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My family is one of complainers. My sisters complain, I complain, my father complains, and my mother complains about everyone’s complaining. One day I was so sick of hearing all the constant complaints, I promised myself I’d try harder to look on the bright side, or at least keep my complaints to myself. Up until recently, I had been doing fairly well I think. But after reading the introduction to Joe Moran’s book, “Interdisciplinarity,”  my streak was quickly broken.

Although interesting, I have come across many statements belonging to Aristotle of which I don’t necessarily agree with. Early on, Moran mentions a statement believed by Aristotle that reads, “The theoretical subjects were the highest for of knowledge, and comprised theology, mathematics and physics, in descending order of importance…” He then went on to report that “…and the productive subjects, which were the lowest… included fine arts, poetics and engineering” in accordance with Aristotle.

It was odd to me that the subjects included in the lowest category were labeled as “productive” when Aristotle clearly felt differently towards those subjects. Subjects such as math and science although important, depend on the arts and engineering as a vehicle for their notoriety and the ability to cause advances in the world in which we live. Fine arts enables societies to preserve, retain and advance its culture, and therefore I believe Aristotle was mistaken when he placed fine arts, poetics and engineering into the lowest point at his “hierarchy.”

Continue reading “WARNING: A Complaint To Follow”

A running joke on campus is that as we walk up the hills to class we look at our friends and say, “I’m seriously paying 20,000 dollars just for great calf muscles?” Like all good jokes, it’s funny because sometimes it seems as though it’s completely true. The debate about whether or not a college degree (or worse- a college degree in English) is worth it is constantly raging around every college student. For everyone who has taken the leap and is already walking up the hills to class every morning, it’s easier to laugh about the uncertainty facing graduates than to seriously consider it.

In Interdisciplinarity, Moran makes an argument not only for a more inclusive and less compartmentalized education but also for education itself. Moran quotes Aristotle saying that liberal educations are “something good in itself” and that the value of these educations are held not in necessarily in “usefulness” but in the idea that a person armed with a well-rounded education is inherently of value.

Additionally, if the only way people can get a quality higher education is by shoveling thousands of dollars out the door, shouldn’t the students get the best education possible? Doesn’t it make sense that along with overwhelming debt, college graduates leave school knowing not only their major but also the disciplines outside of it? Moran quotes an Italian “thinker” Giambattista Vico who claims that focusing only on some disciplines has “led to the neglect of a broad education in favour of specialist knowledge”, leaving some students who perhaps took only Psych classes realizing that maybe taking entry level calculus wasn’t such a bad idea after all. People don’t go to college because they want to master a single math equation or keep rereading the same novel every semester; people go to college so that when they graduate and head into the workforce they have a degree in their back pocket. Of course they will have a major, but with a liberal education they’ve also been exposed to dozens of other disciplines along the way.

The introduction of Interdisciplinarity advocated not just for the derided English majors, but for the embattled liberal education as a whole. So the next time anyone complains about walking up these beloved Geneseo hills, just remind them they are investing in their futures and not just great legs.

 

Moran, Joe. Interdisciplinarity. New York and London: Routledge, 2010. Print
Continue reading “In Defense of a Liberal Education”

Did I say that I was an Education major? Now don’t get me wrong, majoring in education and moving on to becoming a teacher is probably one of the most rewarding jobs a person can have! Teachers consistently get to meet new people, hear new ideas, and have the opportunity to help mold the minds of upcoming generations. Teachers have a major impact on society’s future. Although, teaching is not the only career option that I will have the ability to succeed in. Continue reading ““Oh, cool! So you want to be a teacher?””

I distinctly remember talking once to someone who was in college majoring in some kind of engineering. When they asked me what I planned to major in and I told them English, they said, “I’ve actually been thinking of picking up a minor or a second major in English!” I grimaced and said, “What would you do that for?”

After I ran that conversation through my mind again, I was appalled at myself and my reaction. Are criticisms of the English major so pervasive that even I, an English major, had succumbed to the evil clutches of the naysayers? Was there a degree of truth to the criticisms? Continue reading “If, When, and How”

I remember the day my mother stood with her back to me at the kitchen sink and explained to me why an English major was useless.

