Amusing spellings from final exams I graded last semester:
LITITURE. Not once but 6 or 7 times in the same exam. Indicating the only thing keeping this person from always spelling it “lititure” is spell-check. A thin barrier of defense between her and public shame. Unless only English majors find this spelling shameful. Is that possible? It’s egregious. It’s some horrible ironic joke, a sign of the apocalypse, a Margaret Atwood-ism in our own real life. I mean, my god. With the decline of the humanities, who will teach the children to spell hewmanatees?
I did some research on usage. There’s a facebook group called “English Lititure” whose mission statement says it all: “Well some people and myself want to pass English Literature so this group is to pass notes from one person to the next and find out the home work and so forth.” I also found some message board postings asking for help with English assignments. But is usage of “lititure” restricted to those with self-acknowledged lack of English skills? Apparently not, says a course called “Language, Lititure, and Film” at the University of Limerick. I’m hoping this spelling is the fault of the unaffiliated web site that seems to be a warehouse of university course titles. Though the University of Limerick sounds like a place that appreciates a good joke.
RETALLYATION. I like this one. It’s charming in an I-sounded-it-out kind of way, and it also seems like it could be a word. A word having to do with election recounts, maybe, but a word nonetheless.
DRAMASTIC. Frankly, I think this should be a word. I honestly don’t know (not even from context) whether the student meant to write “dramatic” or “drastic,” and that’s what’s so great about it. It’s both. “I think I’m going to make a dramastic change to my hairstyle. What do you think?” “God, she’s so dramastic about everything.”
SCEWED. Another gem. The world had been waiting for a cross between “skewed” and “screwed” to describe those situations where you’re totally fucked, but in an absurd or cracked kind of way. “They replaced my English professor with a robot. We are all so scewed.”
FRUSTERATION. God, I just love this one. You know how sometimes you’re just soooo frustrated that you wish the word had an extra syllable? If you think I’m joking, then the answer is no. I intend to start using this.
I… am… SO…. frus-ter-a-ted! They replaced my lititure professor with a robot! How scewed is that?! I might have to retallyate by doing something dramastic. Let’s go spray paint the hewmanatees building.
Well, there was a time when spelling was pretty fluid. Maybe we’re just going full circle (cirkel?)?
But seriously, this made me laugh and cry all at the same time.
As for the death of humanities. You humanities peeps need to come up with a better argument about why they’re important. I mean, I think I know what the right argument is, but I keep reading articles about how it’s important to have a soul. Which unfortunately translates to “Really? Who cares. How will that help us compete with China?” Blegh.
MATH AND SCIENCE FOREVER. WORKERS. NUMBERS.
You realize I’m just bitter because my IR degree won’t get me a job.
Having a soul is only #3 on my list of reasons to study the humanities. When I give the spiel to my students about what my classes are good for, I start with #1 learning to do critical thinking and analysis. #2 is the preservation of history and culture. #3 is your soul.
But I’m curious what your answer is. If you’ve got the right one, there are a lot of us who could use it.
No, I think you’re on the right track with critical thinking and analysis. I don’t mean I have THE right answer, even though that’s what I said. Obviously I can’t even convince anyone to hire me. So really? I can’t be THAT right can I?
I think I mean that you have to find a way to relate it to the job market, global competition, etc. How will critical thinking and analysis make you a better ‘worker’. It may not be the prettiest argument in the world or the one you really want to be making but it’s the one that’s most relevant to people’s priorities at the moment. Why will English Lititure make you a better scientist or engineer? Why is someone who majored in a humanities subject just as valid a choice to work for your company as someone who majored in business or finance or econ?
They’re not arguments that are fun to make. (Maybe even a bit painful?) I just think that for too long the humanities have let themselves appear irrelevant (or maybe they simply assume that people still care about becoming more interesting, souled individuals) and so the conventional wisdom is that they are.
So it’s not that I have the right answer. It’s just that I really think that’s the way to get in, because that’s the current driver. I’m not entirely sure how you do that but I definitely think that illustrating how this is a ‘skill’ is the right track. It’s just that a LOT of humanities peeps need to be doing it at the same time. And somehow the conventional wisdom has to change because actual jobs have to come with the skills for them to be considered worthwhile.
