Humanities majors know the story: The Standard Operating Procedure for many college courses is to read a bunch of books, talk in class and write some papers. All-too-embarrassingly-often, that's it. The class conversation often has little to do with your research as you thumb through pages of a poetry book, talking informally. Profs seem in no great hurry to cover material and all-too-willing to joke around about anything at all. And sometimes those are great rambles. Freedom is a versatile tool for an educator who really knows how to turn on the magic of the classroom. But sometimes the freedom makes it all-too-easy to just crap out.
Papers assignments are often as focused as: "Write a 10-page essay on a book of your choosing." You turn it in, your professor scribbles a few unintelligible words on it, circles a mis-spealling (something spell check won't catch, of course), and says "Great job! A-". And you think: If its so damned great, why the A-minus? As long as its a good grade, you usually don't care, but geez--after putting so much effort into the paper, you crave meaningful feedback.
Then you have to deal with all your science & engineering friends who jeer at how much harder they work and how superior their academic field is to yours.
It sure wouldn't hurt if the Humanities had standards for course content like the Natural Sciences. I realize no prof wants to be boxed in by someone else's itinerary, but there are so many duds out there. Sometimes the freedom to do what you want can lure even the most well-intentioned prof into blowing off a day here, a class there, a semester there. How many times have you heard an English teacher exclaim, near the end of the term: "Well, I guess we didn't cover much of the syllabus!" and then break out in to riotous laughter. (My Hiram friends know who I mean, and I love the man too much to put his name here--besides, his were meaningful rambles.)
Hats off to all those Humanities profs who go out of their way to really mix it up.
One of my Theology profs does an excellent job coming up with all sorts of assignments. Its not just about writing a series of papers which are all the same length and depth. On the contrary, we have long and short papers, informal and formal. Sometimes we are to use the material to plan out a Bible study or structure a liturgy around a theme. We have to respond to critical questions in short essays. A common assignment is to make up an "encyclopedia entry" on a particular word that is relevant to our studies.
Make no mistake, we have our major papers, too. For those, sometimes we pour through research of other scholars. Other times, we are asked to do our own study and only consult other scholars after we have done our own independent analysis. And heck, sometimes we even write on a topic of our choosing.
The end result is that we engage the material with a wide range of approaches and methods.
Hats off to all profs who work hard to come up with challenging and interesting assignments. The banal "write pages of fluff that will be skimmed by the prof" is an insult to everyone involved.
You can often tell how bad a professor is by the length of the papers they assign. The longer the paper, the worse the professor is. If you can answer critical questions in 3-page essays you may be working harder than shoveling someone else's research onto a 15-page lifeless drone. Any time you do that, you have to consider another substance that is often the direct object of shoveling.
As Mark Twain said, "If I had more time, I would write less."
"Then you have to deal with all your science & engineering friends who jeer at how much harder they work and how superior their academic field is to yours."
ReplyDeleteIf it's any consolation, Medieval Literature kicked my science major butt. I wonder if the humanities profs were harder on the occasional science people who wandered into their classes, though, just because of how smug we all were.
Considering the prof in question, I can confidently say "no" to that one. I don't think he has a mischievious bone in his body.
ReplyDeleteThe thing about Humanities courses is that you can get out of it what you put in. Two people can take the same class and have a very different experience of it. A student can often figure out a way to slide through, but that doesn't mean that a more enriching experience isn't possible.
Perhaps this is different than the Natural Sciences where there is a regimen that everyone goes through who takes the class?
That Medieval Lit prof was buying me drinks in Trinidad & Tobago! He was great to sit back and have a beer with. He was a really fun prof when you took him for other classes. Diane and I had him for our Senior Seminar and we had a BLAST.
ReplyDeleteHmmm... this entry reminds me more of a certain 18th Century prof (I hated that man) who 1) picked the worse reading selections to teach, 2) rambled endlessly in his classes about other crap that had little to do with the subject, and 3) scored all papers down that didnt spit back exactly what he'd said in class. But I really shouldnt speak ill of the dead...
I also did not particularly care for the Vic Lit prof who pretty much used her class as a soap box for proclaiming her hatred of men... We used to call her class Vic Clit... Everything in literature was about oppression of women by a male-dominated society. Which, hey, as a feminist, I can get behind sometimes. But I really think she took things too far.
PS, a certain writing professor was the best. Her classes were always on target with the syllabus, really interesting, and highly motivating. Her paper assignments were always really fun. She really pushed my limits with constructive criticism on my papers (and an entire page of written suggestions for improvement, even when she gave you an A). An hour and a half of her class always went by really quick. I was always shocked that it was over already!
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