If one were to accept the argument that there has been a decline in students studying the humanities and that this is an issue, how to address the problem would need to start with finding out why students are not pursuing it in as great a number in the past.
Some have pointed to lack of employment prospects, and others have argued that humanities graduates do just fine in the workforce. The problem is however how students view the employment prospects of humanities and they have been bombarded by the message that if they major in the humanities theyâll be underemployed baristas. Whether or not this is true is irrelevant. What matters is that students believe it to be true. So if you want more to enter the humanities then humanities departments need to do a better job of showing prospective students where a degree in the humanities has the possibility to take them. One thing that STEM has going for it is the constant drumbeat of âif you study STEM youâll end up in a lucrative careerâ. Of course thatâs not universally true but itâs the perception that influences choice of major. On the other hand, I hate to say it, but here in Canada at least, they arenât necessarily wrong. Employers are far more linear with their hiring and a History or English degree is unlikely to get you hired into anything but a low paying entry level job unless you have other skills, talents, connections, or personality going for you. Students here have very much absorbed the message that majoring in not just the humanities, but anything not professional or at least pre-professional = a living a life of poverty.
The second factor has to do with the way that humanities are frequently taught in K-12. Theyâre often sterile, boring, and fail to provide any relevance to studentsâ lives. If they were perhaps taught in a more interdisciplinary way with connections to issues that students find relevant, they would be more interested. With respect to English Lit specifically I also think that teachers should get more creative with their reading lists and find works that resonate with students. Ditch the Shakespeare (and the Scarlet Letter). Itâs very hard for high school students to connect with both the language and the themes in Shakespeare. It would be better left to university. Instead find plays and stories that resonate with the lived experience of kids their age (and no Romeo and Juliette doesnât count).
As for my kids specifically all I can say is that we read to them from a very early age. They were encouraged to read both fiction and non-fiction, were exposed to the performing arts, taken to museums, art galleries, and shows. That fostered an interest in the humanities that they both still continue with today despite both having chosen to major in STEM. They have an appreciation for the humanities and see them as being relevant to their lives.
Are you saying that no high school student has ever had friends (romantic or otherwise) that their parents did not approve of for reasons other than the behavior of the friends themselves?
A) kids today date a lot less, and we have in our community some large minority populations that come from very traditional backgrounds
B) most teens find it hard to identify with committing suicide for love
C) R & J is probably the most relatable of the Shakespearian plays that are taught in our curriculum
âDitch the Shakespeareâ can hardly be the answer to making the Humanities more relevant. As I said earlier in this thread or the other one on the Humanities, Hawthorne is not my cup of tea. But Shakespeare is eminently teachable and relatable. His plots are juicy and sensationalistic. If itâs a tragedy, everybody dies in action-movie style, or in a comedy youâll get the equivalent of a RomCom with a wedding at the end. The emotions and feelings he expresses are universal. One of the major lessons of the humanities is that people are the same underneath across centuries, that studying âoldâ stuff may seem daunting at first because of unfamiliarity, but is ultimately rewarding in both insight and satisfaction. Shakespeare, with his broad popular appeal but distinctive language, is probably the best place to start with this lesson. Students can approach Shakespeare through any of the numerous adaptations that transpose his work to a contemporary setting. After students read some Shakespeare in 9th grade, they can start on Clarissa in the 10th.
I would suggest instead that moving away from challenging texts is a contributor to the feeling that the Humanities are less relevant. If everything is accessible, thereâs a point reached where students and parents will ask themselves if they need to pay the equivalent of $5-10k per course to cover what they could read or watch themselves for $25.
Shakespeare wrote plays for the most part. They werenât intended to be read as novels. Maybe they should be taught as theatre arts. Also Iâm not truly advocating for the ditching of Shakespeare but maybe downplaying itâs prominence in favour of other works that may resonate better with students. Thereâs plenty of time for Shakespeare in university so itâs more a matter of what should be taught and when.
Also with regards to other humanities disciplines that students frequently complain about having to study, namely history, many teachers seem to have forgotten the âstoryâ part of history. They teach dates and places and events but fail to relate them to how people were thinking or feeling at the time that led to those significant events. Being able to have students envision themselves in those situations and what it would feel like be faced with a similar situation in their current lives would make it seem more relevant. I think thereâs a reason that out of the fields of humanities the ones that students typically find the most engaging are classics, anthropology, sociology, and psychology.
I guess itâs good to at least be exposed to Shakespeare in high school, but when we read âA Midsummerâs Night Dreamâ in HS, I donât recall anyone thinking of it as a joy to read and clamoring to read more Shakespeare. From what I can tell, thatâs pretty much the common reaction. Iâm sure there are a few students who love Shakespeare, but overall Iâd think the pain involved in reading Shakespeare in HS would be a factor in driving students away from English degrees.
Somewhere in this thread or another one I mentioned a philosophy professor who said nobody should study philosophy until theyâre in their 40s. I agreed with that and of course got some pushback. But I do think that for a lot of humanities fields, such as philosophy, literature and history, that high school students donât have the contextual knowledge gained by life experience required to appreciate what the humanities has to teach us, and thus theyâre bored by those types of classes. In my own case, it wasnât until I was in my late 30s or early 40s, when I started buying VHS courses from âThe Teaching Companyâ on subjects like Shakespeare and philosophy, that I was prepared to reflect on and absorb the lessons that were to be learned from them. Heck, I even found art history to be fascinating by then.
Reading Shakespeare is a mistake. Youâve gotta perform it.
My school does a different freshman-only Shakespeare show each year (~1/4 of the class directly participates, and all of them have to watch it), and all the 9th grade English classes read it. It works much betterâand is way more engagingâthan exclusively reading it.
Every school can show Shakespeare movies to get students engaged and enact scenes in the classroom. Thatâs not hard. I think one drama per year in high school is something any students can stomach, but not all of them must be, or even should be, classical Elizabethan.