When I'm teaching students how to do certain tasks, such as writing a radio script, I try to get them to understand that the obsession with good grades should take a back seat to learning how to do things right. Do them right, my reasoning goes, and the good grades will follow. I also try to stress to them that there's a degree of discipline that comes with learning how to do anything.
There's a saying of Brother Dave's that I love to use: "The object of karate is not to chop the board in two." Karate isn't about splitting lumber; it's about learning skills, acquiring mental discipline and self-control, and getting to know yourself and your abilities. Likewise, if you come into one of my classes thinking it's all about the grades, you're really missing the point. I have had straight-A students who missed the point of the class, obsessed as they were about the outcome; likewise, I've had students who made Bs and Cs whom I'd have been glad to hire for a radio station job, because they let the material sink in, and they got it.
All this is on my mind because of a meditation Professor Mondo posted the other day about the humanities' future and what it could all mean. I was tempted to post something over at the good Professor's blog, but, among other reasons, I wanted to riff a bit about it here, sharing some of my own variations on the theme.
In that post, the Professor quotes an academic who sees the humanities falling by the wayside in favor of emphasis on business, money, popular culture, and other related "here and now" areas. Now, although I teach in one of those "here and now" areas, my undergraduate education was a wide-ranging, liberal arts education in the humanities, and it's a background I don't go a day without tapping in my classes. I can't, for instance, teach how to properly write a script or an article without drawing on my education in language and writing; likewise, in everything I teach, that undergraduate degree in history I earned is never that far away from my mind, my notes or my lectures.
But there's something else I worry that the youth of America (to quote Casey Stengel) will miss. It's an idea I read long ago, in a column written by an airline pilot. He had been asked to speak to a class of young flight students who aspired to careers as airline pilots. His advice to them? Get a good education in all the other things outside flying, too. Why? Because there's more to life than that, he told them. We don't talk about flying that much once we're up in the air, he said, because we are people who have other interests, too. Plus, one of the greatest gifts an airline career gives you is the ability to travel to new places and see all kinds of things. Why not get a good education that -- in addition to flight training -- teaches you about music and art and literature and history and all that other stuff, too? You may think those courses are dumb now, but someday you will sure be glad you took them.
I couldn't help thinking back to that as I read Prof. Mondo's thoughts, because it reminded me of why I do things the way I do, and how distressed I feel sometimes about some educational trends. It's why, for instance, I get concerned when students give me the impression they're in college to play sports instead of to get an education, or why I'm concerned that the only questions they routinely get correct on the weekly current events quizzes are the sports and entertainment questions. It's why I get a little worried about the aspiring television newscasters we teach who nail the camera techniques, but can't write scripts even though they've taken multiple courses in it, because they were more concerned about what bad grades would do to their grade point averages instead of learning how to do the scripts correctly.
I'm fond of saying to the students that the courses in which I made As really didn't stay with me as much as those I made Cs in. The courses I aced really didn't teach me much I didn't already know. It was the courses I had to fight, the ones that threw me curveballs, that stuck with me and made the impression, and in a couple instances changed my life and my way of thinking. I remind students of this to let them know there's more to life than what's in the here and now -- because I'm not teaching them for this moment, when you think about it. I'm teaching them for the moment a year, or two years, or five years down the road, when the lightbulb goes on and they say "Now I understand!"
To me, that's what that good education with a good grounding in the humanities is about. It's about that lightbulb moment. No, I wasn't crazy about reading The Iliad twice as a sophomore, for two courses in consecutive semesters, but I sure ended up being glad I was exposed to it and I came to appreciate it a lot. I complained about having to read Chinua Achebe as a junior taking World Lit, but it sure exposed me to some things I hadn't really thought about. All of it -- the art that I thought was slightly pretentious, the theatre performances I had to attend, the foreign films that seemed just a little in love with themselves that I had to watch and write papers about, the literature that seemed at times interminable -- did me a lot of good. It made me more sensitive. It helped me realize just how much larger the world is. It helped me pick up a few more interests, and to see things in ways I'd never seen them before. And once I was able to get out and travel, I could appreciate things so much more. Even if I didn't fully understand them, or even if I didn't completely like them, I could at least appreciate them as part of the broad, rich tapestry of life.
It's a cliche, but that grounding in the humanities was a gift that kept on giving. And maybe that's really why I do what I do, because that education I got some 20 or so years ago really made this life something special and interesting, and I'd like for my students to become aware of all that wonder. It's my hope that in between team practices and organizational events and all the other things they have to do, perhaps something in them does become aware of why it all matters, and that it's not about chopping boards in two or trying to get the highest GPA or trying to get a credential that will help them get a well-paying job. It's about more than that.
And I hope they'll understand it -- if not now, then down the road.
