You bet, even if the
business community tries to tell you otherwise
Almost ten years ago Colorado
College President Jill Tiefenthaler responded to the idea that states should direct
taxpayer money to higher education specifically on those disciplines that
lead to jobs.
“Unfortunately,
in this tough economy, these politicians are making the all too common mistake
of confusing education with training. The idea that universities should simply
be factories for producing graduates focused exclusively in STEM (science,
technology, engineering and math) fields is incredibly shortsighted. While
getting a job that leads toward a fulfilling career is a great reason for going
to college, it certainly isn’t the only one. A liberal arts education
(including, for example, philosophy, art and sociology) educates the whole
person and prepares students to excel in a range of careers and, even more
importantly, live a life rich with meaning and purpose.”
“In defense of liberal arts
education,” The Denver Post, Oct. 21, 2011
When
President Tiefenthaler steps down this summer to become the CEO of the National
Geographic Society, Colorado will lose its most articulate voice speaking up on
behalf of the humanities. I will miss her voice terribly; I see no other
academic leader in our state prepared to take up this cause. The prevailing
view these days is exactly what she critiqued: “confusing education with
training.”
Another
View
will continue to offer its own small voice to advocate for a liberal arts
education, as opposed to training for the workplace, especially as it
pertains to the purpose of our K-12 system. Past newsletters (eight published
under the title, “The Business of Education – is Education,” Feb. 2018[i] ) have made this point.[ii] Here is my effort for
2020. Timed also as a thank you and a salute to President Tiefenthaler for her
great services to Colorado College, higher education, and our state this past
decade.
**
The
business community often gives the back of the hand to those of us who teach (or
have taught) courses in the humanities. Our subjects are dismissed as far less relevant
(the operative word, it seems) than those with a clear pipeline
(another favorite image) to a career. English, History, Philosophy, Art, Music,
Drama—all so much fluff, not the “real-life learning” that comes in classes
designed for “career-readiness.” Or so we are told, ad nauseum.
In
her commentary, President Tiefenthaler quoted then Florida Governor Rick Scott
to provide one such example: “Is it a vital interest of the state,” he asked, “to
have more anthropologists? I don’t think so.” What follows is my collection of
similar slights these past five years, various shades of smug put-downs about
what takes place in the classroom (a drab place, never an “authentic learning
environment”) contrasted with apprenticeships and internships, where students “learn
how business works”!
Assume
for a moment you spent a good portion of your life convinced that what you and
your students explored while reading, discussing, and writing about—even much
of it classified as “fiction”—was as true and as meaningful as
anything happening out there in the marketplace. Imagine any humanities teacher
who reveres his or her discipline as a way we can better express and discover
and know ourselves. From our perspective, what you are about to read can sound,
well, damn insulting. What is so troubling is that leaders today envision
education in such limited terms.
**
The focus on relevance has been prevalent for at
least five years. Below, news stories in roughly chronological order.
(Bold
mine)
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The
Greater Waco Advanced Manufacturing Academy “offers a unique promise that’s unheard of
even among a new generation of career and technical schools striving to make education more relevant
and useful for today’s teenagers: a guarantee of a job after graduation.”
“High School Reform - What if a high school diploma guaranteed a highly
paid job? A new
vocational school in Waco makes an unheard-of promise to its graduates,” Sarah Garland, Hechinger Report, March 25, 2015.[iii]
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“Another
district worth recognizing is St. Vrain Valley, which makes education relevant to both students and local industry by connecting them in meaningful ways.
The district created and hired a director of innovation, Patty Quinones, and
focused education on STEM. …”
“Two Colorado districts' ideas of how school
should work,”
Scott
Laband, Guest Column, The Denver Post,
March 4, 2016.[iv]
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“Colorado’s Teacher of the Year [Sean Wybrandt] … teaches
game programming at William J. Palmer High School in Colorado Springs … he
switched to teaching CTE [Career and Technical Education] courses because
they seemed more topical for his students. ‘CTE is a natural fit for relevancy,’
he said. ‘It is what’s going on in the industry right now and what’s going on
in society around them.’”
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"The notion of
moving from curricula to active learning is discussed a lot, but it really
hasn't been accepted in K-12," said Jim Hendler, the director of the
Rensselaer Institute for Data Exploration and Applications, who studies
artificial intelligence and robots. "A lot of things happening in
after-school clubs seem more relevant to kids' futures than what they
do in the classroom."
“Students Earn Digital Credentials for Adding New
Skills,” Schools and employers are taking a
fresh view of digital badges (in Aurora Public Schools, Colorado) in
preparing students, by Michelle R. Davis,
Education Week, September 26, 2017.[vi]
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“Colorado schools are rewiring classrooms with courses heavy
in science and technology in a bid to stay relevant in a rapidly
changing world.”
