In Immeasurable Outcomes: Teaching Shakespeare in the Age of the Algorithm, Gayle Greene, professor emerita at Scripps College, raises serious questions about the loss of the humanities. The problems she tells us begin in K12, with a cold focus on accountability, reducing students to test scores and algorithms with students facing screens instead of teachers.
Michael T. Nietzel, senior editor at Forbes, calls her book one of the best on higher education for 2023!
Nietzel states:
In Immeasurable Outcomes: Teaching Shakespeare In The Age Of The Algorithm, Gayle Greene, professor emeritus at Scripps College, pays a very personal, readable tribute to the power of the liberal arts to change students’ lives and enrich their understanding of themselves and the world. She contrasts this perspective with what she sees as a takeover of higher education by technocrats, careerists, and bureaucrats preoccupied with “objective” outcomes.
The best portions of the book are the journeys into Greene’s classes, offering intimate glimpses into how a fine teacher pushes and pulls her students into a deeper understanding of Shakespeare. Less effective are Greene’s lapses into depicting certain aspects of higher education — examples being testing, accreditation, educational technology, and institutional assessments — as boogeymen from which the humanities are the rescuer. That complaint aside, this book is a worthy read, with plenty of attitude.
I agree with the first part of Nietzel’s review but disagree with the last part. Educators will immediately recognize the repercussions of losing the humanities and how the over-focus on testing, accreditation, technology, and the loss of teachers have hurt not only higher education but K12 education as well.
This makes Gayle’s book an engaging read for a wider audience. She understands the critical importance of public schooling and its connection to higher education and knows the history of how public schools worked; the loss of courses that made students whole: Home Economics, debate, the arts, and more.
Gayle’s intimate telling of the interactions with her college students, those who come to class from various backgrounds, seeking a better understanding of their world through William Shakespeare and more, is lovely.
Gayle writes:
I don’t want to hear what my students can do for the global economy. I want to know what I can do for them, how I can help them grow into sane, whole, responsible human beings who make choices that genuinely benefit themselves and the world (p.29).
She notes what’s essential about the student-teacher relationship and shows how teaching is the best of what remains humane. In an era when teachers are being replaced with screens, teachers bring students together, show how to interact and create the necessities for better understanding in our world.
Gayle’s book reflects the extreme differences between corporate-driven schools and teachers focused on students’ needs, not profitmaking, and comes when university liberal arts studies are in danger. The University of West Virginia is a prime example. They’re reducing their liberal arts studies to only a few language classes, an ominous story (See: What Happens When a Poor State Guts Its Public University, The Atlantic).
Gayle outlines the current war on the humanities, a war found in public schools due to the high-stakes standardized tests that rely too much on harsh measurement and in universities that have reduced or eliminated their humanities departments, beginning when President Reagan, in 1967, said as governor, that taxpayers shouldn’t be “subsidizing intellectual curiosity.”
Years later, NCLB and Race to the Top drove reforms that eliminated the arts and classes that gave students life skills, pushing them towards only scientific classes and promising plentiful careers in science that did not exist. This has sadly led to a reduction or elimination of the humanities.
Politicians must understand the humanities and their significance for all of us to live a rich and whole life.
Gayle’s book is enlightening about classrooms where children are increasingly measured, where every activity must be documented, and often online, where outsiders evading privacy controls collect information on students to track them to sell merchandise or typecast them for future jobs.
The loss of liberal education will haunt us for years, and, likely, we’re already witnessing its repercussions.
America used to be known as a great leader in the humanities. We used to often hear that the rote instruction of other countries could not compare to the innovation derived from American students, who learned the sciences and understood humanities.
The humanities make us human. This is the element missing today, and we need more, not less, of the humanities. Gayle describes how to move forward with this endeavor. It’s a book for everyone interested in a better world.
Reference
Greene, G. Immeasurable Outcomes: Teaching Shakespeare in the Age of the Algorithm. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Powell, M. (2023). What happens when a poor state guts its public? University. The Atlantic, Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/12/class-war-west-virignia-university/676152/
“ The loss of liberal education will haunt us for years, and it’s likely we’re already witnessing its repercussions.”
As a high school English teacher, this fatal “loss” is very real. I find myself working endlessly on developing deep connections with literature. Only twenty years ago, my students came prepare to connect with literature and see how great words, ideals, and themes not only taught them about life, but helped them grow into productive, compassionate, effective adults.
Now, i am teaching penmanship lessons during our free time. My students do not even have signatures.
I will read this book. I will search for remedies. The answers are very deeply hidden by the powers controlling our society.
Thank you Nancy. The decline of the humanities over the last two decades is the tragedy of the 21st century. Can the damage be reversed?
Thank you, Joanne, for providing this example. It is truly unbelievable.
I agree wholeheartedly with Nancy’s perspective on the absolute necessity of the humanities for children, teachers, and our society, and on Gayle Greene’s wonderfully engaging and vitally important book. What I remember as the warped and warping message from David Coleman, promoter of the totally misguided and misnamed “Common Core State Standards” in English Language Arts, and Czar of the College Board, is this: “As you grow up in this world you realize people don’t really give a shit about what you feel or what you think.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu6lin88YXU And there you have it, folks, the discarding of the value of the humanities, multiplied in every English curriculum across the country. reprehensible and infinitely damaging Thank you, Nancy and Gayle, for reminding us how much our society has lost and how much we need to regain from the sensitive teaching of the humanities in all its variegated beauty: poetry, drama, music, memoir, fiction, history, philosophy, art.
That’s a great, albeit awful, example, Sheila. It still makes me cringe. Thank you for sharing.
Yes, Nancy. I almost described Coleman’s comment as cringe-worthy, but decided against it. I’m glad you used the word. It’s certainly apt.
Correction:
“. . . a war found in public schools due to the high-stakes standardized tests that rely too much on harsh PSEUDO-measurement. . . .”
Another correction: “Gayle’s book is enlightening about classrooms where children are increasingly INVALIDLY measured,”
Thanks, Nancy! I had about 3 pages on Coleman that I had to drop from my book, quoting him saying, “when you grow up you realize people don’t give a shit about what you feel or think,” suggesting that might tell us more about Coleman than about “people.” I hated to drop that, but I dropped pages and pages on K-12, in order to make the book focus on higher ed.
Thanks. It was probably good to drop it, Gayle. You had enough great stuff without giving him attention. He got by with that comment and his influence on Common Core long ago. Corporate influence, money and power, rules I’m afraid. wonder how much money he’s still making with the College Board.