Higher
education can sometimes be a touchy subject. As more and more students are now
going to college and graduating with bachelor’s degrees, they begin to consider
higher education either as a necessity for a particular job, for opportunities
to move up or receive a pay raise, or even simply to set themselves apart
amongst the thousands of other job applicants with a bachelor’s degree. This is
an even more tendentious subject amongst humanities students. Those pursuing a
humanities degree are often mocked for their choice of study because, as Berube
puts it, “…they are certainly part of the important category ‘useless degree
programs that won’t get you a job and that you will have to explain to your
parents’” (Berube 5). A large part of what originally created this kind of stigma
about higher education, especially humanities subjects, is the rhetorical
velocity of the false claim that there has been a decrease in the number of
humanities students. As Berube says, there are statistics showing a decrease in
undergraduate humanities students, but this decrease was from 1970-1980 and has
since ceased to be a problem (Berube 1). Ridolfo and Rife define rhetorical
velocity as, “a strategic concept of delivery in which a rhetor theorizes the
possibilities for the recomposition of a text based on how s/he anticipates how
the text might later be used” (Ridolfo and Rife 229). If these true statistics
could take on rhetorical velocity using appeals to time and place to create
false claims in a differently appropriated context, then it is possible for
Berube’s statistics that there is no longer a decrease in humanities students
to take on a positive and true rhetorical velocity appealing to modern time and
place in universities to set the record straight.
Appeals
to time and place aid the rhetorical velocity of the situation of decreasing
humanities students. Killingsworth says in “Appeals to Time” that, “Time
becomes a position of value that authors use to draw audiences to their own
positions” (Killingsworth 39). This is what has been done in this case, using
old statistics to appeal to current times. Because the number of humanities
students has remained relatively stable since 1980 also has an effect because
as Killingsworth says, “The implication is that what remains the same is not
worth reporting” (Killingsworth 39). This means that the important information
that a lack of humanities students is no longer an issue is not relevant because
the stable number of students is not interesting. However, in order to stop the
use of these false claims to redefine the purpose and function of higher
education, appeals to time can be useful. In “Appeals to Time,” Killingsworth
says, “Authors may appeal to the past, present, or future, but the focus tends
to fall on the need for change, the pursuit of something new, in the present”
(Killingsworth 39). Appeals to place also come into effect in resolving the
issue of redefining the purpose and function of education in two ways: (1) “appeals
to place rarely work unless they combine with some other kind of appeal,” and
(2) “we want people to see things differently so that they will reconsider what
is most valuable to them” (Killingsworth 54, 66). Combining appeals to time
with appeals to place, along with seeing statistics about humanities students
in a new light that brings value back to this relevant and important field of
study, can help achieve new educational aims. If new rhetorical velocity takes
place, using appeals to time and place with the pursuit of redefining
educational standards and practices, educational stigmas can be eliminated and
false claims about decreasing humanities students can be resolved.
Accounts
that there has been a decline of undergraduate humanities students has received
a lot of focus by intellectuals like Berube and Chomsky. In “The Humanities
Declining? Not According to the Numbers” Berube provides statistics proving the
falsity of these claims, and begging that the concerns over the crisis in the
humanities be focused on graduate education, “in prestige, in funds, and most
broadly, in legitimation” (Berube 6). Chomsky also expresses concerns for
higher education in “How America’s Great University System Is Getting Destroyed,”
especially in the corporatization of universities, which is becoming harmful to
education, not just in the humanities, but also for all higher education
students in general. The corporate business models in effect in most university
systems are put there to indoctrinate the young, but Chomsky pushes for a more
democratic institution (which he recognizes is not a radical idea) where
enlightenment ideals of a structural freedom in education are pursued.
Stigmas
about higher education lie more specifically in the degree or field of study
that a student chooses. The humanities receive a lot of criticism which Berube
touches on when he says, “Even when they are couched as defenses of study in
the humanities, as Brooks’s column was, they are attacks on current practices
in the humanities – like the study of race, class, gender, and other boring
things” (Berube 2). Undermining any particular field of study does not benefit
anyone, nor can any one person decide what makes some studies “boring” or
“unimportant” in comparison to others. Widespread criticism for humanities
studies, combined with false claims that degrees in the humanities are
declining, has given rhetorical velocity to this topic, worsening the false
claims that interested parties like Berube are trying to correct. Berube
discusses a famous statistician, Nate Silver, in his article saying that, “[he]
has found, using ‘numbers’ and ‘arithmetic,’ that ‘the relative decline of
majors like English is modest when accounting for the increased propensity of
Americans to go to college’” (Berube 4). Statistics proving the falsity of
claims that studies in the humanities are decreasing are present, and if the
focus on criticism for the humanities can move to the rise of humanities
studies since 1980, the rhetoric on this topic can take on a new velocity.
