Yes, they need to know how to write an email, a cover letter, and resume to land a job. But really what can we practically teach them after that? How many different kinds of writing are there in the world? There are probably hundreds of formats for quarterly reports, sales reports, accident investigations, or technical manuals. We could never teach all of those ways of writing, but we can teach a student how to ‘crack the code’ of a particular genre. Even more important, you can teach them it is possible to start writing when they are confronted by the blank page.

But I am in the middle of grading ninety take home essays for my Western Civ midterms. About 20% of the students have the mechanics of writing down, and write at a fairly high level. I can teach these students how history is “good to think with.” Another 20% are basically clueless and write at a remedial level. I have to teach some of them how to actually use the ‘inset footnote’ command in MS word. They need to know what a topic sentence is. The remaining 60% have proficient writing skills, but need practice. I can teach some of these students the finer points of essay writing: how to read the question, formulate an introduction, effective use of evidence, paragraph structure, etc.

That all strikes me as being pretty practical stuff. Sure, the content is history, but really, they are learning some of the basic skills they will need to live as adults and make a living in a service economy. If the student takes a comp class in English, a history class, a science class where they have lab reports to write up, a writing intensive course in their business administration major, then maybe they will master the skills of writing.

1) Humanistic courses need to have a more applied bent in and of themselves, in some fashion that makes sense within the context of the humanities.
2) The overall liberal arts curriculum needs to give students a better sense of how liberal arts knowledge might express itself usefully in professional and career life.
2a) One of the more complicated ways you might do that is to have some ‘hands-on’ experiences built into the curriculum which don’t narrowly feed back into the specialized intellectual culture of the disciplines. Hence, a semester’s work with plumbing. The proposition here is not that this will qualify you as an apprentice plumber but it’s the same exploratory proposition as in teaching English or history in a liberal arts college: you might find that work “good to think with”, another arrow in your quiver. But maybe you’d also decide to do a 2-year certification in plumbing after (or while) working on your degree, which would be a good outcome too.

You could just as well ask what’s the outcome for a student taking an impractical class in the same terms, after all. What’s the outcome for taking Renaissance literature? African history? Moral philosophy? I think there are good outcomes, some career-oriented, some not–but as outcomes, they maybe resemble each other too closely. This is about getting more heterogeneity, more possible connections to the world, more discoveries, into the mix.

I spent five years between undergrad and grad school working as a technician in theater and building trade show booths. It was a great experience. If I had been any good at it, I should have stuck with it and become the boss. But I was better at reading and writing about history. So I went to grad school. While I was doing this, I met a lot of very skilled people, who have more than just manual skills like carpentry, welding, electric know how, etc, but they had planning skills and other sorts of knowledge. Many of them had a BA or a couple years of college. They learned some of those skills in theater programs in college, but most of them picked it up as apprentices and in entry level positions working in theaters.

I think its a little presumptuous that a student at swarthmore or any other SLAC with a few credit hours in wood shop is going to be employable at anything other than the entry level. In a theater, they would have to work their way up the ladder just like everyone else, and they would still be ignorant of the mental habits of a lighting tech, for example. The case is even more tenuous for honest to god trades like plumbing, electrical work, dry wall and plastering, etc. So what is the outcome for a student taking one of your practical classes? – Proletarian class consciousness? – Improved home handyman skills for when they move to Williamsburg and start gentrifying a brownstone? – Averting a crisis of masculinity in the Accounting section?

I wonder if sub-contracting/cross-listing these courses with the local voc-ed schools or community colleges. It would also provide students with a healthy way to escape the ivory tower and perhaps weaken the tendency toward elitism.