Reformation and renaissance - Page 9
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 31: Ways of Seeing
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by John Armstrong
A QUALITY OF mind can be seen as both ability and a disposition. An ability names something you can do. A disposition names something you tend to do.
The aim, then, of humanities education – in this sense – is to cultivate dispositions: the reliable, intelligent deployment of abilities in real-world situations. It is the ability to think carefully – when under pressure, when there are strong countervailing forces, when there is a need to do so, in the service of an important purpose.
What would be the consequences for the humanities if they took the cultivation of such dispositions of mind as their central purpose? It would mean radical revision of teaching. If the point of studying the French Revolution is not so much to accumulate knowledge about that event as to develop abilities to think effectively about complex processes, the emphasis in teaching and assessment should be on those qualities of mind as needed in other situations. If we've learned something about a complex process, let's try using it on something other than the French Revolution. And in research, qualities of mind would stand as the principle of evaluation.
I was recently talking to an engineering student and the conversation happened to turn to ethics. I was surprised by how confidently she handled the topics: she had a well-informed view about utilitarianism and its strengths and weaknesses. Having, in the past, often taught introductory courses on ethics, I was rather envious of her lecturer. I feared that few of my students would have come away with such a good education. How had she come to understand all this? She explained that she'd been watching a series of lectures on YouTube by the Harvard philosopher Michael Sandal. The lectures were so good, she said, it was like watching a brilliant documentary.
There's no reason why all lecturing should not be provided in this way. A hundred or so superb communicators could take over the whole of that task. The more intimate aspect of education – the cultivation of capacities – would then be the primary focus of teaching.
THE STAKES ARE high. We need the humanities to flourish. But this will require reformation: the humanities need to become more eloquent, more focused on other people, more adept at facing competition, more connected to the economy, more sympathetic to aspiration.
If we will it, this is not the twilight of the humanities: it is early morning. We have to shake off our dogmatic slumbers.