Business Essay Writing – The World of School

Business Essay Writing – Introduction : Humanities in Crisis: The Way to Active Learning

The author’s career, both in and out of academia, attests to the fact that he is a humanist. Both his education (in foreign language, music, literature and philosophy) and his experience (as translator, editor, administrator and educator in the US and overseas) attest to the fact that he values his humanistic, liberal arts background. It is a strength of his teaching at Iowa’s Graceland University, a small, mid-American liberal arts school where students receive an education grounded in the core values of caring and community—an education of the human, by the human and for the human. But it is also a critical weakness: professing the humanities and teaching in the division of humanities (traditionally, the home of writing classes from poetry writing to professional writing), in the 21st century classroom of young, modern, image-bred computerati requires a self-investment of heart and head that needs much time to develop.

In “The Stupidity Crisis”, a late 20th century paper as relevant as some paper now, Robert Pattison re-invested the role of the humanist with value while developing resistance to the repeated message of typical humanities apologists, viz., that universal stupidity will engulf American society unless “serious humanism” receives an unequivocal endorsement not only of undying respect, but also of unending resources. Reviewing the work of two writers on the humanities: Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind and Hirsch’s Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, Pattison (1988) argued against the conclusion that “Young Americans are extraordinarily stupid”, “Young Americans don’t know much” and that the ignorance of young Americans promises “the decline and fall of the American way of life” (p. 4). On Pattison’s account, Bloom bestowed a crisis on the bankrupt young American soul, and Hirsch bestowed a crisis on the empty young American brain. And, as always, “Most guilty are university teachers of humanities” (p. 6).

Delivered in 1987, Pattison’s “University community lecture in the humanities at North Arizona University” predated by 20 years a recent conference called in New York to answer the urgent question, “A crisis in the humanities?”. In July 2007, scholarly human beings from all around the world, teachers included, squeezed their varied humanistic backgrounds into backpacks and congregated at Columbia University to share variations on a familiar theme for three days. Of course, in the intervening years, varied versions of the question have been asked and answered many times—sometimes in presentation and sometimes in print. Some (in articles and books that link the closed, switched-off American mind to the turned-on television and open computer, complaining of the loss of cultural literacy in the wired bunch all the while) have claimed that the crisis is upon us—is, in fact, here at hand! Others, in the manner of Bishop Berkeley (1710; 1999), a wise student of human nature, who saw with what conviction “We have first raised a dust and then complain we cannot see”, have claimed that the crisis is hand-made and self-serving—a pseudo-crisis concocted, most likely, by the cocky humanists themselves! Still others, so-called saviors of the humanities who convinced of an enlightened calling and a grand cause, have looked for the nearest dustpan (Simpson, 2007; Graff, 1990).
The author does not have illusions of grandeur about either his division or his profession. However, the author does have around 20 years of experience in the humanities—the last 10 of which he has enjoyed at Graceland, a little-known but big-hearted school that transforms the lives of students from more than 40 states Preparing students in today’s school world for success in tomorrow’s work world challenges 21st century teachers to revisit past mentors and models, to revise old paradigms and philosophies and to become knowledge society catalysts. Helping students succeed in the knowledge society of the new century—a world characterized by ceaseless change, boundless knowledge and endless doubt, requires that teachers re-invent their professional personas by creating a fresh professionalism founded not on old, comfortable abilities and attitudes, but on new, unfamiliar skills and traits (Hargreaves, 1994; 2003). For some teachers (many of whom teach exactly as they were taught, typically, following the talk-chalk model that fills a classroom with five or 10 rows of passive listeners in fixed seats, and fills a class period with 50 or 60 minutes of garbled monotones in lecture format)—learning to teach in ways they were not taught represents the greatest challenge of their careers.

The knowledge and insight that the author has gained while learning to teach in ways he was not taught (because the majority of his undergraduate and graduate school teachers were sages on stages, non-stop lecturers who expected students to be non-stop note-takers)—have led him to advocate the use of active learning in all of his humanities classes—from business writing and essay writing to French and Greek, from literature and philosophy to junior seminar and freshman English. As advocates know, by challenging teachers and students to reconfigure the lecture and to rearrange the furniture, the active learning model can engage, enlighten and empower teachers as well as students. And classes can function, through the use of active learning strategies, as dynamic workshops in which students (even the super tech-savvy, somewhat self-absorbed Millennials3
In his monumental work and in words more than a decade old, Silberman (1996) made an early argument for the use of active learning strategies for students in the knowledge society, “Because today’s students face a world of exploding knowledge, rapid change and uncertainty, they can be anxious and defensive”. As a result, of course, today’s students, especially the concerned Millennials in the author’s writing classes, can be expected to blossom when engaged in group activities and collaborative exercises that foster “a feeling of safety and security”. Further, when students are arranged in groups tasked with activities fostering interdependence, they are engaged in the collaborative work that, on Silberman’s view, leads students to master who filled his classrooms during the last decade) can prepare for the unending uncertainty of the knowledge society by becoming creative and flexible, cooperative and confident, eager to risk and ready to learn. Interestingly, the continual readiness to learn, the trait most prized by today’s active-learning advocates, is also the quality most valued in tomorrow’s knowledge-society workers.

learning, “Giving different assignments to different students prompts students not only to learn together but also (to) teach each other” (p. 5). And, according to the active learning credo of Silverman based on the wisdom of Confucius (p. 1):

What I hear, I forget.

What I hear and see, I remember a little.

What I hear, see, and ask questions about or discuss with someone else, I begin to understand.

What I hear, see, discuss, and do, I acquire knowledge and skill.

What I teach to another, I master.

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