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The Decline and Fall of the English Major

nytimes.com

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Re: The Decline and Fall of the English Major

#91

Post by gruseom »

abraininavat wrote: post #81
gruseom wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it mean fifty different things, though? I'd say its definition is pretty precise. I didn't realize that anyone still used the word, let alone that there was a category, "the kind of person who says 'philistine'". It reminds me of Louis CK's thing about people who say "People from Phoenix are called 'Phoenicians'". Not a category one would knowingly step into!

Such a category does indeed exist. It happens to intersect with the category of people who purposefully use words they think no one else uses.

I do like old words, especially when they fit a particular concept in just the right way.

But wow, your comments are really insinuating. "There's just something telling". "People who purposefully". "The lack of nuance in your understanding". I was interested in your point of view, but I'm finding this unpleasant and am going to stop now.

Re: The Decline and Fall of the English Major

#92

Post by [deleted] »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #90
gruseom wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But your comment already takes for granted that there's no purpose in studying literature other than a career in academia (presumably because education is only about careers to begin with). I'd say the battle for the things worth caring about here was lost long before that assumption became not-even-worth-bothering-to-make-explicit. And sure, the economics are pathetic and the profession is rife with horseshit. The r…

If getting a degree were the only way to acquire knowledge in humanities or literature then the world would be a sad place indeed. Fortunately that's not the case. It's easy to appreciate literature. Cheap even. And I would argue that colleges actually do more to harm the practice than to help it.

[deleted]

Re: The Decline and Fall of the English Major

#93

Post by abraininavat »

gruseom wrote: post #91
abraininavat wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a category does indeed exist. It happens to intersect with the category of people who purposefully use words they think no one else uses.

I do like old words, especially when they fit a particular concept in just the right way. But wow, your comments are really insinuating. "There's just something telling". "People who purposefully". "The lack of nuance in your understanding". I was interested in your point of view, but I'm finding this unpleasant and am going to stop now.

You seem to have a thin skin. The only of those phrases which is "insinuating" anything is the first. You've mentioned something about personal insults but have failed to point one out. Unless you're suggesting I shouldn't point out that you don't fully understand the old word you're using?

That's not an insult so shake it off and don't take it as one. You've got the term wrong. I agree that maybe we could have a great conversation about it, if only you'd address it instead of whining about the phrase "lack of nuance in your understanding." It's not exactly Don Rickles material.

Re: The Decline and Fall of the English Major

#94

Post by beloch »

I did an English minor while doing my undergraduate physics degree. It's a good thing I took the "heavy" course on literary theory last, because it utterly demoralized me. The sheer volume of books in the library devoted to literary criticism is astounding. It outweighs the entire canon of classics by at least two orders of magnitude, and it's almost all self-aggrandizing gibberish. If you could somehow distill all the original and clear ideas in these books down there wouldn't be enough material to fill a pamphlet! Perhaps I was just unlucky in my choice of books and perhaps I had a bad prof, but after that course I couldn't look at someone doing graduate studies in English and not marvel at their tolerance for bullshit.

The most important lesson in writing is that "nobody wants to waste one second more than they have to reading your drivel, so get to the point". I learned this writing physics papers. I had several English profs who probably still haven't learned this lesson.

Re: The Decline and Fall of the English Major

#95

Post by pjbrunet »

bane wrote: post #33
gruseom wrote: post #3

It's sad that the classical education is no more, but it's also true that the humanities rotted from within. Because carrying on the traditions of arts and letters was no longer considered valuable, the disciplines rushed to gut themselves in favor of far shallower and dodgier stuff, like political ideologies ("the only things that matter are race, class, and gender") and pseudo-technical gibberish. None of that has…

> It's sad that the classical education is no more, but it's also true that the humanities rotted from within This really resonated with me. I find the concept of a classical education immensely important. I originally wanted to be a music major before diverting to CS. Even during my CS studies, I took extra liberal coursework to try and "round out" my education: history courses, literature, etc. I found it troubling…

Representational art was valuable in those days, worth spending time on, because they didn't have Internet, TV, movies, photography, magazines, etc. 3D representation of objects on a 2D surface was still a new, challenging concept. Those Renaissance painters aimed to reach Joe Sixpack who was illiterate. Representational art wasn't meant to be that challenging. No surprise Average Joe still nods his head in approval: "No way my 6-year-old could do that." Most people today when they see art they think two things: "How much time did that take?" and "Could my six-year-old do that?" That's the sad reality. There's still hope for humanity but I'm just putting this into perspective for you ;-) Some of those Renaissance artists snuck in advanced shape science, carefully modulated colors, but most people could care less, besides the few artists who reached that level too. If Rubens painted Crucifixions today, they'd be dismissed as simplistic, unchallenging, old-fashioned, trivial. As far as the future of art, in my opinion it isn't so literal--it's more imaginative, not limited by the laws of physics, instead pushes the limits of comprehension. All the language we have now had to be invented at some point. The drug of the artist is that invention, to be in the creative moment of discovery. Doing something new. Knowledge keeps expanding regardless what museum goers think. Just the concept of "perspective" was challenging at some point. Today's art viewer just has different, more advanced challenges. That said, I wouldn't defend most modern/contemporary art.