“Schools put
emphasis on mathematics, technology,” The Denver Post, Monte Whaley,
Jan. 29, 2018.[vii]
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“If Colorado students are to thrive in
the Age of Agility, then schools must help them become life
entrepreneurs… Fortunately, an
increasing number of schools in Colorado are moving in this direction. In
Salida, for example, a building trades apprenticeship program enables student
to work directly with local businesses to build affordable housing for local
teachers. Students gain marketable, real-world skills while local
industry builds a sustainable talent pipeline.”
“And learning must be experiential, occurring
outside school walls as much as within. Educators and business leaders will
need to work together to create relevant and engaging work-based learning
opportunities, from apprenticeships to job shadowing.”
“Education
in the age of agility,” by Scott Laband, America Succeeds, Denver Business
Journal, Aug. 1, 2018.[viii]
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"There
are so many ways that the world of work can intersect with the classroom and
vice versa. I loved the innovative approaches to learning that directly tied
to relevant career pathways. And, speaking with the students at STEM
School, you could feel the pride they had in their work knowing that it was directly
relevant to an industry or pathway of interest to them." Mark Tapy, Pinnacol Assurance
“The Business Perspective:
Innovative School Models and What We Can Do to Support More,” Colorado Succeeds,
Nov. 15, 2018.[ix]
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“78% of apprentices find the content they
learn ‘on the job’ to be ‘very’ or ‘completely’ relevant to their
future career. When asked the same question about content learned ‘at school,’
only 34% found it to be ‘very’ or ‘completely’ relevant to their
career.” (p. 8)
“Why Apprenticeship? To gain real world
experience
“TESTIMONIALS - Quinn, one of the
apprentices working at Pinnacol Assurance in an IT role, reflects on his
experience compared to his peers, many of whom work in more typical teenage
after-school jobs. ‘Compared to them…it’s a lot different to come to a real
company. When I come to Pinnacol, I learn real things, do real work,
and meet real people.’ (11)
“… Students can attain industry credentials,
perform real work for their community — like building tiny houses for
people experiencing homelessness — and interact with adults who are committed
to preparing them for the real world, not just an end-of-semester
exam. “(15)
CareerWise Colorado, Annual Report, 2019.[x]
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21st Century
Apprenticeships
“What does a
21st century apprenticeship look like? Much like apprenticeships of old,
modern apprenticeships still combine paid, structured, on-the-job training
with relevant classroom instruction.”
“The Case for Apprenticeships in 2019,” by Dawn Lang, Council
for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL) [xi]
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#3
More College ≠ More Prosperity,
by Nassim Taleb
“This is not to
say that knowledge is
unimportant. Practical knowledge is closely connected to economic progress.
But the record shows that formal education is a poor transmitter of practical
knowledge—which is much more often accumulated by doing things, on the
job, out in the real world. It is academic, commoditized, organized
education that needs to be viewed skeptically.”
#4 College Should be More Useful, by Naomi Schaeffer Riley
“We know that
students today want their degrees to be relevant to their employment
and promotion path. Many fault colleges for doing this poorly. They say there
is a big disconnect between what college trains them to do and what they
actually take up after graduation…
“… Ted Mitchell is
president of the American Council on Education…. [He] mentions two ways that
colleges can respond to student hunger for better occupational preparation.
First, all varieties of instruction should try to be relevant and
applicable to daily life. ‘We need to give students hooks to hang their
theoretical work on, to connect them with the real world.’”
“Benefactors Beware-Seven hazards
donors to higher ed need to avoid,”Philanthropy Magazine. Summer 2019. [xii]
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“Pushing
all students to concentrate on core academic classes at the expense of
vocational study, advocates say, takes the focus off the occupationally relevant
skills and credentials graduates need for a smooth transition to
adulthood.”
“Depth
Over Breadth,” by Daniel Kreisman and Kevin Stange, Education Next,
Fall 2019.[xiii]
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“The Pathways in Technology program was established [in
Colorado] in 2015 with the signing of HB 15-1270 and works by establishing
cooperation between school districts, community colleges, and local industry
partners. Upon completing secondary schooling, P-TECH students
transition into a community college where their education is meant to be a
seamless continuation of the technical and academic training they had
received in high school. Additionally, by working with industry partners,
students gain relevant work experience that may include internships,
shadowing, or apprenticeships.”
“Power Technical: Preparing
Educated and Ethical Leaders in the Trades,” Education Policy Center,
Independence Institute, Jan 2020.[xiv]
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“WHY BECOME AN APPRENTICE - Through an
apprenticeship program, you can obtain paid, relevant workplace experience
while acquiring the skills and credentials that employer’s [sic] value.
