Crisis of the Humanities: "Shakespeare’s not on trial. You are."

Cynthia Haven let loose yesterday over at The Book Haven with the piece “The questionable utility of the dancing bear, or, the future of the humanities.” She says,

“In the world of education, we value humanities only if we can team people onto digital projects that make cool onscreen images or turn them into rap lyrics to make them palatable for the kids. I like a lot of these efforts, and appreciate their intent, but they’re rather beside the point.  Coolness and likeability aren’t the reason Ovid was exiled, why Osip Mandelstam died scavenging a rubbish heap in a transit camp, why Reinhold Schneider was slated for trial and probable execution had the Third Reich not fallen first, or why André Brink was banned in South Africa.  And it certainly wasn’t why Joseph Brodsky, when I studied with him, made us memorize hundreds of lines of Robert Frost, W.H. Auden, Thomas Hardy, and others – in fact, it made him distinctly unfashionable; some kids fled the class rather than make the effort.  William Shakespeare can be mutilated, but he can’t be tamed.  As one teacher said, after a student had made a snarky, sophomoric comment about Hamlet:  ‘Mister, when you read Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s not on trial. You are.’  And that is the point.”

She also zeroes in on the culprits:

“The New York Times has run an article ‘As Interest Fades in the Humanities, Colleges Worry,‘ once again decrying declining enrollment.  I don’t understand why this should come as a surprise to anyone. The humanities are devalued everywhere you look in our society – so why should kids study them?  The humanities are prized only when we can hook them up to consumer interests, make them turn a coin, demand that they entertain us.  There’s always the implicit threat that if we can’t get the bear to dance, the poor old fellow will be put down.”

I’ve agonized a bit about the troubled ties between the humanities and theology here. It might be time to revisit what Coetzee said along with all the things Mark Edmundson has said promoting his new book Why Teach? (not the most sensitive questions for someone with tenure to ask, is it?).