, if you aspire to greatness. So gravitate towards top playwrights, artists and politicians in cultural centres, work like the devil in jobs associated with these professions, get a library card and wear it out, and get writing... that has to be better than university!Originally Posted by Neely
Except that in many cases, those jobs are preferentially going to go to candidates with a degree. And generally, it takes more than just a few good pieces of work to be hired as a freelancer- people like to see credentials. For those first starting out, until you are published in a few places, a degree fills that space and acts as a credential.
I'm weary with right-angles, abbreviated daylight,
Waiting for a winter to be done.
Why do I still see you in every mirrored window,
In all that I could never overcome?
No... I never said that. I said that the education is expensive and possible to obtain without that expense. I never said that a university education is bad, just that it's not necessarily better than self education and not always (or even often when it comes to humanities) worth the price of admission.
I pointed out that quite often university graduates don't know very much to show that things like a degree/university courses in themselves are quite meaningless. The point is that if someone really wants to learn they will do so, in a classroom or on their own, and if they just want the degree they can obtain that without learning much at all.
A lot of these degrees are easy to do. Every idiot straight out of high school nowadays gets a degree in some sort of bologna and they end up paying for it while working retail for minimum wage.
Also your post was not perfectly accurate and I addressed why in my post. You chose to ignore that of course and focused on one small sentence to draw your inane conclusion of my meaning and point, which you got wrong.
Well first of all my original comment was not specifically directed at you, though was in part I suppose, but rather at the general idea that somehow a degree in the humanities is not worth the same as other degrees because you can get the same thing from just reading on your own:
Yours must be about the tenth comment I have seen on the matter in the past few months - also along with comments suggesting that humanity/art degrees by their very nature are inferior to science/engineering degrees. As if everybody in the world should just study science or something like that? So in no way at all did I get that "wrong."I have seen a lot of comments such as this one, which seems to be suggesting that...
University courses offer a structured approach to learning, guided by absolute experts in the field. Furthermore, you have potential access to some of the best reading material and resources not readily available to the general public. You study in an environment of other learners in which you can bounce ideas around, share notes or catch up on things you might have missed. Pit this against a library card and a sole learner and it is very difficult to match the potential for learning. Yes I suppose it is possible, but not likely. And yes there are lazy people on degrees who don't do the reading vs people not on the courses who do, but so what? The potential learning with university support vs without it is clearly better and anybody who thinks not is deluded.
Does this mean that the difference in learning is worth the cost of a degree?
That depends upon the individual, though yes it is very expensive now (£27k) in the UK and do I think the difference is worth it at that cost? No, no way - though if you want to teach it or want to do anything that requires a humanity degree then you need to pay it.
I don't agree that any degree is easy to do. Yes I have seen people taking it easy, not doing the reading/reading spark notes etc and just cramming for exams, but I think these people are just cheating themselves. These sorts of people will come out in my opinion wasting the potential of the university experience, but that is up to them and I think these people are in the minority anyway as most people investing time in a degree don't really do this. Even for the lazy people it still requires three years of dedication, exams, essays, presentations etc, so many people can do that, maybe 50% of the population at a complete guess, but not "any idiot."
The costs of study now are too much for people just with an interest in the subject perhaps. I wanted to do some other courses for interest, not a full degree, just some modules in a different field but it was going to cost me something like £2000 and it wasn't worth it for that. Instead the new free modules via the Open University, but through other universities, Future Learn are pretty good for general interest and is perhaps the sort of way forward for those caught between wanting to study and not being able to pay for it. The link is below if any one is interested, though it is just in the early stages and there is nothing comprehensive yet, but the psychology one I'm doing is pretty good - just video links and articles but better than watching the telly. My main area of study is chess now anyway which is where I am spending most of my time, minimum 20-30 hours a week.
https://www.futurelearn.com/
Last edited by LitNetIsGreat; 12-07-2013 at 08:36 AM.
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W a r n i n g
Please do not personalise your arguments.
Posts containing inflammatory comments will be removed without further notice.
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"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
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Yes, but ultimately there are several fields in the humanities of equal importance that go unchecked. Namely, linguistic and philological knowledge, foreign language acquisition, research methodology, etc.
We are not writing "what do you think of this poem" papers every day. Nor are we writing "how does two novels we studied this term portray gender and class relations in regard to family obligations" essays either. We generally, when we research, focus more on inherent textual difficulties than on expositions of particular themes, that make up the general educational standard of the Undergraduate classroom.
The problem with humanities degrees is for the most part, many professors focus on "being interesting" more than on being educationally directed. They are not so much focused on teaching things as so much as giving people time to "express" themselves, or write boring essays on topics they care nothing about.
The Bard did, however, manage to grow up in the theatre of London, something which dominates his every work. The community of authors there are the backbone for his artistic development, as traceable from his early mediocre works to his final successes. The progression of his content, themes, style, etc. all demonstrate the intense feedback and understanding he would develop toward the genre in which he was engaged. Such an education, ultimately, would not have been available for someone from any other community, or any other part of England for that matter.
Nelly in my own studies I am only interested in humanities fields. It would be flagrantly against my own self interest and convictions to suggest that studying literature, history, art and philosophy is lesser than science, medicine, technology or mathematics. Kindly stick to responding to things which I have said when you are arguing with me. Yes you point out above that you're also considering other peoples views and generalizing, but that wasn't exactly clear until your most recent post.
"University courses offer a structured approach to learning, guided by absolute experts in the field. "
This is debatable. I think if you cared to try you could find cases of very inexpert, stupid and destructive professors teaching at universities throughout the world at any given time.
"Furthermore, you have potential access to some of the best reading material and resources not readily available to the general public."