“EDUCATION
- Gain workplace-relevant skills in the field of your choice through
on-the-job learning.”
Apprenticeship.Gov, an official
website of the United States government.[xv]
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Literature, history, art, music – the
humanities – not relevant?
And now for another view: recent newspaper and
magazine articles that connect our current situation to literature, film,
drama, history…They even dare to use the r word, stressing the relevance
of works and events as distant as ancient Greece. Examples, perhaps, where
our study and understanding of the humanities provides perspective and insight
on our own challenges and fears in this strange time.
Our reading this spring included
a review of Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel, The Fatal Eggs, under the heading,
“Disaster fiction”: “… as a parable of bureaucratic bungling, avoidable
disaster and drastic countermeasures, it is horribly relevant.” An
appreciation of Alfred Hitchcock’s murder mystery, Rear Window, noted
how it “capture[d] the mental state that results from being stuck in a room for
an extended period of time … In its carefully honed study of limitation—and
dangers—of life lived inside four walls, Rear Window turns out to be as relevant
as ever during the age of coronavirus.” And who hasn’t seen one of the
references this spring—well, yes, for the past few years—after White House
briefings, to George Orwell’s warnings about doublethink … well, just google 1984
– relevance.
Drama? James Shapiro’s
new book, Shakespeare in a Divided America, is the latest exploration of
what plays written four centuries ago can say to us: “His writing continues to
function as a canary in a coal mine, alerting us to, among other things, the
toxic prejudices poisoning our cultural climate” (The Denver Post, March
29, 2020). Sculpture? “Albert Giacometti’s figures,” The Economist
wrote, “are as compelling today as when they were made… they have succeeded
because his work still resonates. A master of vulnerability, Giacometti offers
solace in an age of doubt.” Speaking of solace - Music? What is Colorado
Public Radio playing each Friday evening to “honor Colorado health care workers
and first responders”? Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. (For fun, cross the globe
and watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lNaajK3Scc)
The humanities include the study of history. In “How to
survive a plague – Disease and Democracy” (The Economist, March 28,
2020), professor Josiah Ober of Stanford University reminds us of Athens’
experience in 430 B.C. “The key to [the city’s] resilience, thinks Mr. Ober,
was the ‘democratic advantage’ enjoyed by Athenians, in common with other
societies based on free speech and a broad franchise. ‘We are a democracy,’
Angela Merkel reminded Germans last week. ‘We don’t achieve things by force,
but through shared knowledge and co-operation.’ Much the same went for ancient
Athens, which at its finest cherished truth-telling and held that good
information drove out bad.”
In that same vein, I just re-read Albert Camus’ The
Plague. If you care to, read on: quotes from just the first 100 pages …
eerily familiar. Relevant in a deeper sense too: on finding meaning amidst
tragedy.
On that note, I leave the final word to a college senior,
Robert Bellafiore Jr., at the University of Oklahoma, writing about the course,
“Fate and the Individual in European Literature.” (So much for career prep!) To
Bellafiore, that he and his classmates “would voluntarily submit themselves to
Goethe, Melville and Dante suggests,” he stated, “that young people crave
meaning… Too many students are seeking clarity and purpose and finding only
cacophony and aimlessness. The Western canon offers the challenge of a
lifetime, and it is one I believe my generation is willing to accept.”[xvi]
A rare perspective, perhaps, but he is certainly not alone in seeking meaning
and purpose from his studies. It is fundamental to the vision of a
liberal arts education. It is fundamental, many of us will argue, to why school
matters. More inspiring, we believe, than to proclaim that we are “building a
skills-based workforce.”
**
From The
Plague, by Albert Camus, published in 1947
Quotes
from just the first 100 pages.
… But it was merely a matter of adding up the figures and,
once this had been done, the total was startling. In a very few days the number
of cases had risen by leaps and bounds, and it became evident to all observers
of this strange malady that a real epidemic had set in. (33)
… Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring
in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on
our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in history;
yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise. (34)
In this respect our
townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words
they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences. A pestilence isn’t a
thing made to man’s measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere
bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn’t always pass away
and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first
of all, because they haven’t taken their precautions. Our townsfolk were
not more to blame than others; they
forgot to be modest, that was all, and thought that everything still was
possible for them; which presupposed that pestilences were impossible. They
went on doing business, arranged for journeys, and formed views. How should
they have given a thought to anything like plague, which rules out any future,
cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views…. (35)
“People in town are
getting nervous, that’s a fact,” Dr. Richard admitted. “And of course all sorts
of wild rumors are going round. The Prefect said to me, ‘Take prompt action if
you like, but don’t attract attention.’ He personally is convinced that it’s a false alarm.” …
“Do you know,”
Castel said when they were in the car, “that we haven’t a gram of serum in the
whole district?”