I WISH the soul method was the effective way to go about it. But you have to go for people’s wallets first and hope the soul stuff seeps in as a consequence of the material. So #3 is probably a good placement.
I’m not sure if any of that makes sense. Or I’m just being cynical.
I totally agree with you. I tell my students that I’m teaching a skills course. Now, I’m not sure those skills are totally important for the business world, per say. But close enough. They’re life skills, and being a soulless business man is one kind of life.
But science and business are not the only ways to hook people. We don’t have to appeal to everyone, just enough people to keep our salaries paid. Plenty of students still want to go into advertising, publishing, law, PR, etc. And they need to know how to write. Law schools recently started favoring English majors pretty heavily in admissions.
Unfortunately, it seems the market for lawyers was just another bubble that’s now bursting, so even that is no longer the best advertisement for majoring in English. Sad.
I do think a lot of students still believe the “soul” argument. But they think they’re getting it if they take an intro Shakespeare class one time in college. Exposure to the greats and all. So it may be that in fifty years’ time there won’t be any English majors and all the faculty will be adjuncts teaching intro surveys, or will have merged with other departments like journalism and business.
But I’m not sure I really believe that. There will always be artsy kids.
And either way I should be able to get some kind of job before the science-apocalypse.
I think the main problem here is that reasons like critical thinking, the preservation of history and culture, and in some cases soul, are public reasons, whereas reasons to study business or science are often (not always) private reasons. Being a culturally aware critical thinker makes you a better citizen, which is not the same as being a better worker. The rewards of being a good citizen play out in public life, whereas the rewards of being a good worker are private rewards (monetary rewards). Because we’ve come to value private life and things we can buy so heavily, it’s hard to make a case for something that leads to being a better citizen, especially when it may cut down on time spent enhancing those monetary rewards, and when it is not necessary to achieving them in the first place.
The corporate world doesn’t want our critical thinking because, among other reasons, it is so often critical of that world. They’ll go ahead and tell us how to think. It used to be that college could teach students to be citizens because most of those students were already set based on their class backgrounds. Now, college is more associated with upward mobility, and therefore has to be more like job training than citizen training. This is not all bad, but there’s some confusion between these two models of college education.
Writing might be the best bet at connecting the two sides here. Not reading (literary or otherwise), not thinking (critical or otherwise), but writing. Writing is production, and it connects the private and the public.
this blog post is fucking dramastic. seriously. love it.
I know how you feel about making words happen.
oh my god I wrote the longest (and unecessarily so) comment ever. SORRY.
Humble apologies – no fault of University of Limerick for the typo on ‘Literature’ in the aforementioned article. Don’t know if it makes anything better to know that the typo originates from a school teacher!
dude, me and my soul are never going to be any kind of “good worker.”
We teach empathy and imagination: two crucial ethical skills. Not sure how to sell that to college freshmen, but I think they’re the most important things they get from us, and from art in general. The capacity to consider life and its dilemmas from perspectives other than one’s own, to think of what it would be like to exist in a different culture or different world – these are the types of exercises that help break down prejudice, extremism, and blind individualism. And that help build positive social visions for the future.
Marshelle, I totally agree. And Erinn, that’s probably why I can’t find a job.
I just worry that those reasons, as important as you and I think they are, aren’t that important to the people writing the checks or designing the way universities will function in the future….that is unless you can tell them why they are important to “the bottom line”
It sucks balls but it appears (at least from my current perspective) that unless it’s economically important it isn’t at all. Maybe I’m just cynical because the president of my uni HATED the humanities department and didn’t see the point of having one at all.
Can we go back to laughing at Students Say the Darndest Things? These comments make me want to drop out of school.
Sorry, Megan. I didn’t read the discussion carefully enough before jumping in. I realize now that I was preaching to the choir, at least in some cases.
sorry?! Nah. I actually didn’t even think you were like “NO! WRONG!” haha it’s all good : D But also, I don’t always make myself particularly clear!
Now whenever I see the word “dramatic,” I think it’s a typo.