I remember when they wanted to close all smaller departments in the university of my hometown (Hamburg, Germany) with the reason you named: Geting rid of costlier departments, streamlining the university. But they didnt call it that, they said it was because they want more students finding work in those field.
When someone pointed out that no1 on the shopping block was finnugristic which had the previous year a HUNDRED PERCENT employmenmt rate by graduates in finnish businesses, they basically said "Well, still" (I left shortly afterwards so I dont know what happend in the end)
That was in the 90s.
Universities are expansive, and they allow for critical thinking. Thats not high on the priority list on conservative politicians.
Thanks for continuing to hold out fact over myth when it comes to the humanities. In that spirit, the Clemente Course in the Humanities has for more than two decades offered free, college level, dialogue-driven humanities courses to those who lack the financial or social capital needed to access formal education. The winner of the national humanities medal and numerous other awards, it continues to bring citizens at all levels into the circle of humanistic inquiry in a time of intellectual retraction. https://www.clementecourse.org/
It's doesn't feel like a mystery that students flock to STEM. The fields have been exciting, successful, and lucrative. Historically speaking, going to University to pursue some kind of study for it's own sake has been an option for the highly privileged. In the UK when they expanded access to higher education people were perplexed that many new students were choosing their courses like they were apprenticeships and expecting that if they studied forensic science, they'd become forensic scientists. But that makes absolute sense if you are the first in your generation to go to uni.
Please help me understand what you mean by "historically speaking." What history? Whose history? What years are we talking about? Also, perhaps focus on the US since that's the context in which this piece is situated a context which shares some similarities to other countries, but which also has a number of unique facets.
I suppose arguably having opposition to the humanities be bipartisan could work in its favor, if it meant that support for the humanities was also bipartisan. I realize that may be an overly rosy picture, but take what you can get from my usually pessimistic nature.
"In essence, a niche field (computer science) exploded" - yes, IT exploded starting in the 1980s and is now a serious strand of the labor market. But the rest of STEM also took off, immensely, especially allied health. CS is only one part of that.
Yes it's interesting because a lot of the humanities education that these right wingers idealize really happened in high school. Like in medieval times a BA was basically a high school diploma, and was often awarded to kids of eighteen or nineteen. That's where I got my humanities education, in my catholic high school. College, as currently constituted, is more like a medieval masters, which was always more specialized!
Great insights, John. Universities have pursued a neoliberal agenda for some time now. For some unknown reason, my dean invited me to lunch in 1990s with Ford Motor executives and he started waxing poetic re students as 'customers.' That led me to (a) point out how the student-professor relationship was so much more than that and (b) never being invited to lunch again by the dean.
Ian McGilchrist explains the invisible force under these deep cultural trends- yes capitalism but neuroscience too. Check the master and his emissary. Brilliant. Profound.
Aside from everything else, Flanagan strikes me as one of those creepy people who keeps hanging out with high schoolers when they're 28, not for prurient reasons but because they just can't shake off that time when they were taken seriously by the teachers and were smarter than most of the other kids--this constant revisitation of what college should be without any investment in college as such, without any ability to build a bigger framework or context.
As an economist, I get tired of capitalism being blamed for everything. First, we live in a mixed economy. This means some things are provided by the market and some things are publicly provided. This mix is determined by society’s choices. If the market underprovides a good or service, we could choose to provide more publicly. If this is the case, it is society’s failure not capitalism’s. Second, it seems like people that complain about capitalism seldom provide an alternative market structure or successful example. Are the humanities thriving in Russia or China? Is there a place where the humanities are thriving and is it because they don’t have capitalism? What alternative structure do you prefer?
To be clear, I favor capitalism over those alternatives you cite, though I'm a fan of the way the Nordic countries seem to balance public needs against the forces of the market. IMO, the pendulum in American capitalism has swung way too far into a kind of magical thinking where markets solve all problems and are a kind of natural (even supernatural) force that gets the answers to what should be happening correct simply because it's capitalism. We know that the market underprovides for all kinds of services, perhaps most notably for health care and education, where we have decades of proof that the market creates more inefficiencies (if the goal is to provide broad an equitable access to these services) than it solves. But part of the ethos of capitalism is competition, so one could look at health care and education and argue that this is capitalism working as intended, creating a playing field where some rise to the top and others get something less.
