English: I still believe in you.
Get in that job-machine, mister.
More dire news for university English departments: from the University of Maryland, English majors are bailing like mad. And faster and faster.
The humanities have been getting a bad rap for, oh, half a dozen decades or so, because they don’t lead directly to a slot in a job machine. And, as the thinking goes, without the job machine you fail at life. Or at least paying for life’s good things (like a huge TV and plenty of Lean Cuisine) (Or rent and clothing).
We’ve certainly seen this coming. We’ve wondered: Why go into college debt just to be a philosophy-talking barista? We’ve lamented the pitiful conditions of adjuncts. Colleges in my area cut budgets and then cut more, from fat to bone. And now wholesale amputation to accommodate the demands of producing souls for job machines.
True: English departments that focus solely on esoterics need to undergo change. I’ll argue that any academic program (or any institution, frankly) that promotes the inward-gaze as the end-all, top-function of the human condition is currently being rudely awakened.
Smart English departments are tuning in to this—just like businesses have been realizing people don’t really care about their product all that much. Even churches are starting to realize there is a world of people living and working just outside their doors—people not interested in joining the club but crazy-interested in the meaning of life. Speaking of churches, we used to call it “evangelism” when we invited others in. Business evangelists understand all too well the benefit of going where people are and adapting their product to current conditions.
But reaching out to the rest of humanity—that’s where the action is.
It’s because we’ll always need to reach out, to communicate something to someone else, that I’m optimistic about English, if not exactly English departments. Rather than an either-or approach (deep-thinking/creative expression or assembly line training), we need both-and: deep-thinking and creative expression that leads to more conscious assembly line work. And perhaps that thinking will help us move beyond assembly lines entirely.
As I prepare my next set of writing classes for college English majors, I am beefing up the entrepreneurial end. Because the way out of a soulless slot in a job machine is to invent your own job machine.
That’s something we should train writers to do. And some of those writers will be English majors.
###
Image credit: Kirk Livingston
conversation is an engine 
Nice! Do you also teach college English? Perhaps if we had more instructors like you, we’d have more English majors (and let’s face it, creativity is key in any field. Creative minds find work. It doesn’t matter the field).
createarteveryday
February 1, 2015 at 8:43 am
I do teach a couple professional writing classes at a local university. Agreed: creativity is key in every field. It’s funny how these daily dumb sketches exercise my writing and vice versa.
kirkistan
February 1, 2015 at 9:01 am
I’ve started “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” again, and she says drawing will help your brain do lots of other things better. I believe she’s right!
createarteveryday
February 1, 2015 at 9:10 am
I ordered that on your recommendation. It just arrived, so I’m eager to read it.
kirkistan
February 1, 2015 at 9:12 am
Good luck with it! So much good info there.
createarteveryday
February 1, 2015 at 7:02 pm