“I know. I rang up
the depot. The director seemed quite startled. It’ll have to be sent from
_____.” (44)
… For most of them it would mean going to the hospital, and
he knew how poor people feel about
hospitals. “I don’t want them trying their experiments on him,” had said the wife one of his patients. But he
wouldn’t be experimented on; he would die, that was all. That the regulations now in force were
inadequate was lamentably clear… The only hope was that the outbreak would die
a natural death; it certainly wouldn’t be arrested by the measures the
authorities had so far devised. (56)
… The Prefect took the responsibility, as he put it, of
tightening up the new regulations. Compulsory declaration of all cases of fever
and their isolation were to be strictly enforced. The residences of sick people
were to be shot up and disinfected; persons living in the same house were to go
into quarantine; burials were to be supervised by the local authorities — in a
manner which will be described later on. Next day the serum arrived by plane.
There was enough for immediate requirements, but not enough if the epidemic
were to spread…. (58)
From now on, it can be said that plague was
the concern of all of us. Hitherto, surprised as he may have been by the
strange things happening around him, each individual citizen had gone about his
business as usual, so far as this was possible. And no doubt he would have
continued doing so. But once the town gates were shut, every one of us realized
that all, the narrator included, were, so to speak, in the same boat, and each
would have to adapt himself to the new conditions of life. Thus, for example, a
feeling normally as individual as the ache of separation from those one loves
suddenly became a feeling in which all shared alike and — together with fear — the greatest affliction of the long
period of exile that lay ahead.
One of the most striking consequences of the
closing of the gates was, in fact, this sudden deprivation befalling people who
were completely unprepared for it. Mothers and children, lovers, husbands and
wives, who had a few days previously taken it for granted that their parting
would be a short one, who had kissed one another good-by on the platform and exchanged a few
trivial remarks, sure as they were of seeing one another again after a few days
or, at most, a few weeks, duped by our blind human faith in the near future…
(61)
Thus the first
thing that plague brought to our town was exile….It was undoubtedly the feeling
of exile — that sensation of a void within which never left us, that irrational
longing to hark back to the past or else to speed up the march of time, and
those keen shafts of memory that stung like fire. Sometimes we toyed with our imagination,
composing ourselves to wait for a ring at the bell announcing somebody’s
return, or for the sound of a familiar footstep on the stairs … when a traveler
coming by the evening train would normally have arrived … (65)
… And thus
there was always something missing in their lives. Hostile to the past, impatient
of the present, and cheated of the future, we were much like those whom men’s justice, or hatred, forces to live
behind prison bars. Thus the only way of escaping from that intolerable leisure
was to set the trains running again in one’s imagination and in filling the
silence with the fancied tinkle of a doorbell, in practice obstinately mute.
Still, if it was an exile, it was, for most
of us, exile in one’s own home. (67)
… Nevertheless, many continued hoping that the epidemic
would soon die out and they and their families be spared. Thus they felt under
no obligation to make any change in their habits as yet. Plague was for them an
unwelcome visitant, bound to take its leave one day as unexpectedly as it had
come. Alarmed, but far from desperate, they hadn’t yet reached the phase when
plague would seem to them the very tissue of their existence; when they forgot
the lives that until now it had been given them to lead. In short, they were
waiting for the turn of events. (85)
… The only thing gained by all this expenditure of energy …
was that it served to keep his mind off his predicament. In fact, the rapid
progress of the plague practically escaped his notice. Also, it made the days
pass more quickly and, given the situation in which the whole town was placed,
it might be said that every day lived through brought everyone, provided he
survived, twenty-four hours nearer the end of his ordeal. (99)
The Plague,
translated by Stuart Gilbert, The Modern Library, New York, 1948.
Endnotes
[i] “The
Business of Education – is Education” (Feb. 7, 2018) - A collection of eight newsletters examining the purpose of K-12
education.
Is it to prepare
young people for jobs?
Are schools and
community colleges expected to serve business and adopt training for the
workplace as part of their mission?
Do academic
expectations come first—before we start to send our juniors and seniors out of
the classroom much of their final two years—to work?
Most
of us still believe, do we not, that public education has a more noble and
ambitious purpose than career prep?
[ii]
AV #156 included an Addendum with quotes from over 10 men and women
advocating for the liberal arts.
[xvi]
“Millennials Hit the Great Books,” by Robert Bellafiore Jr., Wall Street
Journal, April 26, 2018.
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