Personally, I think this is a bad system, but to your point, "we" could choose differently, and much of what I write about here is about advocating for different choices, e.g., buying books at independent bookstores in order to support those businesses instead of Amazon. We don't need a different structure, but we do need more balance and unfortunately, the choices of individuals have very little impact on these systemic problems, which is why we need regulations and government incentives to help foster these aspects of our society that are not favored by a kind of unthinking adherence to a capitalist market system.
It seems to me, if you want capitalism but not some of its outcomes, the problem is with the political process not capitalism. When teaching basic economics, we teach a section on market failure. We teach that the market fails to provide the efficient solution under certain circumstances (e.g. monopoly, externalities like pollution, public goods.) We also teach that society might want to deviate from the efficient solution to provide a more equitable solution (e.g. minimum wage.) In either of these cases, to achieve the optimal result requires public policy or regulation. Your example of the Nordic countries is pertinent here. They tax at higher rates and then the government provides more services. This is a political choice not some different version of capitalism. As a society, if we don’t like a market outcome, it is within our power to engage in policy solutions that provide the desired outcome. If we don’t, it is a failure of the political system, not capitalism. If you drive over a cliff because you don’t apply the brakes, it is your fault not the fault of the car. We are driving capitalism. If we don’t like where it is taking us, we need to steer it differently.
Unfortunately, the way economists frame these things - as you do here - ignores the ways our political system is, in fact, distorted by capitalism. Just because something is theoretically possible under the system doesn't mean it is actually possible.
We have a less efficacious fourth estate providing news to inform voters because of the impact of financial engineering on newspapers. This is a byproduct of capitalism that makes it more difficult for people to be informed. It's a logical outcome of a capitalist system as private equity has purchased these entities, squeezed out additional profits through debt financing, and discarded the husks, leaving localities without sources of information. I suppose we could shrug and say them's the breaks, we should just "choose" differently, but how does one choose differently in a world where they're not able to be well-informed about their choices?
We also have a system where ultra-wealthy people can spend huge sums in order to influence our polity, and it works! Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on a political process that ultimately resulted in the installation of a sufficient number of Supreme Court Justices to overturn Roe v. Wade. This is politics, yes, but it's inextricable from a capitalist system that makes it possible and desirable for wealthy individuals to tilt the playing field in their favor. Our tax code essentially reflects the preferences of the wealthiest political donors because they provide the money that funds the electoral activities of our elected representatives. We can't do anything about guns despite overwhelming public sentiment for action for similar reasons. A critical mass of legislators are funded by a minority that wants to prevent any additional regulations.
We can't extricate our politics from our market system, so to say we could just choose differently is a cop out. We need to be more thoughtful about what kind of choices are truly possible in the system as it exists, not as we think about it in theory and in textbooks. This is one of my core messages about the problems in higher education. By turning it into a market, rather than a public good, we've effectively closed out opportunities for many people. Fixing this is not just a political problem. I did more thinking about this in an earlier post that I think you might find infuriating, but I'll link it anyway: https://biblioracle.substack.com/p/stop-thinking-like-an-economist
I read that post when you originally posted it. I would say irritated is a better descriptor than infuriated! BTW, infuriated better describes my reaction every time those on the right scream socialism every time someone proposes an expansion of government services. To me, capitalism and socialism are about who owns the means of production (private vs. public) and they are neutral terms. Rather than argue more about the strict definition of capitalism, let me go back to my other point. If you don’t like capitalism, at least as it currently exists in the US, what is your proposed structure and how do we get there?
