ACADEMIC MAJORS
This is a follow up to yesterday’s question about why certain sound waves touch us so deeply.
Schubert must have felt fully alive when he was hearing the sounds of music and must have delighted in arranging those sounds. If he was a going to college today he would have been a music major and if forced to take a business class he would very likely have hated it. He was probably a terrible businessman and didn’t know how to get rich from his beautiful songs.
But if he were about to attend college today he would very likely have discovered that the music major was being discontinued because it was impractical and he would have been offered classes in environmental science instead, which he might flunk.
At Warren Wilson College the major in which I taught, Intercultural Studies, has been discontinued. History is being discontinued. Religion is discontinued. None of them are practical and justify paying $30,000 in tuition so they apparently don‘t attract students.
In my old man’s group of former college teachers it is the historians that give us perspective on every political problem that comes up. American politics is one long cultural war. It would seem that we could use some perspective on cultural differences and advice on how to get along together.
But aside from the practicality of various majors some people are as turned on by learning about history as Schubert was turned on by music. And other people get turned on by becoming aware of the variety of cultures in the world.
If one of the functions of a college education, in addition training you to make the most money possible, is to discover what forms of responding to the world make you feel most alive, then it would seem that colleges should offer a great variety of majors. And students should choose a way of responding to the world which allows them to be as fully alive as they can be in their short time here on earth, and not just wealthy.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 