Keeping the Essence of What Makes Us Humane:

The Beauty and Brilliance of the Humanities in All Educational Institutions and Its Importance to the World

Guest Blogger: Nicole Stephens

I walked down the street yesterday morning and I saw a yellow flower and the flower began to dance!
I looked out the window and the tree that greets me every morning started to sing!!
I was sitting in the park and a blue bird started speaking French to me!
Each time I experienced those profound meetings, I smiled, and my heart was filled with glee!!
Oh -where would I be if I did not have that flower, tree, bird- dance, sing, and speak French to me!!

I’m simply tired of the disrespect-the disrespect of what makes us humane! As educators, I often ponder- do we really examine what makes our students (us) get up in the morning and what helps them (us) go to sleep at night? My current blog will help some understand my deep and profound concern about how the humanities and liberal arts education at the university level, K-12 education, and even the world is embraced-I mean truly embraced on a level that helps us understand the importance of what makes us human.

I was reading the New York Times just the other day and I wanted to scream. I had to take a deep breath. The headline under the opinion section read: Do Colleges Need French Departments (October 17, 2010)? It caught my attention, mainly because I majored in International Studies (French) and studied Biology as an undergraduate at North Carolina A & T in Greensboro and I wanted to know what issue they had now about this important major. The article went on to explain that The State University of New York at Albany is cutting most all their foreign language degree majors (French, Italian, Classics, and Russian) and their theatre program. The article focused on cutting the humanities in general from educational institutions not only at this particular university, but universities and colleges all over the United States, because of budget issues.

In my humble opinion, nothing that makes us humane should be cut from the budget from higher education or K-12 educational institutions. Many reading this blog may say that this is not realistic or even sensible when you consider the fact that we are in a technologically driven world that must focus mainly on math, sciences, business, and other majors that are “more important” and bring in more money to the institution. These STEM majors and skills related to them are vitally and profoundly important if we are to survive in this century and beyond. However, I am a firm believer that the humanities are what make us competent, creative, interesting, and even wonderfully profound for all that teach them, take them, or just even embrace them.

At NC A & T, my soul became more beautiful (full of knowledge and deep hunger about many different things) and so did all my other peers that took a similar path. I did not major in education as an undergraduate. However, I took the PRAXIS (formerly NTE) exam and passed with flying colors, simply because of the make-up of the test during that time. The test focused on how much I knew about the Liberal Arts. I passed not because of brilliance or because I belong to MENSA but because of my education in the humanities. My interests grew in many areas including business and biology. Creativity is needed for marketing. The body is a creative gift that moves in lovely ways. I took French, Spanish, History, Art, Music, Philosophy, and any thing that made me smile and then I was able to understand those things that made me marketable for the world today.

This takes me back to my opening blog statement-what makes our students (us) get up in the morning. It is the music that greets us on our alarm clocks and cell phones. It is the dance that we (our students) cannot wait to get to on Friday night, but know that we must be successful on the Chemistry test or finish checking the test so we can enjoy our “night of creative flow.” How many of us cannot wait until we see that special play on Broadway or that basketball player fly poetically to the basket net?

As educators, do we take the time to tell our students to look out the window and admire the natural beauty that the Creator has given us for free?

Educational institutions must find a way to keep humanities in our arenas. It is what keeps us sane and it is what keeps the world humane.

The Mission of the Writer's Studio: Your Help Requested

Guest blogger: William Donahue

My goal in this post is to involve the Lincoln University community in writing the mission statement for the Roscoe Lee Brown Writer’s Studio. Located in University Hall B-3 with hours this semester on Tuesdays from 3:30 until 5 p.m. and Wednesdays from 4 until 6 p.m., the RLB Writer’s Studio is based on a writing center model—a collaborative place to create better writers. We offer non-evaluative, one-on-one consultations on any writing matters, for any student at any level, as well as specialty workshops for groups. We also house the English Department’s component of the Humanities Tutoring Program in the core.

Let me start with an anecdote from a class in that core:

In yet another English Composition II class, this first day of midterm week, I explained my “revision” midterm assignment. Students need to take their short story analysis essay, write a revision, then write a meta-cognitive reflection of how they attempted to revise each graded entity on the rubric (thesis, support, etc), and finally address grammar and punctuation issues by writing the rule for their particular pattern of error as well as demonstrating application of that rule to their own writing.

No Scantron here. We are quickly climbing Bloom’s taxonomy and addressing numerous SLOGs.

The students are writing, revising, engaging in critical thinking, and learning about their writing process. But a finer point escaped the students—the difference I was trying to elicit between “editing” and “proofreading.” Even after my powerpoint and class discussion, a student response to the midterm assignment was to “fix the errors” as if there was nothing more to revision than fixing a mistake. That a thesis, although “somewhat effective” on the grading rubric, could not be revised further.

As I discussed with my students today and as I talk about the RLB Writer’s Studio as a “writing center” at Lincoln, I am often reminded of Stephen North’s 1984 essay in College English titled “The Idea of a Writing Center,” which was the basis for a “new” model of writing center that differed from the “basement, fix-it” shop approach to writing (VISIT US IN THE BASEMENT OF UNIVERSITY HALL!) Instead, North argued, “it represents the marriage of what are arguably the two most powerful contemporary perspectives on teaching writing: first, that writing is most usefully viewed as a process; and second, that writing curricula need to be student-centered” (438) as opposed to the “older” model where “instruction tends to take place after or apart from writing, and tends to focus on the correction of textual problems” (439).

Writing centers focus on creating better writers through collaborative, dialogue/question driven, non-directive measures. The goal is often a better writer, not necessarily a better written text. The analogy I often use is teaching people to fish so that they will never go hungry.

The more recent criticism of the process approach to writing, which developed in 60s through the 90s, comes from post process scholars such as Kent (2003) who assert that writing is social—a situated, public, and interpretative act. The product cannot be ignored.

So the Writing Center is stuck in the middle—which is right where we want to be.

WE DON'T FIX STUDENT WRITING (but we can help students fix their own writing).
WE DON'T DO REMEDIATION (but we can help remediate student writing).
WE WANT STUDENTS TO COME TO US (but any encouragement to help students find us will be accepted).
WE WORK WITH ANY WRITING ISSUE (believe it or not there is more to writing than grammar).
WE WANT TO PROMOTE WRITING (we want to promote writing).

After all as North stated, “if writing centers are going to finally be accepted, surely they must be accepted on their own terms, as places whose primary responsibility, whose only reason for being, is to talk to writers” (446).

So I now enter into a dialogue with you. Help us create our Mission Statement. What do you see as the mission of the Roscoe Lee Browne Writer’s Studio?

References

Kent, T. (2003). “Introduction.” Post-Process Theory: Beyond the Writing Process Paradigm. Ed. Thomas Kent. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP.

North, S. M. (1984). “The Idea of a Writing Center.” College English, 46(5), 433-446.