My proposed structure is a capitalism that recognizes the value of public goods being funded publicly. To the extent that this is ultimately a problem solved by politics, the first step is to get rid of dark money and in general, make the work of lobbying more like persuasion and advocacy and less like legalized bribery. We also need to make it much easier to vote and (hoping against hope) get rid of the structural problems of the electoral college and lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court. We could also use (as is happening) more regulations around potential monopolistic practices, an a tax structure that captures money generated from wealth as opposed to income.
I don't advocate an alternative economic structure. I advocate a more forthright discussion about the one we have, particularly from economists, so rather than shrugging and saying "that's just how markets work" we talk about whether or not that how we want our markets to work.
If you substitute the word society for capitalism in your reply, I would agree with the statement 100%. I even agree with your proposed policy changes except the wealth tax. I think the wealth tax is fine in theory, but it has some real practical difficulties in implementation. I think many people try to assign negative connotations to the words capitalism and socialism so that when they see a policy or outcome they don’t like, they can shout “Capitalism! QED” or “Socialism! QED” rather than articulate a logical argument. As far as shrugging and saying that’s the way the market works, I perceive this being said by the people who benefit from the market working that way. Most economists I know would more likely say that’s the way the market works and if you don’t like that outcome, here are some policy changes that would provide a different outcome.
I don't quite agree with this, but I think we're not necessarily all that far apart, though I think the gap is more than mere semantics.
I should have said earlier that I don't intend to use Capitalism as a de facto pejorative, but as descriptive of a system organized around competition/efficiency where what has happened is simply the logic of the system. In that sense, the system, unrestrained ultimately results in the kind of inequality and distortions of our political process that we live with today.
I think it's undeniable that these are features (not bugs) of a Capitalist system and if people don't like them, we must reform or restrain the system in some way. For me, that mostly means writing about values other than efficiency and productivity when it comes to the issues I know something about and care about (education/reading/publishing).
You make really valid points! I may have said this as a comment on one of your other newsletters-- or quite possibly one of the many other newsletters I read, but most people view college as a way to get a job. And find no value in degrees that don’t directly lead to a job, i.e. the social sciences and humanities. Neither of my parents have college degrees, but my going to college was never a question, but an expectation. Because an education would lead to a good job. So I didn’t have the pressure to major in something that would lead to a job, and I didn’t treat college that way. I ended up with a BA in Anthropology, because it was the one discipline that was interdisciplinary! I could do all the science/bio stuff I liked without the math and chemistry, and also all the history I enjoyed with archaeology. I subsequently went on to earn an MA in anthropology as well! I always viewed college as teaching me and everyone else, though my peers vehemently disagreed-- most of whom were science/engineering/math majors-- that we were all learning the same thing, how to read, how to write and how to think critically. Vastly important skills no matter what career you choose. Skills, I realize, that my parents don’t quite have, with their high school educations. I never had a directly related anthropology job-- which did pose a problem in job interviews, and still does, as people assume that I should be a professor, or locked away in a lab doing research-- things I never wanted to do! But any real job skills, I learned on the job. In this day and age, where you can google anything, watch a you tube video showing you how to do something, college shouldn’t be about finding a job, but learning how to be in the world. Grad school is for practical job skills. You don’t need to have a BA in biology to go to med school-- you go to med school to be a doctor. That’s where you learn the skills for that, and frankly that’s what you do at the hospital! You learn to be a doctor not in college, but on the job. Like most jobs. So really, we all need to get over our hangups with using college as the means to finding a job, or the means to learning how to do a job. That’s not what it is and was designed for. And furthermore, college isn’t for everyone, not because everyone can’t go to college, by all means it should be accessible to everyone who wants to go, but it shouldn’t be the status symbol that it at times, still maintains. Skilled labor is important and necessary. We need plumbers and electricians and builders, etc. etc. who can be creative in solving those things, skills they learn in a trade school or through an apprenticeship. Anyway, now that I’ve run on, just wanted to say that I like all your points!
Sigh. Just what I've been saying all along, the whole problem (with everything in the world) is capitalism, comrades. Or to get all classical on you, as my liberal arts studies taught me, the love of money is the root of all evil.
