The Wabash Commentary: There seems to be evidence that certain departments miscounted students when asked by the administration for a census of their classes, thus leading perhaps to unfair cuts. Why not go back and review such seeming errors instead of pushing ahead and in effect cutting several positions? Dean Gary Phillips: We did our very best, the division chairs and I, to cover all of those areas, and I’m not willing to say there were not some students missed. But the criteria that we used for helping to identify the positions that needed to be reduced were not simply numbers driven, not simply the head count in a class. There were a range of them, including engagement, and engagement is a function, not just of how many students are in your class, but a whole department’s engagement with all of your students. You could compare music, with its number of faculty and of majors, and compare it to political science, with its number of faculty and majors, and then you can crunch the student load, which is the direct engagement each student has with the faculty, and of course it’s going to be different with a class of 45 than with a class of ten… It’s not a science, but we used criteria that we thought elevated student engagement and kept that at a high level, as well as maintained strong majors, majors that have made historically strong contributions to the College. Now, having said that, someone will say, ‘Classics hasn’t been a historically important major to the College?’ And of course it has been, but you’re also looking at where students are, and one of the important ways student come to the College is they’re coming here and wanting to do pre-med or the life sciences or the health professions, and you have to have a curriculum that services those large numbers of students, as part of the bread and butter, the same way that we have to have high-quality athletic facilities, because lots of our guys play sports.* And that’s part of the liberal arts, of the body and the mind working together, and the College has to support that.
TWC: So on that note, as far as French is concerned, you’re cutting French down to one full-time professor. This creates a vicious cycle: It will now be harder for students to take French, and so fewer and fewer students will, until the department becomes a shadow of its former self, or just disappears altogether. Dean Phillips: And so, in that context, there are several things to think about, so, what’s the strategic plan for the future? Where are the modern languages going? All across the U.S. the diminishment of modern language teaching in high schools is a fact. Slowly, incrementally, high schools are dropping French and German as language options. Spanish is not diminishing… The growing language in America right now is Chinese. When we think about the world of the 21st century, we ask ourselves, ‘What will the men of Wabash need for personal growth and development in the 21st century?’ And this is a hard judgment call: is it going to be French or is it going to be Chinese? You say, historically, traditionally, French has been involved in the curriculum for a long time, but then you say, ‘What do we have to do for Wabash students of the future to determine how to live their lives, how to be educated?’ And our judgment is that, right now, by comparison, it’s more important to have a vibrant, effective Spanish major with four faculty members, than it is to have a Spanish major with three persons in it and a French department with two faculty members. And if you said to me, ‘Dean Phillips, is that what you like?’, I would say no… but at the same time, if I have to choose to put resources in a place that will prepare more Wabash men, or fewer Wabash men, I’m going to wager that it will be in Asian languages and in Spanish, rather than in French and German.** TWC: Could you please comment on the administration’s refusal to prioritize disciplines, instead relying on a simple mathematical formula, a “numbers game”? It seems obvious that the humanities are the heart of any liberal arts curriculum, but Division II was the division that took by far the greatest hit. Dean Phillips: The liberal arts are not the humanities. The liberal arts are the sciences, and the social sciences, and the humanities. So, instead of saying the humanities are the heart of the liberal arts, I would say, if the metaphor extends, that they are a central organ of the body of liberal arts. And so, to say they are the heart of the liberal arts, I guess I would just beg to differ. They are a central organ of the body, if the metaphor extends, of the liberal arts. And so, I would just take a different view of that. If you look at the cuts that took place, they were proportionately the same, in all the divisions… The difference is, when you look at the humanities, there are three departments that go from three [professors] to two [professors], and in that sense, the difficulty of mounting majors was intensified in Division II compared to I and III. It was mine and my colleagues’ decision to keep Division I strong because of the interconnectedness of those four departments, whereas, and this is a feature of the humanities, there is not such a connection. Rhetoric can coexist with classics, with music, but their impact, support, and integration with one another is not so intense.*** If you’re pre-med, you’re going to take important courses in all four of those science areas and so it was important to keep that area of the College strong. TWC: The ‘numbers game’ mentality seems to suggest that we see little value in courses that are not popular with students. If Greek were to have not one student enrolled in it, would we keep it, seeing value in Greek study, or would we just let it go?
Dean Phillips If Greek and Latin as a whole were not valued, then you would just do away with the department. Same is true with music, same is true with art.****
*This college is fundamentally different than a product advertised on Nickelodeon. We should not cater to what students want, but what they need. The high school senior wants high-quality athletic fields and specialized pre-medical courses, but he also wants alcohol and pornography, anarchy and power (at least, we did when we were seniors). The purpose of the College is not to gratify our desires, but - taking the part of Virgil and Beatrice - to mould our desires. **This is a persuasive argument, because in shallow water it appeals to “the wants of the country” schtick. But it is wrong. The diction of his reasoning entails unnecessary doubt: Dean Phillips “wagers” in which language we must pour our resources. A risky bet, since ten years ago there was a rush to learn Arabic, thirty years ago it was Russian, and in the 1960’s sociologists assured us that Ebonics was the wave of the future.
You are wrong, Dean Phillips. We should pour our resources into that which prepares men for their future lives, and no languages do that better than Latin, Greek, French, and German - the cornerstones of our culture. The famous words never engraved at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi: “Know everyone else.” ***What the hell, Dean Phillips? And you fancy yourself a Division II scholar? I will, for the moment, shelve my indignation in order to parse the Dean’s argument. As best as we can make out, this is his reasoning: A Division I major is most likely a pre-med student, thus he must take courses in three departments: Physics, Chemistry, and Biology. A Division II major, according to Dean Phillips, does not require such integration. He could take nine courses in the Art department and his education would be complete. Bada bing bada boom, get him through comps then ship him off to grad school.
This is poppy-cock. Examine the case of someone learning art, whose particular passion is Gothic Architecture. At the very least, he would wish to develop his command of the French language, study philosophy in the tradition of Plotinus and Porphyry, theology according to Augustine and Aquinas, and develop a firm grounding in the musical principles that inspired the geometric paradigms of the Medieval Ages. I don’t think Professor Huebner, as capable as he is, can teach all of that. ****We have worked our way from a difference of opinion to poppy-cock, and the next step, as we might expect, is sheer fallacy.
To use the language of logicians, there is a possible world in which Dean Phillips harbors a secret desire to eradicate Greek, Latin, Music, and Art (thinking that each, as a whole, was not valued), but still we keep such programs because the realities of tenured positions, student enrollment, and alumni donations force the Dean’s hand. I am not suggesting this is the case (this is a possible world, not our world). My point, though, is this: apathy and negligence - not disposal - are the surest, and most heart-breaking, indications that this institution ceases to value a discipline, a department, or, as the case may be, an all-college course. |