Choosing to go to community college over several other more prestigious and exciting colleges (including Geneseo) was a decision my mother had praised as practical and economical. But a degree in English? Continue reading ““Something Good in Itself””

For my English class in my senior year of high school, we had to talk about intertextuality, which loosely represents how all knowledge is inextricably linked through texts or literary mediums — everything stems from something. So, when beginning my reading into Interdisciplinarity I expected a similar idea to evolve. While there are some consistencies between the two since philosophy was seen as the basis to other disciplines therefore connecting them together, it still has a big difference. To me intertextuality is a part of the definition of interdisciplinarity if a definition can be even given. I still have yet to define interdisciplinarity myself since the ambiguity of the term makes it difficult, but I feel that this hesitance is a large part of what interdisciplinarity is. Our reading of the introduction gives many meanings to this term which connects it to many parts of our communication as a society and that’s why I’m constantly baffled when people say to me, “An English major? Are you sure? Is that going to help you with anything? You won’t get a job with that degree. You’re going to end up changing it, English majors always do.”

How come so many people question the merit of an English major when what is learned tends to be the foundation for many subjects? Even mathematics could be considered a language in itself, it has rules and some rules can be broken. Themes learned in English classes, or the Humanities at least, are common throughout the disciplines. And this isn’t a one way street, other structured, defined subjects can meld into others. Nothing is entirely separate, nothing ever will be. Each idea, thought, motion, action, decision, and more, is connected to another idea, thought, motion, action, etc. And maybe this is the definition of interdisciplinarity — the general connection between anything and everything. While this might be a possible definition, Moran makes a very interesting point, “I want to suggest that the value of the term…lies in its flexibility and indeterminacy…In a sense, to suggest otherwise would be to ‘discipline’ it, to confine it within a set of theoretical and methodological orthodoxes” (14). Interdisciplinarity cannot be defined because it cannot be disciplined; its theory prevents this from occurring.

This is why I cannot define a specific reason to be an English major. While my intentions may be to graduate as an English major, to keep on this path I’ve set myself on, if interdisciplinarity exists and cannot be disciplined to one specific ideal, then why should I discipline myself. No matter what major you’re in an English class will have to be taken and no matter how much some people may tell themselves and others that it’s useless, it will impact how they communicate and how they decide to discipline themselves. Interdisciplinarity can be used in any context, in any subject, in any way it may be used which I think presents people with more freedom to possibly create their own discipline and/or break away from the disciplines they’ve been confined to.

So, yes, I’m sure I want to be an English major.

As I was reading just the introduction of Interdisciplinarity, I couldn’t help but think of the Common Core. On page 14, there is a thesis of sorts when Moran states interdisciplinarity “attempt(s) to transcend disciplinary boundaries altogether”. The common core is basically a huge failure that immediately has me worried about the authenticity of  interdisciplinarity. From a surface layer, common core may sound appealing—the tying together of all subjects to one standard of education, everyone treated equally and at the same level. However, this is not well executed because it turns into a profit making game for large corporations, such as Pearson, which pretty much controls common core. It amounts every student to a number and it becomes all about “meeting a standard” which translates to certain grades on a test, which doesn’t mean thorough learning at all. Teachers are forced to produce the right numbers, which means more money for the right(wrong?) people. What happens is that students feel helpless and are not learning, just merely training to achieve a certain grade on a test so that it looks good as data. In this way, I’m not sure about interdisciplinarity— not sure how much sense it all makes to lump all the disciplines together—how practical it is to apply math to english and vice versa. These are, of course, all things I have to think about as I just switched my major to english. I’m not sure how much the english major applies to the real world as much as just being something I love doing and comes to me most comfortably. Maybe the english major is actually just general knowledge that everyone should participate in?

“Has it ever occurred to any of you that all of this is simply one grand misunderstanding? Since you’re not here to learn anything, but to be taught so you can pass these tests…” This commencement of Joe Moran’s introduction to his Interdisciplinary speaks to the core of the issue of why I decided to major in English.

“An English major? Asks Mark Edmundson in “The Ideal English Major.” “To me an English major is someone who has decided against all kinds of pious, prudent advice and all kinds of fears and resistances, to major, quite simply, in becoming a person.” Continue reading “English? Really?”