My wife and I used to read each other newspaper articles about cricket because the descriptions seemed, at best, invented satire a la 43-man Squamish, at worst a series of random terms made to resemble a sports-like substance (or to be hip with the times, generated by faulty AI).
Apologies to the half of the world that understands cricket. We try to be good people in other ways.
This hits home, because while I can now pretty much get what they're talking about in the match commentary, I tried reading a summary of the. New Zealand v. Sri Lanka match and it really was a totally foreign experience. There's a whole wealth of terminology that makes no sense to me. It was interesting because with just about any other sport I have sufficient fluency to get what's being described, but my ignorance on Cricket terms is profound.
Agree with everything you said! I also can't help but wonder if we're simply teaching humanities incorrectly. I read and wrote a lot as a young boy, but by the time I was in high school, I wanted nothing to do with the English curriculum. Now having, in a sense, returned to my roots (I'm an English major), I've constructed a vague hypothesis about the degredation of the humanities: we've simply forgotten our "why" (shoutout to Simon Sinek). Many English professors do a good job of enjoying what we read and sharing that passion with their students, but some--and many more high school teachers--put students off of reading by assigning ends to the material. In other words, instead of reading to enjoy and reap reading's benefits, we're reading so we can pass a reading test (which is literally a test that teachers assign that asks questions about the book's content to check if the student actually read the book). I mean, what a waste! Everything is for a grade. Curriculums are literally designed so students will pass standardized tests because the schools (at least where I'm from) with the highest standarized test scores get the most funding. It's no wonder students would rather play video games than read a book. Reading has become more of a burden than an opportunity! How can a young student reap the benefits of a book if their only goal is to finish it so they can get a good grade???
You've articulated what I call the difference between "schooling" and "learning" and unfortunately, too much of school has become about schooling, the behaviors that are rewarded by a grade, rather than learning. Changing this when it comes to how we teach writing seems to have become my life's mission, through no advance planning.
I remember when they wanted to close all smaller departments in the university of my hometown (Hamburg, Germany) with the reason you named: Geting rid of costlier departments, streamlining the university. But they didnt call it that, they said it was because they want more students finding work in those field.
When someone pointed out that no1 on the shopping block was finnugristic which had the previous year a HUNDRED PERCENT employmenmt rate by graduates in finnish businesses, they basically said "Well, still" (I left shortly afterwards so I dont know what happend in the end)
That was in the 90s.
Universities are expansive, and they allow for critical thinking. Thats not high on the priority list on conservative politicians.
Thanks for continuing to hold out fact over myth when it comes to the humanities. In that spirit, the Clemente Course in the Humanities has for more than two decades offered free, college level, dialogue-driven humanities courses to those who lack the financial or social capital needed to access formal education. The winner of the national humanities medal and numerous other awards, it continues to bring citizens at all levels into the circle of humanistic inquiry in a time of intellectual retraction. https://www.clementecourse.org/
It's doesn't feel like a mystery that students flock to STEM. The fields have been exciting, successful, and lucrative. Historically speaking, going to University to pursue some kind of study for it's own sake has been an option for the highly privileged. In the UK when they expanded access to higher education people were perplexed that many new students were choosing their courses like they were apprenticeships and expecting that if they studied forensic science, they'd become forensic scientists. But that makes absolute sense if you are the first in your generation to go to uni.
Please help me understand what you mean by "historically speaking." What history? Whose history? What years are we talking about? Also, perhaps focus on the US since that's the context in which this piece is situated a context which shares some similarities to other countries, but which also has a number of unique facets.
I suppose arguably having opposition to the humanities be bipartisan could work in its favor, if it meant that support for the humanities was also bipartisan. I realize that may be an overly rosy picture, but take what you can get from my usually pessimistic nature.
"In essence, a niche field (computer science) exploded" - yes, IT exploded starting in the 1980s and is now a serious strand of the labor market. But the rest of STEM also took off, immensely, especially allied health. CS is only one part of that.
