TONY CARDOZA
Even as a steadfast defender of the “great books,” I agree with the basic premise of your essay, namely that the humanities can and should promote more effectively the useful skills and competencies that they provide students. The escalating costs of higher education and the un- derstandable desire of our students to find gainful employment require us to show that our disciplines do more than simply cultivate the “life of the mind” in the abstract. In our focus on the practical skills that the humanities impart,
however, I argue that we should not neglect the valuable content and intellectual stimulation these courses can provide. In other words, I think that it is not an either/or choice we must make, since we can offer both valuable skills and enriching content to our students. As director of the Core, one of my concerns has been that an exclusively skills-based cur- riculum allows the inclusion of overly specialized and narrowly focused courses. Hardboiled detective novels or the history of Italian women in the 19th century can be excellent courses, but when they become the sole disciplinary experience of our students, we are depriving them of the opportunity to be exposed to the big ideas, major trends, and foun- dational texts of our intellectual traditions. At the same time, we still face the daunting task of defining in con-
crete ways the practical skills our students will acquire. Unfortunately, terms like “critical thinking” have become little more than marketing devices, endlessly repeated, but largely bereft of any meaning.
PAUL JAY
This gets at one of our main points, which is that faculty and administra- tors have to be more vocal in calling attention to the practical value of the skills humanities students develop. After all, they score highest on the test for entrance to medical schools, as well as the College Learning Assessment test, which measures critical thinking and writing skills. Striking the right balance between an emphasis on skills and on the
intellectual content in humanities courses is, I agree, crucial. I think we’re talking about two kinds of literacies here. I like to call them cultural liter- acy and critical literacy. Cultural literacy values knowledge of important intellectual traditions and the foundational texts associated with them, while critical literacy values the kinds of skills our article discusses: critical thinking (which I agree is sorely in need of definition), rhetorical analysis, interpretation, close reading, and argumentative writing.
CONTINUES ON NEX T PAGE
SPRING 2012
19
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44