Re: The Decline and Fall of the English Major

#96

Post by dagw »

jmduke wrote: post #23

I'll say this: more so than any other department or discipline (yes, including computer science), I think a person would benefit most from a few properly taught college English classes. Well-taught classes (and I took enough good and bad English classes to recognize the distinction) are completely irreplaceable by Google or MOOCs. They focus overwhelmingly on the art of discourse: sure, there are papers and exams but…

I completely agree. The, by far, most useful course I took in high school was English literature. Far more useful than any math or science class, despite going on to study physics and getting a degree in maths.

Re: The Decline and Fall of the English Major

#98

Post by foobarbazqux »

lemmsjid wrote: post #88
nooron wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps so. If pjbrunet was making a clever joke, I suppose I owe them an apology.

I dunno, I missed it too. Maybe something to do with the economic use of a personal epiphany? Either way I appreciate your response, and your openness to be wrong.

> Would you like fries with that?

This was a snide remark about education as emotional entertainment, a bourgeois pleasure if there ever was one.

Alternatively, it was about some claim that English majors are likely to be employed at fast food establishments.

Alternatively alternatively, it was about the fast food nature of the life experience gained in an English course.

Any other interpretations?

Re: The Decline and Fall of the English Major

#99

Post by abraininavat »

sk5t wrote: post #84
abraininavat wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Philistine is an anti-intellectual or a non-intellectual -- a person with a materialistic frame of mind, lacking the education, intelligence, or will to focus on ideas rather than things. To suggest that a Philistine is a person who is ignorant strictly of "philosophy, art, history, or discourse" is to ignore that, when the term came about, those subjects were a huge part of every curriculum. We've moved on since t…

My intent was not to persuade you on the meaning of "Philistine," but rather to support the idea that a large proportion of STEM students become rather self-satisfied in their fields' relative importance, while more-or-less mocking the humanities as useless fluff. I've not observed the converse to be true--at least not up until the Ph.D. levels. FWIW, I had a highly varied college experience, working and associating…

*...support the idea that a large proportion of STEM students become rather self-satisfied in their fields' relative importance, while more-or-less mocking the humanities as useless fluff. I've not observed the converse to be true--at least not up until the Ph.D. levels..."

Regarding the attitudes of STEM students, you seem to take for granted that they're wrong about the relative importance of those fields. That isn't at all obvious to me.

Re: The Decline and Fall of the English Major

#100

Post by Crake »

jmduke wrote: post #23

I'll say this: more so than any other department or discipline (yes, including computer science), I think a person would benefit most from a few properly taught college English classes. Well-taught classes (and I took enough good and bad English classes to recognize the distinction) are completely irreplaceable by Google or MOOCs. They focus overwhelmingly on the art of discourse: sure, there are papers and exams but…

"100-level English classes were about punctuation and grammar"

They are--which is, luckily, one of many reasons I placed out of them.

"A good professor wants to teach you that Frankenstein is an allegory for the Industrial Revolution, or the creation of Man; a great professor knows the conversation that Shelley had with Chaucer and Milton and everyone in between..."

Or they could write a book and you could read it for free at the library, or online. Why limit knowledge to people who have $50,000/year to blow on college? Not everyone is rich and upper class. Can only people from well off families become "properly" educated? I've met a lot of educated people from all walks of life, and all levels of education. To me, at least, intelligence and a drive to learn are far greater indicators of someone's likely degree of sophistication than how much their parents spent on their four year vacation to some over priced campus.

Well taught classes are a nice idea, but most people will never have access to a good teacher, much less a good classroom environment. I've had good teachers but a ruined class experiment by sufficiently unprepared or even just unintelligent classmates.

There's nothing magical about college. You can do just as well with finding informed and (likely more enthused, even) peers at a open access book club, if not the often maligned internet forums dedicated to literature.

I've seen too many english and other writing intensive liberal arts majors graduate without knowing the difference between your and you're, its and it's, to really have any respect for the degree. Oddly, my scientist friends have few problems with attention to detail and understanding basic syntax, despite not spending four years on mastering the subject. I suspect this is because they already mastered it in high school, if not earlier, much like myself.

If you have to go to college to learn, you're doing it wrong. (And these days--also very expensively.)

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