I would like to make a modest proposal. First, I point out the obvious flaws, whereby legislation was repeatedly brought forth to Congress over the past eight years, which would have reigned in [sic] the predatory lending practices of now mostly defunct institutions. These institutions regularly filled the coffers of both parties in return for voting down all of this legislation designed to protect the common citizen. This is an outrage, yet no one seems to know or care about it. Since Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith [sic] passed, I would argue that there has been a dearth of worthy philosophers in this country, at least ones focused on improving government.
This message (reproduced, warts and all, in a book by Chris Hedges) resonates with a teacher of a marginalized subject (such as, say, English). It is also a warning to educational systems that continue to neglect my subject in particular and the humanities in general. Simply put, the arts and social sciences are called the humanities for a reason: without them, civilizations have in the past collapsed and will again collapse into brutality.
Over my twenty-four years of teaching, I have been told, among other incidental, staff room-exiling affronts to my subject, that English teachers are “a dime a dozen” (by a recruiting TDSB principal), and that the humanities are the “spokes in the wheel” of a sci-tech school (by successive principals at my current school). And what happens to the wheel when spokes get damaged?
Here’s one thing that happens. In my wing of the school, classroom computers were removed. Now students must (gasp!) leave the classroom to do incidental research that could have been completed in moments. In order to use the library’s computers (often booked anyway), they require a signed note from a teacher, which eats up more class time. Some teachers even go as far as to allow students (double-gasp!) to turn on their smartphones and google the information in class! Yes, I know it’s wrong to do that. Why? Because it’s against the rules? Maybe. No, wait; because it makes information most accessible to students who are wealthy enough to own smartphones with data packages, further unravelling the myth of equity in public education? That’s more like it. (Shakespeare, who had to leave school after grade 7 over financial woes stemming from his father’s graft, overcame his challenges without the glories of public education or modern antibiotics, but he was a bit of an anomaly. More about him later.)
It’s not about the money. Well, maybe a little, since money has become the language of emotion. The smallest child who cries out against inequities of treats, gifts, what-have-you, isn’t lamenting the lack of stuff, but the naked evidence of indifference. For this reason, 3C students ask at least once per semester, “Why don’t we study Shakespeare?” while some administrators ask us why we study it at all. BTW, we study it to understand the power of universal insights that transcend time and circumstance; but we teach it exclusively to those whose circumstances point toward university. Students pick up on this atmosphere of neglect. And they are astute enough to know that neglect is a form of abuse. Not yet sensitized to the responsibility of the bystander, however, they vaccilate between railing against inequity and dogpiling on its victims.
Those of us fortunate enough to study at the post-graduate level know that all academic disciplines converge eventually. The arts, social sciences, sciences and mathematics all form the base of a pyramid whose topmost point is philosophy. And what happens if you knock down one side of a pyramid? The same thing that happens if you take out a spoke of a wheel. Or, for that matter, amputate a whole branch of learning. Let’s close with a rhetorical question from renowned “artsy” (and politician, and Nobel laureate) William Butler Yeats:
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