Yes it's interesting because a lot of the humanities education that these right wingers idealize really happened in high school. Like in medieval times a BA was basically a high school diploma, and was often awarded to kids of eighteen or nineteen. That's where I got my humanities education, in my catholic high school. College, as currently constituted, is more like a medieval masters, which was always more specialized!
Great insights, John. Universities have pursued a neoliberal agenda for some time now. For some unknown reason, my dean invited me to lunch in 1990s with Ford Motor executives and he started waxing poetic re students as 'customers.' That led me to (a) point out how the student-professor relationship was so much more than that and (b) never being invited to lunch again by the dean.
Ian McGilchrist explains the invisible force under these deep cultural trends- yes capitalism but neuroscience too. Check the master and his emissary. Brilliant. Profound.
Aside from everything else, Flanagan strikes me as one of those creepy people who keeps hanging out with high schoolers when they're 28, not for prurient reasons but because they just can't shake off that time when they were taken seriously by the teachers and were smarter than most of the other kids--this constant revisitation of what college should be without any investment in college as such, without any ability to build a bigger framework or context.
As an economist, I get tired of capitalism being blamed for everything. First, we live in a mixed economy. This means some things are provided by the market and some things are publicly provided. This mix is determined by society’s choices. If the market underprovides a good or service, we could choose to provide more publicly. If this is the case, it is society’s failure not capitalism’s. Second, it seems like people that complain about capitalism seldom provide an alternative market structure or successful example. Are the humanities thriving in Russia or China? Is there a place where the humanities are thriving and is it because they don’t have capitalism? What alternative structure do you prefer?
To be clear, I favor capitalism over those alternatives you cite, though I'm a fan of the way the Nordic countries seem to balance public needs against the forces of the market. IMO, the pendulum in American capitalism has swung way too far into a kind of magical thinking where markets solve all problems and are a kind of natural (even supernatural) force that gets the answers to what should be happening correct simply because it's capitalism. We know that the market underprovides for all kinds of services, perhaps most notably for health care and education, where we have decades of proof that the market creates more inefficiencies (if the goal is to provide broad an equitable access to these services) than it solves. But part of the ethos of capitalism is competition, so one could look at health care and education and argue that this is capitalism working as intended, creating a playing field where some rise to the top and others get something less.
Personally, I think this is a bad system, but to your point, "we" could choose differently, and much of what I write about here is about advocating for different choices, e.g., buying books at independent bookstores in order to support those businesses instead of Amazon. We don't need a different structure, but we do need more balance and unfortunately, the choices of individuals have very little impact on these systemic problems, which is why we need regulations and government incentives to help foster these aspects of our society that are not favored by a kind of unthinking adherence to a capitalist market system.
It seems to me, if you want capitalism but not some of its outcomes, the problem is with the political process not capitalism. When teaching basic economics, we teach a section on market failure. We teach that the market fails to provide the efficient solution under certain circumstances (e.g. monopoly, externalities like pollution, public goods.) We also teach that society might want to deviate from the efficient solution to provide a more equitable solution (e.g. minimum wage.) In either of these cases, to achieve the optimal result requires public policy or regulation. Your example of the Nordic countries is pertinent here. They tax at higher rates and then the government provides more services. This is a political choice not some different version of capitalism. As a society, if we don’t like a market outcome, it is within our power to engage in policy solutions that provide the desired outcome. If we don’t, it is a failure of the political system, not capitalism. If you drive over a cliff because you don’t apply the brakes, it is your fault not the fault of the car. We are driving capitalism. If we don’t like where it is taking us, we need to steer it differently.
Unfortunately, the way economists frame these things - as you do here - ignores the ways our political system is, in fact, distorted by capitalism. Just because something is theoretically possible under the system doesn't mean it is actually possible.