Some examples please.
"You study in an environment of other learners in which you can bounce ideas around, share notes or catch up on things you might have missed. Pit this against a library card and a sole learner and it is very difficult to match the potential for learning. "
Why? That potential is limitless. Unless you are telling me you've gone through the entire contents of all of the libraries in your area. Also am I supposed to be in complete isolation? I post on forums online to get other peoples opinions on what they've read and I have my own friends and acquaintances offline to speak to about what I've read.
"Yes I suppose it is possible,"
What do you mean you 'suppose' it's possible? It's a demonstrated reality and it doesn't take much searching to find a list of people who published significant works, furthered their fields of research/thought or achieved a real depth of knowledge despite never setting foot inside a university. Goethe, Hemingway, Borges, da Vinci, Gorky, and Melville to name just a few.
"I don't agree that any degree is easy to do. Yes I have seen people taking it easy, not doing the reading/reading spark notes etc and just cramming for exams, but I think these people are just cheating themselves. These sorts of people will come out in my opinion wasting the potential of the university experience, but that is up to them and I think these people are in the minority anyway as most people investing time in a degree don't really do this. Even for the lazy people it still requires three years of dedication, exams, essays, presentations etc, so many people can do that, maybe 50% of the population at a complete guess, but not "any idiot."
I think it's pretty much anyone. If you can graduate high school you can graduate with a BA in something.
Last edited by Clopin; 12-09-2013 at 12:08 AM.
I'm not arguing with people on forums because as I have other things to do. I have already wasted enough time on you. If you don't think university courses offer a structured approach to learnings vs reading library books alone, fine. If you don't think there are good and valuable teachers/professors then fine. If you don't think the libraries of Oxford, Cambridge or any other good universities, have better reading material then a local public library, then again fine. If you think it is a better approach to learning doing so on your own, as opposed to having the opportunity of support from others, then fine. If you think that just about anyone can get a degree in the arts, then again fine. Some people just like to argue for the sake of it.
This is true, and Dickens started as a parliamentary reporter in an age & place renowned for great parliamentary speech makers, and great newspapers. So he also had a great feedback loop. So where can someone today get into a great crucible for creative endeavour? I did some reporting for my student newspaper. But it didn't lead to much, if anything! Too small a pool, too little inspiration.
Clopin, have you ever been to a university library? Because, I have never come across a local public library that would have so many books or even 1/6 of the books about linguistic, methodology and foreign language acquisition that my university library had."You study in an environment of other learners in which you can bounce ideas around, share notes or catch up on things you might have missed. Pit this against a library card and a sole learner and it is very difficult to match the potential for learning. "
Why? That potential is limitless. Unless you are telling me you've gone through the entire contents of all of the libraries in your area. Also am I supposed to be in complete isolation? I post on forums online to get other peoples opinions on what they've read and I have my own friends and acquaintances offline to speak to about what I've read.
Well, if you want to know your subject, perhaps take a look at publishing. Every genre is very much community run, so the fantasy author must be trained in the genre he wishes to read in, and must be engaging with the audience he wishes to impress. That's perhaps why Canadians have been such strong players in the contemporary fantasy genre field - there is a sort of community acceptance of that genre in the cross-border that does not translate over into other genres - namely Canadian fiction with Canadian content is unpublishable in the American market, whereas fantasy, with its lack of particular constraints is.
When we consider all these "poetic movements" of the second half of the 20th century, we are besieged with numerous geographic or style schools who focus around one periodical. Fiction is more difficult, but there are major trends that seem to be in focus - one must ultimately play to an audience.
As for where to find it now - well, literature today is far too chaotic - too many voices writing today and too many different readers. We are, in a sense, blocked out, and waiting for another mass movement to sort of turn things around.
Back to the original question of the worth of the education - it all needs to be counted. You don't not learn anything useful in an humanities course (usually, some are actually more or less useless) but there is no justification there that it is worth one's money. Likewise to suggest English be more valuable than lets say Japanese literature is also incredibly problematic.
My general feelings toward it have always been, within your undergraduate years, make sure to add one or two foreign languages behind your belt, in addition to familiarizing yourself in a specific discipline (Literature, Art, History, Linguistics, Philosophy, etc.). The so called humanities idea is derived from such an understanding of the engagement of a tradition with the understanding of languages.
Now, if you want to attribute literary studies with any other number of skills, my question remains how is this any more true than any other number of subjects that teach critical thinking, and formal writing - skills, which ultimately, can be taught without approaches to Shakespeare or literary studies. The actual translation of these skills is neither justification nor necessarily true about any field and more than another.
The rational of the scientific method also includes a strong emphasis on communication - the so called 5 paragraph essay which is the backbone of western composition is easily replaced with the scientific study format, which communicates in a different way. There is nothing to suggest that the scientist is not learning some critical skills while discussing proofs and research methodology. In fact, the use of statistics is heavily related to the scientific understanding of the world.
This is not to downplay literature, merely to dissuade others from making this silly argument that we actually get something from classwork that is of great value. I would say you may learn something, but if I needed to pay 40,000$ American a year for it, I wouldn't do it.
The Shanghai Library, Nanjing Library, and Chinese National Library all have collections bigger than the universities in their respective cities, namely Fudan University, Nanjing University, and Peking University - in fact, much of the research is headed off in the public library here, as they contain the rarest and most prized collections.
The Toronto Public Library was not too bad either, nor is the Library of Congress in the United States. The New York network of libraries is not to be dismissed either. There actually are numerous libraries that have great work, and when you are looking at research on the level of rare editions, you most likely will not be restricted to one library either, but probably traveling to different major research libraries depending on the archive you are interested in.
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