The Decline and Fall of the English Major • Hacker News Board

Re: The Decline and Fall of the English Major

#101

Post by jacalata » Mon, Jun 24, 2013, 7:10 AM UTC

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…

Old art is all popular because the unpopular old art wasn't kept around. Modern art looks unpopular because it hasn't yet been filtered.

Re: The Decline and Fall of the English Major

#102

Post by pjbrunet » Mon, Jun 24, 2013, 7:16 AM UTC

abraininavat wrote: post #77

petegrif wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a deep truth here. Most artists are acute observers of the human condition. They distill the products of such observation into artistic truths and evolve forms to freshly present their insights. The problem is that there is only so much an acute observer can learn about the human condition and share with us. Have we really experienced many people who have pushed the limits of such acuity materially f…

Most artists are acute observers of the human condition. Seriously? Most artists? Do you mean "most famous artists", or "the most accomplished artists", or "the best artists", or something like that? Or do you mean something like "artists tend to be more acute observers of the human condition than non-artists"? I agree with the rest of your post, so if you meant the statement as it's written I'm going to assume that…

LOL. That bothered me too. I don't think art is limited, or should be limited, by our humanity. Just because we're physical beings, doesn't mean we're limited by the physical world. I'd argue many artists find the physical world boring, which is why they're drawn to art.

Re: The Decline and Fall of the English Major

#103

Post by Crake » Mon, Jun 24, 2013, 7:21 AM UTC

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…

The classes are useless fluff. The topics themselves are interesting, but at least for me, academic rigor is so lacking that I'm bored to tears. It's been suggested to me by someone who knows me that it's not easy for everyone like it is for me, and that's it's just because I'm smart that I'm bored. While this hadn't occurred to me until she suggested it, I suppose it could be partially the case, but I suspect the perceived easiness (as well as the actual relative easiness) of the average liberal arts degree does a lot to influence the type of student who chooses to pursue it.

Interestingly, a lot of the people you'd revere and read and study in an English class are people who had no formal English training whatsoever, or maybe high school level at best. It's only in recent years that colleges have managed to spread the myth that you can't have really learned something if you didn't pay $100,000 to do it. To me, it's just silly.

Re: The Decline and Fall of the English Major

#104

Post by virtualwhys » Mon, Jun 24, 2013, 7:22 AM UTC

English major to a master's in psychology to self-trained programmer, see the pattern?

I was interested in all three, but programming was the only one that grabbed me in a wow, I really want to dive into this world, kind of way.

Re: The Decline and Fall of the English Major

#105

Post by Crake » Mon, Jun 24, 2013, 7:24 AM UTC

krakensden wrote: post #16

> No one has found a way to put a dollar sign on this kind of literacy, and I doubt anyone ever will. But everyone who possesses it — no matter how or when it was acquired — knows that it is a rare and precious inheritance. This is a widespread sentiment. This is even a chic sentiment. This is maybe even a sentiment I once sympathized with. It is also the kind of romantic bullshit that hurts people. It doesn't really…

"Jorge, though, first in his family to get to college, might just take it seriously, and wind up somewhere ugly with too much debt, four years gone, and a piece of paper that nobody wants."

This exactly. This sort of lie about college--that it doesn't matter what the cost is--is perpetuated by meaningless and empty platitudes. Unlike many others of the kind, however, it has the potential to permanently destroy a young person's life. High school guidance counselors whose parents paid for their education still continue to advise kids without any parental support that they should spend as much money as possible to get the "best" education they can afford. It's cruelty of the highest form: apathy towards those from lesser circumstances than you.

Re: The Decline and Fall of the English Major

#106

Post by abraininavat » Mon, Jun 24, 2013, 7:24 AM UTC

foobarbazqux wrote: post #21

krakensden wrote: post #16

> No one has found a way to put a dollar sign on this kind of literacy, and I doubt anyone ever will. But everyone who possesses it — no matter how or when it was acquired — knows that it is a rare and precious inheritance. This is a widespread sentiment. This is even a chic sentiment. This is maybe even a sentiment I once sympathized with. It is also the kind of romantic bullshit that hurts people. It doesn't really…

Surely the oldest complaint is that life's too brutal for romance. But why bother living, without meaning, without romance?

meaning == romance ??

Re: The Decline and Fall of the English Major

#107

Post by Crake » Mon, Jun 24, 2013, 7:26 AM UTC

sk5t wrote: post #41

krakensden wrote: post #16

> No one has found a way to put a dollar sign on this kind of literacy, and I doubt anyone ever will. But everyone who possesses it — no matter how or when it was acquired — knows that it is a rare and precious inheritance. This is a widespread sentiment. This is even a chic sentiment. This is maybe even a sentiment I once sympathized with. It is also the kind of romantic bullshit that hurts people. It doesn't really…

Are you arguing that there exists a class of people smart enough to gain admission into and pay for college, yet too simpleminded to assess the hazy job prospects based around a degree in English, psychology, art history, and the like? As far as I know, every major world culture produces writers, poets, sculptors, and musicians, and in no case is an education in those fields a guaranteed ticket to economic prosperity…

I have met a LOT of people who thought that their degree in English, psychology, art history, and the like was going to get them a $60,000/year job fresh out of school. Heck, even some of the artists I know expected to be able to pay off their $80,000 in student loans with their art degree.

Now they sit around their parents house whenever they're not at their part time retail job and complain about how "the economy" screwed them over.

Re: The Decline and Fall of the English Major

#108

Post by abraininavat » Mon, Jun 24, 2013, 7:29 AM UTC

kvee wrote: post #72

bbxiao1 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the decision to focus on writing was very specific. She is trying to convince people that studying the humanities can/does create a very real skill, an argument that drives a lot of STEM advocates. Personally, I see the value of humanities as how we (a society) got here and why. I think it's important, but I don't think I will have the opportunity to use this knowledge. I do not know all the author's thoughts…

She never makes a clear, logical case for writing. But forget about writing in particular. She never makes a clear case for the humanities at all. She just says they're really really important.

There should be a comma there: "really, really"

Re: The Decline and Fall of the English Major

#109

Post by dnautics » Mon, Jun 24, 2013, 7:30 AM UTC

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #75

patio11 wrote: post #35

The first paragraph would be improved by the economic reality that dare not speak its name: adjunct . Most people who pursue the PhD in English will fail to join the one profession which actually needs English PhDs (training future English PhDs) and instead, if they want to continue putting to use the last 7+ years of their life dedicated to mastering the reification of privilege and construction of the other as demo…

I could never understand why my classmates had such trouble with getting good grades in English classes. Most of them attended similar if not superior high schools. The Catholic school students certainly should have had a better grasp of language and composition. In the long run, my successes were a combination of reading experience and the ability to quickly create mental outlines. I was a voracious reader as a chil…

"My messages have become shorter and more direct". This is a good thing. Not everyone can or should be a Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Faulkner. It seems to me the way you've written this post is not so bad. All you have to do to make it a real, long-form essay, book, or series, is to collect your thoughts, organize, and be unafraid to edit (or pay someone to edit for you).

Re: The Decline and Fall of the English Major

#110

Post by Crake » Mon, Jun 24, 2013, 7:31 AM UTC

beloch wrote: post #94

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 t…

The problem is that if they didn't fill it with self-aggrandizing gibberish, people would easily understand what they mean, and then go: wait, didn't so-and-so write about this already?

Science still has legitimate frontiers. English, in many instances, does not.