Chomsky
introduces several ideas about education that could provide positive rhetorical
velocity for eliminating educational stigmas and working toward better
university systems. In his article, Chomsky says, “So if you read, for example,
John Stuart Mill, a major figure in the classical liberal tradition, he took it
for granted that workplaces ought to be managed and controlled by the people
who work in them – that’s freedom and democracy” (Chomsky 4). If this example
of the workplace is applied to a university setting, a focus on freedom and
democracy could be the answer to giving equality to all fields of study. Berube
places the blame for the stigmas about humanities studies on the students
themselves, saying, “Undergraduates have voted with their feet. Humanities
professors have killed interest in their own disciplines, and students have
responded accordingly” (Berube 1). It is up to the students, who themselves
give rhetorical velocity to educational stigmas like a loss of respect for the
humanities, to utilize their democratic role in the university system and
realize that everyone in the US university system has the freedom to receive an
education in whatever field of study they choose, to begin moving away from
criticism and a lack of legitimation for anyone who chooses to pursue higher
education.
A
focus on a democratic education in the university system is possible if the
purpose and function of higher education can be redefined. The purpose and
function of higher education is to give all students freedom in their education
to pursue more knowledge in any field of study they may choose. This means
there must be freedom in the way that students in higher education learn as
well. A loosely structured classroom can be to the best benefit of the student,
allowing them to move with a structured teaching, but to also learn at their
own pace, pausing when necessary to explore further and ask more questions.
Chomsky firmly believes in an educational model similar to this, which he calls
the Enlightenment Ideal. Describing this model that provides a degree of
structure, Chomsky says it is like, “laying out a string along which the
student progresses in his or her own way under his or her own initiative, maybe
moving the string, maybe deciding to go somewhere else, maybe raising
questions” (Chomsky 5). This educational structure works well in any capacity
of education, but especially in higher education because it gives the student
the ability to learn as much as they can. Chomsky believes that the goal of education
“is for the student to acquire the capacity to inquire, to create, to innovate,
to challenge – that’s education” (Chomsky 6). This is the function of education
at all levels, and education should especially function in this way at the
higher education level, as this is how we have been taught to learn from the
beginning of our educations.
The
educational structure that Chomsky promotes for higher education, he also
relates to kindergarteners, explaining the way they are taught to look at
something that challenges them, and to get imaginative and creative and ask
questions that will lead them to solutions on their own time. This seems like a
simple idea, but it is applicable to all levels of education, to learn on our
own for the purpose of gaining and remembering, not just memorizing to pass an
exam. Many university classrooms function in this way, requiring students to
memorize for a single grade, and then never touching on the subject matter
again. This isn’t the purpose of education though, which Chomsky realizes when
he says, “In a reasonable graduate seminar, you don’t expect students to copy
it down and repeat whatever you say; you expect them to tell you when you’re
wrong or to come up with new ideas, to challenge, to pursue some direction that
hadn’t been thought of before” (Chomsky 6). If all students in higher education
pursued their own education both inside and outside the classroom, higher
education students could start learning at their full capacity.
False
statistics about a decline in humanities students quickly took on rhetorical
velocity using appeals to time and place to promote old statistics that are no
longer relevant to current humanities students. Referring to a student whose
image was appropriated from a serious social justice campaign to a school ad
for campus life, Ridolfo and Rife say, “Despite the lack of seriousness
associated with the action, the appropriation of Maggie’s image without her
consent is indeed a strange and unanticipated occurrence with serious
consequences” (Ridolfo and Rife 226). The same can be said of Berube’s article
where he points out the misuse of old statistics. In the case of false claims
about decreasing humanities studies, the consequences are serious, leading to
increased beliefs that humanities students are lessening and these studies are
becoming less relevant, less important, and less valid. If false claims about a
decline in humanities students can take on such effective rhetorical velocity,
then new and positive ideas about the humanities and higher education can have
rhetorical velocity as well. Removing stigmas about higher education,
especially in the humanities, will allow for redefining the purpose and
function of higher education entirely, to give back intellectual ownership of
the freedom of learning that higher education provides.
Works Cited
Berube,
Michael. “The Humanities, Declining? Not According to the Numbers.” The
Chronicale of Higher Education. 28 October 2014. Web.
Chomsky, Noam.
“How America’s Great University System Is Getting Destroyed.”
AlterNet. 1 March 2014. Web.
Killingsworth,
M. Jimmie. “Appeals to Place.” In Appeals
in Modern Rhetoric: An
Ordinary-Language Approach. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP,
2005. 52-67.
Print.
Killingsworth,
M. Jimmie. “Appeals to Time.” In Appeals
in Modern Rhetoric: An
Ordinary-Language Approach. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP,
2005. 38-51. Print.
Ridolfo, Jim and
Martine Courant Rife. Rhetorical Velocity
and Copyright: A Case Study on Strategies of Rhetorical Delivery. 223-243. Print.
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