'Don't waste your education years studying writing'

[Dick Whitman]

That's the advice that a writer in the New York Times letters section today relays to readers. The letter is one of a batch of them in response to a recent piece about the decline of humanities majors. (I believe the WSJ also had such a piece recently that we may have discussed here):

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/28/opinion/why-the-humanities-still-matter.html?src=recg

Anyway, it's interesting advice, and advice I largely agree with, with the benefit of hindsight. I did love both of my majors, at the time, journalism and English. But I don't feel like I left college with any practical expertise. On the other hand, I'm not sure I would have made my way to Hemingway and Shakespeare on my own, and my engagement with them and others have certainly enriched my life. Had I it to do over again, though, assuming the same goal of becoming a journalist, I would have probably majored in something like international relations or economics, along with a humanity. Maybe history. Maybe philosophy. Maybe even English again. Is political science a humanity? Maybe that.

A fuller excerpt from the letter:

Sixty-five years ago, in my first year of college, I attended a briefing by various faculty representatives to help freshmen decide which subject to major in.

The professor from Harvard’s English department gave us some surprising but firm advice: If you think that you’d like to be a writer one day, he said, don’t waste your education years studying writing. Instead, learn some of the fascinating things in our great wide world that you may want to write about.

 

[User 11148]

Yours truly majored in Political Science with a minor in English (woulda majored in English but for its heavier foreign language requirements). Sometimes I look at my diploma and wonder why it wasn't stamped "Non Negotiable."

These contemporary stories hit pretty close to home, though. My oldest will leave the nest in a few weeks to start her "real" college career at a huge, well-regarded state school (she spent her freshman year in a guarantee-transfer program close to home). She'll be majoring in English (and, yes, I am doing the paying). I truly believe in the value of a liberal arts education, but I am strongly encouraging her to use the flexibility those majors provide to take lots of "useful" electives. Among the courses I am going to browbeat her into taking are: 1) Calculus; 2) Economics (micro, not macro); 3) Principles of Finance; and 4) some computer programming language. I don't know that they'll have immediate practicality, but they're better than simply an extra course in the humanities (with huge overlaps between other courses she'll already have taken).

I've already had one success ... she took statistics as her required freshman math course (taught by the very weird brother of a colleague). There were some humorous moments, such as when she said "I think sometime I'd like to take a course about how to use Excel," to which I replied, "Wow, and if only you knew someone who knew a little bit about Excel."

 

[Ace]

I think that there is some merit to that for writing. Unless you are lucky enough to have writing professor that really sparks and challenges you, you are probably better off opening your eyes and learning things.

But I think this whole shift to -- science, math and technology is the only thing that matters and humanities majors are future drains on society -- is really short-sighted and foolish.

 

[Mizzougrad96]

It's pretty good advice...

Even being out of journalism, I do have to write up business plans and my bosses have been pleased that it's something I can do very quickly and keep it as concise as possible, two things I definitely learned while in journalism, so those skills have served me well.

 

[Dick Whitman]

I think that there is some merit to that for writing. Unless you are lucky enough to have writing professor that really sparks and challenges you, you are probably better off opening your eyes and learning things.

But I think this whole shift to -- science, math and technology is the only thing that matters and humanities majors are future drains on society -- is really short-sighted and foolish.

Kids can't write any more. Everybody keeps saying it. And I don't think it falls into the, "Get off my lawn!" category, either. It's a legitimate problem and an unintended consequence that public policy is currently scrambling to address.

 

[Mizzougrad96]

I double majored in Political Science and Journalism and I probably learned more useful skills in journalism than I did in Poly Sci, not that that's saying much.

If you major in economics, business or just about any science, you're going to have a much easier time finding work than if you major in journalism, humanities, literature, philosophy, history, poly sci, etc...

 

[Mizzougrad96]

I think that there is some merit to that for writing. Unless you are lucky enough to have writing professor that really sparks and challenges you, you are probably better off opening your eyes and learning things.

But I think this whole shift to -- science, math and technology is the only thing that matters and humanities majors are future drains on society -- is really short-sighted and foolish.

Kids can't write any more. Everybody keeps saying it. And I don't think it falls into the, "Get off my lawn!" category, either. It's a legitimate problem and an unintended consequence that public policy is currently scrambling to address.

Agreed. It's something that should be taught during the core classes that everybody has to take in college.

 

[Dick Whitman]

I double majored in Political Science and Journalism and I probably learned more useful skills in journalism than I did in Poly Sci, not that that's saying much.

If you major in economics, business or just about any science, you're going to have a much easier time finding work than if you major in journalism, humanities, literature, philosophy, history, poly sci, etc...

I'd put an enormous asterisk by business, though. It's become as useless as some of these humanities majors, to be honest. It's a default major for college students with a smidgen of smarts but no intellectual curiosity.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Also, I think that this goes way deeper than college. Elementary, middle, and high school teachers are dropping the ball here. Well, they have been incentivized to drop the ball, as you can't grade an essay on a state-issued scantron sheet.

 

[User 11148]

I'd put an enormous asterisk by business, though. It's become as useless as some of these humanities majors, to be honest. It's a default major for college students with a smidgen of smarts but no intellectual curiosity.

