Oldies But Goodies
Posted on March 31st, 2009 in Uncategorized | 7 Comments »
Yesterday’s Globe had a nice piece about the renewed interest in reading the classics at Harvard.
To entice students to explore such subjects, Harvard has more than tripled the number of small freshman seminars taught by star professors. Among the 132 diverse classes: “The Beasts of Antiquity and their Natural History.”
…President Drew Faust, a Civil War historian, has said that education in the humanities prepares students to challenge the status quo.
“That kind of critical thinking and questioning is something we should encourage and instill more fully than we do,” Faust said in a recent interview about the value of a liberal arts education when jobs are becoming hard to come by.
How do you increasingly open Harvard to students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and then sell them on the humanities, though? That will be an interesting challenge…..
7 Responses
3/31/2009 10:15 am
“How do you increasingly open Harvard to students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and then sell them on the humanities, though? That will be an interesting challenge….. ”
Pshaw. RT knows that challenge. He handles it Monday with his coffee.
There is nothing new under the sun; every year the freshmen are eighteen, and every year the stock market is in the news. The two facts impinge on each other hardly at all.
SE
3/31/2009 10:24 am
Hope you’re right, SE.
3/31/2009 11:17 am
Drew Faust is trying to get across the fact that there need not be an issue here, RB. SE has it right, and my colleague Mark Schiefsky in the same Globe article made the point:
“Many other classics majors, though, go on to become investment bankers, doctors, and lawyers, said Mark Schiefsky, director of undergraduate studies in classics.”
This is not just assertion. Again check out the Commencement issues of my Department’s newsletter, with future plans of seniors:
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~classics/newsletter/index.html
3/31/2009 11:25 am
You misunderstand me, RT. I wasn’t saying that humanities aren’t relevant to careers in lots of different professions. I was saying that young people from poor backgrounds may take some selling on that. They clearly do at the graduate level…..
3/31/2009 12:09 pm
RB, I think you miss the point that the choice of a field of concentration should not be related to a student’s career goal, but to the student’s intellectual interests. Students aspiring to careers in medicine and the law have known this forever. Those wanting to work on Wall Street seem to believe that a concentration in economics is required and that any other concentration would make that goal impossible. It’s a fiction common among undergraduates from poor and wealthy backgrounds.
3/31/2009 1:29 pm
Sorry, I think that’s quite right, RB, and that is our job, which is why it is good to have a President who actually believe said choice should, or rather need, not be related to career goal . . .
3/31/2009 2:02 pm
Ben Levy and RT — Richard clearly knows all this. His point remains valid — that poor students, whose parents may lack education, **may** not see as easily or quickly as other kids the appeal or point of the humanities as a major for themselves.