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  #21  
Unread 06-24-2022, 03:26 AM
John Isbell John Isbell is offline
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We visited the Nobel Museum in Stockholm yesterday: they have a Cambridge oar whose blade's crew list are Cambridge Nobel winners - Crick and Watson, Dirac, Rutherford, and so forth. They're not sure who presented it. Cambridge has 121 Nobels thus far and Trinity has 34.

Cheers,
John
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  #22  
Unread 06-24-2022, 04:08 AM
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Sarah-Jane Crowson Sarah-Jane Crowson is offline
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Quote:
We don't educate in America--we job train.
Education as product not process. It's the current UK trajectory, too - neo-liberal policy and the need for government to fill labour shortages mean that the checks and balances that currently govern education do not favour the arts and humanities or value them.

Talking again to John's point,

Creative arts education fights a rearguard action, arguing for its impact on crucial transferable skills and wellbeing. But we are measured on our efficacy at getting graduates into 'graduate employment' and 'further study'. One of many problem-spaces here being that the metrics for graduate employment are based on Socio-Occupational Classifications which speak more to different disciplinary pathways, mostly following a (20 model (not very fluid things, SOC codes). Where the data capture meets real-life it creates limitations/excludes/renders certain things invisible.

What worries me more long-term that despite a rhetoric around inclusivity, the squeeze on arts and humanities risks pushing this back into being a pathway chosen mainly by people from positions of economic/social privilege. People will only choose arts/humanities if they have money/parental money to fall back on? I didn't have parental money behind me when I chose an arts path, but I was very determined. But I wonder if I would have chosen an easier (but perhaps less fulfilling) pathway if I was a student today?

And, given the enormous power of the articulations of the present, and history, and data, which are generally articulated by people from arts/humanities backgrounds - this means we risk narrowing these important articulations down to a very thin/one-dimensional perspective, which again risks rendering some people/some ideas invisible.

I don't have any issue with science disciplines, btw, or computer science disciplines. Personally, I like inter-disciplinary practice - that's where the exciting things happen.

Sarah-Jane

Last edited by Sarah-Jane Crowson; 06-24-2022 at 04:25 AM. Reason: Socio-occupational (there are SEC codes but they're different)
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  #23  
Unread 06-24-2022, 09:04 AM
E. Shaun Russell E. Shaun Russell is offline
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I've been just as acutely aware of the ever-dwindling appreciation for the humanities as anyone. Tenure-track positions in academia overall are becoming increasingly rare, but literature-based ones are dying out even quicker. I could bemoan the seemingly inevitable "death" of the field, but I'm actually a little optimistic about a parallel trend I've seen: students in STEM and business fields often love humanities courses precisely because they're so different from their main career trajectory. I had a bunch of students comment after my intro to poetry course in the spring that they came in expecting to hate poetry but wound up loving it. Whenever I teach literature, there's inevitably a palpable sense of surprise from students who had different expectations going into it. There's something to be said for teaching students who aren't (and won't be) specialists in the field -- it complements their main career track, and rounds them out a bit. Humanizes them, even. I find that encouraging.

Incidentally, I've written a couple of student recommendations for med school in the past month. Both students mentioned how the med school applications specifically encourage one of their recommendations to be from a humanities field. So that's also reason to not despair.
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  #24  
Unread 06-24-2022, 10:52 AM
John Isbell John Isbell is offline
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While I was at UTRGV, they brought in a VP who arrived, killed the foreign language requirement (in a place that bills itself as the nation’s first fully bilingual campus), and departed. She had a faculty consultation meeting post hoc, which was sweet of her. She argued that without a language requirement, students could graduate faster. Of course, UTRGV could just issue diplomas to incoming freshmen and solve the problem at a stroke.

Cheers,
John
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  #25  
Unread 06-24-2022, 11:58 AM
W T Clark W T Clark is offline
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Saying all this, I am not at all sure that the positioning of poets and therefore poetry within academia has done anything good for poetics. In fact, it may well be having a limpening effect.
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  #26  
Unread 06-24-2022, 12:05 PM
John Isbell John Isbell is offline
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I don’t know about limp. I think MFAs produce cookie-cutter poets though.

Cheers,
John
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  #27  
Unread 06-24-2022, 01:33 PM
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Sarah-Jane Crowson Sarah-Jane Crowson is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by John Isbell View Post
I don’t know about limp. I think MFAs produce cookie-cutter poets though.
Not limited to poetry. In my experience most arts institutions have 'house styles' meaning you can see where someone's been educated by the style of their work.

Does this happen with MFA's too, I wonder.

Sarah-Jane
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  #28  
Unread 06-24-2022, 01:39 PM
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Sarah-Jane Crowson Sarah-Jane Crowson is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by E. Shaun Russell View Post
Whenever I teach literature, there's inevitably a palpable sense of surprise from students who had different expectations going into it. There's something to be said for teaching students who aren't (and won't be) specialists in the field -- it complements their main career track, and rounds them out a bit. Humanizes them, even. I find that encouraging.
That's lovely, as is the med school example. I don't know the US system very well, but I know you have a liberal arts curriculum, and I think that means that there's more flexibility inherent in the programme (so as a student I could study math but also latin?) Either way, we don't have that in the UK and I envy it.

I guess what worries me still (as it does with the 'transferable skills' argument) is that it relegates arts/humanities to a kind of complementary secondary discipline.

Straying off topic a little, but one of my favourite, favourite pieces of research (a bit old now, maybe 2018?) was a collaboration between a surgeon working at a medical school and the Royal College of Needlework.

The surgeon was concerned that his med students lacked the fine motor skills to sew people up neatly. So students at both centres worked remotely to share skills and techniques. In the end I think (don't quote me on this) they came up with a specific bespoke stitch to support timely sewing and healing of wounds.

Great collaboration, with neither discipline privileged.

Sarah-Jane
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