Yesterday, Brendan Woods '13 criticized Dartmouth's curriculum for focusing too heavily on academic quibbles, which squelches inquiry into life's "big, interesting questions" ("It's Academic," Sept. 27). Although he fails to recognize that a course as limited in its scope as "Cell Signaling" might be necessary to an aspiring endocrinologist, it is true that there are many courses in the humanities that reflect an unjustifiable narrowness.
I've previously written that the humanities are in danger at Dartmouth, since they don't prepare students for careers in medicine, engineering or banking ("Balancing Act," May 25). Judging by his remarks at Convocation last Tuesday, President Kim still doesn't get it. Quoted in The Dartmouth ("Kim touts humanities in speech," Sept. 23), Kim prescribes freshmen a dose of the humanities, acknowledging that you might need creative abilities "to succeed in your world-changing mission." That looks like progress, you might say.
But while his rhetoric may be increasingly supportive, he still seems to think that the humanities are essentially an adjunct to the practical disciplines. Apparently, they exist merely to cast and communicate utopian visions, "to imagine the world you want to create, and then render that vision in a way that convinces others that it is attainable and desirable." There's the rub: if you're a poet, historian or philosopher, it's up to the doctors, engineers and politicians to execute your vision for the world, Kim says. From Kim's perspective, a student of the humanities is just an idea person, an intellectual waterboy.
Despite my indignation at being relegated to the sidelines of productive society, I will do my best in what remains of this column to fulfill the expectation President Kim holds of my intellectual caste. Seeing the humanities at Dartmouth as they are, allow me to cast a vision of how they ought to be.
As Woods noted, many courses offered in literature, art and cultural studies departments are too narrow in their scope. Take History 5, "Emergence of Modern Japan." Are we concerned that students already know too much about ancient Japan, medieval Japan and imperial Japan? Would it be too much to throw in contemporary Japan, you know, whatever happens after it emerges? Include those and the course could just be called, I don't know, "History of Japan." But history is small game compared to comparative literature. Here are some selections from this term: "Women of the Asian Diaspora," "Afro-Brazilian Diasporic Literature," "Trash Culture" and "Children on the Streets." I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that these concoctions of abstrusity are in little danger of appealing to anyone outside the compartive literature cabal.
If President Kim is serious about the importance of the humanities to a liberal arts education, then his administration should be working to effect a seismic shift in the humanities curriculum. Efforts must be undertaken to curb excessive specialization and direct more students to survey courses that build the rich cultural background that is expected of Ivy League graduates. One option to achieve this result and affirm Dartmouth's commitment to undergraduate teaching would be to replace distributive requirements with a core curriculum in the humanities. The College could look to peer institutions like Columbia University to design a core that would include survey classes in Western and non-Western civilization and literature, philosophy, music and art, writing and oratory.
As I see it, being well-educated in the humanities has much more to do with knowing a little about many familiar topics than being an expert on any particular obscure one. Examine the tissue of quotations and allusions in the works of Shakespeare or Dante and you will find that the truly great students of the humanities are dilettantes on a grand scale. But the humanities curriculum at Dartmouth fails to acknowledge the wrongheadedness of specialization that is a product of the "publish or perish" mentality and professorial apathy. Consequently, we are spelunkers in a series of academic niches, who ought to be sailing the ocean of human culture. The move to a core curriculum in the humanities would ensure engagement with great issues and ideas, and maybe even save the world. If that's what you're into.