We have a less efficacious fourth estate providing news to inform voters because of the impact of financial engineering on newspapers. This is a byproduct of capitalism that makes it more difficult for people to be informed. It's a logical outcome of a capitalist system as private equity has purchased these entities, squeezed out additional profits through debt financing, and discarded the husks, leaving localities without sources of information. I suppose we could shrug and say them's the breaks, we should just "choose" differently, but how does one choose differently in a world where they're not able to be well-informed about their choices?
We also have a system where ultra-wealthy people can spend huge sums in order to influence our polity, and it works! Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on a political process that ultimately resulted in the installation of a sufficient number of Supreme Court Justices to overturn Roe v. Wade. This is politics, yes, but it's inextricable from a capitalist system that makes it possible and desirable for wealthy individuals to tilt the playing field in their favor. Our tax code essentially reflects the preferences of the wealthiest political donors because they provide the money that funds the electoral activities of our elected representatives. We can't do anything about guns despite overwhelming public sentiment for action for similar reasons. A critical mass of legislators are funded by a minority that wants to prevent any additional regulations.
We can't extricate our politics from our market system, so to say we could just choose differently is a cop out. We need to be more thoughtful about what kind of choices are truly possible in the system as it exists, not as we think about it in theory and in textbooks. This is one of my core messages about the problems in higher education. By turning it into a market, rather than a public good, we've effectively closed out opportunities for many people. Fixing this is not just a political problem. I did more thinking about this in an earlier post that I think you might find infuriating, but I'll link it anyway: https://biblioracle.substack.com/p/stop-thinking-like-an-economist
I read that post when you originally posted it. I would say irritated is a better descriptor than infuriated! BTW, infuriated better describes my reaction every time those on the right scream socialism every time someone proposes an expansion of government services. To me, capitalism and socialism are about who owns the means of production (private vs. public) and they are neutral terms. Rather than argue more about the strict definition of capitalism, let me go back to my other point. If you don’t like capitalism, at least as it currently exists in the US, what is your proposed structure and how do we get there?
My proposed structure is a capitalism that recognizes the value of public goods being funded publicly. To the extent that this is ultimately a problem solved by politics, the first step is to get rid of dark money and in general, make the work of lobbying more like persuasion and advocacy and less like legalized bribery. We also need to make it much easier to vote and (hoping against hope) get rid of the structural problems of the electoral college and lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court. We could also use (as is happening) more regulations around potential monopolistic practices, an a tax structure that captures money generated from wealth as opposed to income.
I don't advocate an alternative economic structure. I advocate a more forthright discussion about the one we have, particularly from economists, so rather than shrugging and saying "that's just how markets work" we talk about whether or not that how we want our markets to work.
If you substitute the word society for capitalism in your reply, I would agree with the statement 100%. I even agree with your proposed policy changes except the wealth tax. I think the wealth tax is fine in theory, but it has some real practical difficulties in implementation. I think many people try to assign negative connotations to the words capitalism and socialism so that when they see a policy or outcome they don’t like, they can shout “Capitalism! QED” or “Socialism! QED” rather than articulate a logical argument. As far as shrugging and saying that’s the way the market works, I perceive this being said by the people who benefit from the market working that way. Most economists I know would more likely say that’s the way the market works and if you don’t like that outcome, here are some policy changes that would provide a different outcome.
I don't quite agree with this, but I think we're not necessarily all that far apart, though I think the gap is more than mere semantics.
I should have said earlier that I don't intend to use Capitalism as a de facto pejorative, but as descriptive of a system organized around competition/efficiency where what has happened is simply the logic of the system. In that sense, the system, unrestrained ultimately results in the kind of inequality and distortions of our political process that we live with today.
I think it's undeniable that these are features (not bugs) of a Capitalist system and if people don't like them, we must reform or restrain the system in some way. For me, that mostly means writing about values other than efficiency and productivity when it comes to the issues I know something about and care about (education/reading/publishing).