That's probably overbroad. There are lots of business majors, other than in small liberal arts schools. When I teach undergraduates I have students majoring in several business disciplines -- accounting, finance, real estate, marketing, general management -- and the heterogeneity (both in smarts and curiosity) across and within the majors is striking. My weakest students tend to marketing and general management (perhaps your generic "business" major), and my strongest students tend to accounting and finance. But the exceptions are almost the rule. I'll never forget the young lady, majoring in finance, who told me she was struggling in my course because she wasn't "good at math."

 

[Dick Whitman]

I'd put an enormous asterisk by business, though. It's become as useless as some of these humanities majors, to be honest. It's a default major for college students with a smidgen of smarts but no intellectual curiosity.

That's probably overbroad. There are lots of business majors, other than in small liberal arts schools. When I teach undergraduates I have students majoring in several business disciplines -- accounting, finance, real estate, marketing, general management -- and the heterogeneity (both in smarts and curiosity) across and within the majors is striking. My weakest students tend to marketing and general management (perhaps your generic "business" major), and my strongest students tend to accounting and finance. But the exceptions are almost the rule. I'll never forget the young lady, majoring in finance, who told me she was struggling in my course because she wasn't "good at math."

I concur that accounting and finance are different.

 

[Captain Obvious]

I think that there is some merit to that for writing. Unless you are lucky enough to have writing professor that really sparks and challenges you, you are probably better off opening your eyes and learning things.

But I think this whole shift to -- science, math and technology is the only thing that matters and humanities majors are future drains on society -- is really short-sighted and foolish.

Kids can't write any more. Everybody keeps saying it. And I don't think it falls into the, "Get off my lawn!" category, either. It's a legitimate problem and an unintended consequence that public policy is currently scrambling to address.

Agreed. It's something that should be taught during the core classes that everybody has to take in college.

It's too late to wait until college to teach someone how to write.

 

[Mizzougrad96]

Business majors usually have to take a lot more economics and math that liberal arts majors and that usually serves them better when they're out of school.

If you major in business, you're also probably best served if you go to graduate school.

 

[DanOregon]

One of the things I love about the Journalism major (at least at most schools) is that it requires students to take a broad range of classes. It teaches you how to adapt and digest new and unfamiliar information.
But for my defense of the English major (I was also an English and Poly Sci major, ended up with a History degree - (yeah - i really know how to pick the high paying ones yes?) , I'll turn to Steven Spielberg, who said when accepting an Academy Award that if you want learn to write, read as much as you can, read unfamiliar things, learn about things you didn't realize you wanted to learn more about. It will open pathways you never knew existed. Which is why I think the English major is so valuable. It prepares for things you (and others) don't realize you should be prepared for.

Okay, now feel free to rip apart the dangling participles, grammar and punctuation from above.

On a completely different tack - I can only imagine how much "damage" texting and facebook have done to writing. While people are "writing" more than ever thanks to the Internet, kids are learning bad habits that must give teachers fits.

 

[User 11148]

This was in the Chronicle of Higher Education a few years ago, and I continue to point to it when I am in opposition to the viewpoint that writing is "someone else's" responsibility:

Writing is not the expression of thought; it is thought itself. Papers are not containers for ideas, containers that need only to be well formed for those ideas to emerge clearly. Papers are the working out of ideas. The thought and the container take shape simultaneously (and develop slowly, with revision).

http://www.etsu.edu/cas/litlang/composition/documents/Writing_is_Not_a_Basic_Skill.pdf

 

[novelist_wannabe]

Bob Knight would love this thread.

 

[cranberry]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/19/arts/humanities-committee-sounds-an-alarm.html

A new national corps of “master teachers” trained in the humanities and social sciences and increased support for research in “endangered” liberal arts subjects are among the recommendations of a major report to be delivered on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

People talk about the humanities and social sciences “as if they are a waste of time,” said Richard H. Brodhead, the president of Duke University and a co-chairman of the commission that produced the report. “But this facile negativism forgets that many of the country’s most successful and creative people had exactly this kind of education.”

Those people, Mr. Brodhead pointed out, include both President Obama (political science major) and Mitt Romney (English), as well as most of the 54 members of the commission, which includes distinguished jurists, business leaders, artists, scholars, university presidents and politicians, many of whom offer stirring testimonials on the value of their own liberal arts training.

 

[DanOregon]

The real "enemy" of the Humanities major are colleges and universities who have expanded their programs, much like the offerings on Cable TV. Programs are getting narrower and narrower and more focused on specific career fields, which invariable lead students to believe if they major in "sports marketing" they'll be set for life working for Nike or the NFL.
Marketing isn't going to solve the "decline." Marketing new majors to students who want "career certainty" for the small fortune they have to pay for a degree is what led to the decline in the first place.

 

[Captain Obvious]

The real "enemy" of the Humanities major are colleges and universities who have expanded their programs, much like the offerings on Cable TV. Programs are getting narrower and narrower and more focused on specific career fields, which invariable lead students to believe if they major in "sports marketing" they'll be set for life working for Nike or the NFL.
Marketing isn't going to solve the "decline." Marketing new majors to students who want "career certainty" for the small fortune they have to pay for a degree is what led to the decline in the first place.

Funny how a sports marketing degree leads to careers manning tables at a minor league sporting event, or escorting VIPs to their seats, yet you won't see those jobs mentioned in brochures marketing the program.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

Bob Knight would love this thread.

If the philosophy major is inevitable, lie back and enjoy it?