The Rise and Fall of the English Major Part II

Continuing from my previous post, why do we make students study English in high school?

OK, first of all, you have to until you finish Yr 12. So...there's that. Why do we privilege English and mathematics by making them the compulsory subjects students must take? Perhaps our society would be better served if every student had to take four out of five years of their high school careers learning one of the hard sciences. We may not have much demand for novelists and poets, but we sure have a demand for students who could grow up and cure cancers (plural. Look it up- there wouldn't be one single cure for what is a multitude of diseases that we label under the umbrella term “cancer”). Perhaps that is vicious hyperbole, but I suppose what I am addressing is the application of subject knowledge in “the real world”.

OK, so first of all, I stand by what I said when I stated that the things you learn in English like essay-writing or poem-composing may not directly impact your job, in the same way that other high school subjects might. An electronics course might improve your efficacy as an engineer. Knowing some basic exponential math is going to come in handy if you're a statistician. Being able to run really fast will come in handy when you're working as a prostitute catering to the crystal meth market (I hear those guys are wily, but they're often confused by bright lights). We have a massive surplus of people who want to be professional authors, poets, screenwriters, and journalists and only a tiny number of employment opportunities for these occupations. Obviously, we, as a society, could stand to lose a few aspiring poets in exchange for people who take the time to learn more about human biology and consequently won't oppose, and can actively explain to others the benefits of vaccinating children (my feeling about this is if you have a blanket policy about not vaccinating kids en masse, you either don't understand the science as well as you think you do or you actively hate children). The question remains, why study English? Again, I have an English degree so clearly I didn't think it was as much of a waste of time as watching Pretty Little Liars (I also have a Media degree so my opinion's very slightly valid there too).

So, I think it's pretty clear by now that in my soapbox-crusade in promoting English in schools, I'm going to have to deal with my reasons one post at a time so today I want to talk about the transference of skills. For simplicity's sake, look at the idea of multiplication. When you're taught in schools that 7 x 8 = 56, you aren't rote-learning specific numbers so that you also have to learn 8 x 7 = 56, but you're learning about a concept that can be transferred, so that when you're later working out how many pieces of pie you'll need for a group of kids you can work out that 3 x 13 = 39. In much the same way, essay-writing is not actually about the ability to write essays (if your boss ever makes you sit down and write an essay about your job, I do feel really bad for you). What essay-writing, as a skill, enables you to do is learn how to critically analyze and apply reasoning to a specific situation, gain a perceptive awareness of what's happening, and structure how you want to articulate your thoughts in a serious, formal manner. These three skills will come in handy in later life, and it's difficult to teach these skills for specific jobs so we have to teach them in abstract. Learning film language (high shots, low shots, soundtrack, sound effects, et cetera) isn't about learning film analysis, but about learning how to recognize the structure of systems where you aren't necessarily told what you're meant to be observing. This might come in handy later if, let's say, you're a firefighter and you have to look out for weaknesses of the structural integrity in a burning building. Having experience with learning such systems like film language make it easier to learn systems in later life.

What about making posters?

I got no idea about that one.

The Rise and Fall of the English Major Part I

So, update on what's been going on in my life- finished editing the newest draft of my friend's novel. I'm putting my English degree to its best use, by becoming a book editor! Sadly, the majority of people equate editors with proofreaders. While I am a stickler for grammar, most of my editorials involve story structure, character development, and backhanded compliment- there's very little on the actual prose. Still, it's a way to say to myself “those three years of university weren't a waste of time”. However, I have another reason for saying that getting an English degree was worth it.

Let me get this out of the way now- I don't think you could ever make a quantitative argument that a degree majoring in English at a New Zealand university is worth it, dollars spent in tuition fees balanced by a fixed income when you contrast that degree with earnings from other Arts degrees. I am aware that many, many people see English degrees as just a hobby and a way for you to be able to more eloquently explain why you're on unemployment benefit (har har, that joke is as fresh as day-old sushi). However, we force students to go through English education throughout high school all the way up to Year 12. Why? To teach kids how to read? No. At age 5, most of them can do that. So why do we teach English?

Well, that turns out to be a difficult question to answer with many reasons why but I'm going to give the answer that I think is the easiest to understand. First off, there is such a thing as emotional intelligence. There is skill in being able to recognize, interpret, resist, and exploit the emotions of yourself and others. Don't believe me? Consider times when you've done things impulsively, or done things you've regretted, or acted in a way that was self-destructive (smoking, binge-drinking, gambling). We are creatures of emotion, and we need to be aware of this (teenagers, I feel, are particularly lacking in this type of intelligence).

So, how do you teach someone what to do when they're unbearably sad? How do you teach someone to understand that they have an insatiable, irrational desire for something? Well, make them read books, watch films, write stories so they can have experiences that aren't their own, and put these feelings into words which can be communicated to others. I might not know what it's like to lose a parent, but I've seen Forrest Gump and (spoiler) the titular mother's character dies, and I was very sad. Although it will be much sadder when one of my parents actually dies, I will have, in some small way, have experienced this before and recognize it for what it is.

So, why do we need to recognize our own emotions? Because we aren't in complete control of them, and if we let them, our emotions can spiral out of control and leave us broken. This is why we have art- because art isn't always supposed to make us happy, but make us feel something.

I suppose I'm writing this because I've been feeling down lately.

This is nothing new. The end of semester is always hopelessly anticlimactic to me because I always imagine it to be full of parties and drunken shenanigans, but I have come to accept that it is more than likely stressed cramming for exams and mid-winter blues. As a postgraduate student, I don't have exams- I just have that gnawing feeling that my Master's degree is never going to pay for itself. I suppose lately what's happening is that I've been feeling ennui- that feeling of restlessness, boredom, frustration of the tediousness of life. Incidentally Sylvia Plath wrote one of my favourite lines of poetry about ennui- “tea leaves thwart those who court catastrophe”.

However, I started this blog in order to write down some of my feelings (dear god, if I ever end up famous for becoming a bestselling novelist or the first person to ever overdose on cappucinos, please don't include the majority of my scribbles in my complete biography). What else am I feeling? Tired, I suppose. Annoyed with myself at being unable to do any serious writing of my new play. I tend to subscribe to the John Green method of writing- just allow yourself to write terribly, and eventually the few granules of quality will amass as you refine your work. I like John Green, and I like his ouvre, but that is not really how I work.

How do I work? Well, this isn't exactly a proper answer but the usual response would be “as little as possible”.