You make really valid points! I may have said this as a comment on one of your other newsletters-- or quite possibly one of the many other newsletters I read, but most people view college as a way to get a job. And find no value in degrees that don’t directly lead to a job, i.e. the social sciences and humanities. Neither of my parents have college degrees, but my going to college was never a question, but an expectation. Because an education would lead to a good job. So I didn’t have the pressure to major in something that would lead to a job, and I didn’t treat college that way. I ended up with a BA in Anthropology, because it was the one discipline that was interdisciplinary! I could do all the science/bio stuff I liked without the math and chemistry, and also all the history I enjoyed with archaeology. I subsequently went on to earn an MA in anthropology as well! I always viewed college as teaching me and everyone else, though my peers vehemently disagreed-- most of whom were science/engineering/math majors-- that we were all learning the same thing, how to read, how to write and how to think critically. Vastly important skills no matter what career you choose. Skills, I realize, that my parents don’t quite have, with their high school educations. I never had a directly related anthropology job-- which did pose a problem in job interviews, and still does, as people assume that I should be a professor, or locked away in a lab doing research-- things I never wanted to do! But any real job skills, I learned on the job. In this day and age, where you can google anything, watch a you tube video showing you how to do something, college shouldn’t be about finding a job, but learning how to be in the world. Grad school is for practical job skills. You don’t need to have a BA in biology to go to med school-- you go to med school to be a doctor. That’s where you learn the skills for that, and frankly that’s what you do at the hospital! You learn to be a doctor not in college, but on the job. Like most jobs. So really, we all need to get over our hangups with using college as the means to finding a job, or the means to learning how to do a job. That’s not what it is and was designed for. And furthermore, college isn’t for everyone, not because everyone can’t go to college, by all means it should be accessible to everyone who wants to go, but it shouldn’t be the status symbol that it at times, still maintains. Skilled labor is important and necessary. We need plumbers and electricians and builders, etc. etc. who can be creative in solving those things, skills they learn in a trade school or through an apprenticeship. Anyway, now that I’ve run on, just wanted to say that I like all your points!
Sigh. Just what I've been saying all along, the whole problem (with everything in the world) is capitalism, comrades. Or to get all classical on you, as my liberal arts studies taught me, the love of money is the root of all evil.
My wife and I used to read each other newspaper articles about cricket because the descriptions seemed, at best, invented satire a la 43-man Squamish, at worst a series of random terms made to resemble a sports-like substance (or to be hip with the times, generated by faulty AI).
Apologies to the half of the world that understands cricket. We try to be good people in other ways.
This hits home, because while I can now pretty much get what they're talking about in the match commentary, I tried reading a summary of the. New Zealand v. Sri Lanka match and it really was a totally foreign experience. There's a whole wealth of terminology that makes no sense to me. It was interesting because with just about any other sport I have sufficient fluency to get what's being described, but my ignorance on Cricket terms is profound.
Agree with everything you said! I also can't help but wonder if we're simply teaching humanities incorrectly. I read and wrote a lot as a young boy, but by the time I was in high school, I wanted nothing to do with the English curriculum. Now having, in a sense, returned to my roots (I'm an English major), I've constructed a vague hypothesis about the degredation of the humanities: we've simply forgotten our "why" (shoutout to Simon Sinek). Many English professors do a good job of enjoying what we read and sharing that passion with their students, but some--and many more high school teachers--put students off of reading by assigning ends to the material. In other words, instead of reading to enjoy and reap reading's benefits, we're reading so we can pass a reading test (which is literally a test that teachers assign that asks questions about the book's content to check if the student actually read the book). I mean, what a waste! Everything is for a grade. Curriculums are literally designed so students will pass standardized tests because the schools (at least where I'm from) with the highest standarized test scores get the most funding. It's no wonder students would rather play video games than read a book. Reading has become more of a burden than an opportunity! How can a young student reap the benefits of a book if their only goal is to finish it so they can get a good grade???
You've articulated what I call the difference between "schooling" and "learning" and unfortunately, too much of school has become about schooling, the behaviors that are rewarded by a grade, rather than learning. Changing this when it comes to how we teach writing seems to have become my life's mission, through no advance planning.
It's a worthy mission!