I'm not sure that's true. Scholars write books; there shouldn't be any oral Torah from Sinai thing going on. I've heard similar sentiments from Egyptologists re: language classes, and in retrospect that was a cover for philologists being uncomfortable with questions grounded in basic linguistics.
I’m not talking about language classes per se, I’m saying there are x number of people who are currently really able to deal with a complex Sumerian inscription and if they don’t train anyone to do it they will probably eventually die. Maybe you can read a grammar and get there on your own but
There's def. efficiency issues & issues with personal attention to learning challenge areas -- this also occurs with stuff like palaeography -- but in-person teaching should not be exaggerated. What are they concretely doing that's not fundamentally transferable to a thoughtfully written book?
You can't engage in dialogue with a book, you can't ask it to clarify things, it can't make suggestions based on your interests and skills, it can't correct you when you fuck up or misinterpret something.
But those would be efficiency issues, and while it's not ideal, it's not like the knowledge dies. Professors can also be wrong in interpretations & not know appropriate references for particular interests/skills. We need professors & ongoing intellectual life, but downsizing isn't a new Dark Age.
You asked what lecturers concretely do that's not fundamentally transferable to a thoughtfully written book and I answered. And yeah they can be wrong, thats why you need more than one for each subject and why you need them in general, cos how do you know the comprehensive book your picking up...
is the right one? Discussion and disagreement are needed to keep a subject alive otherwise you have people approaching sources with no guarantee that they'll be accurate.
But discussion/disagreement can take place with books, and the dead can be right when the living are wrong. If there's some info/perspective that is so unique and it's only in the classroom, that teacher should put it in writing so it reaches more people and so that it lives on after they're dead.
Sorry but I just find this a really odd standpoint, learning requires a dialogue with people who understand the subject,that's how you develop critical skills. Like I taught myself a good chunk aesthetics and metaphysics from books but when it came to doing my own stuff I still needed someone who...
knew what they were talking about to help me develop my own arguments and test my interpretations against.
My perspective on this comes from Egyptology, an outlier field when it comes to language/linguistics. The trouble is that linguistics has not been sufficiently integrated and the typical locus of expertise -- top-flight faculty at major departments -- do not necessarily possess necessary skillsets.
Living teaching is def. more efficient/responsive than books. However, I also think that philologists can be prone to characterize language teaching as some sort of "sit at the foot of greatness" esoteric priesthood. Initiation with particular persons is not a valid form of intellectual authority.
I actually critique Egyptology this way at conference presentations. There's a subcultural malfunction among a subset of philologists, and it's profoundly anti-intellectual... They use these sorts of rationales to disguise training tradeoffs that have hindered needed linguistic research.
Oh don't get me wrong, I hate academia and think it mostly exists to control rather than generate knowledge, but I do think people who know their shit are necessary for learning.
I do think in person teaching is tremendously important and autodidacts capable of doing what you’re talking about tremendously rare but I understand there are people who feel differently
This thread is getting divided... In-person teaching is very important. I guess what I see from my research is that there can be counterproductive personal agendas behind the deployment of these characterizations of teaching. It can be abuse of power to hinder inquiry. bsky.app/profile/miha...
I don’t think we’re going to lose Egyptian any time soon but when I was struggling my way through Ugaritic I already figured my mediocre effort put me in what the top 100 in the world?
No one thinks they're going to lose the language they're surrounded with soon. And then suddenly there are only 2 native speakers left, as on Sark, both in their 80s, and the vast majority of recording and study is concentrated in one scholar. Active teaching is critical for language survival.
I would agree with this 100%.
But this is shutting down a whole department of folks who are essentially paid to write the books, isn't it? There's always been a need for the House of Life, because the School of Life knocks the dreams (and energy) out of most of us.
There's several aspects to this-- Loss of language teaching, which amounts to loss of efficiency/responsiveness (but not really loss of knowledge unless it's an endangered language situation). Hindering/loss of research (no doctoral dissertations bc admissions stopped).
People aren't talking about this, but UChicago has a 2019 report on graduate education that acknowledged "faculty abuse of power” that was affecting students’ “personal well-being” and “mental health.” For many faculty, facilitating production of quality dissertation research was not a priority.
This is not some well-oiled machine breaking down, despite the mythic way that everyone is talking about UChicago's humanistic research. It's actually a hotbed of academic bullying and incivility and it's produced teaching & research misconduct.
Sounds like an alarming situation - hopefully the pause in intake will enable them to address internal issues. I've only ever come across UC at distance, at Chicago House in Luxor, and folks there were really welcoming. (And the lunch was amazing! The library and gardens were positively dreamlike.)
There was a reason people at Chicago were also not “at Chicago” over some years. The mothership was a hard vessel for some and less so if you were able to stay in another port as it were. There was definitely abuse there, but at the same time, axing the entire humanities isn’t good news for anybody.
As a colleague from Divinity remarked by text, "I’m troubled by that but also think they’ve been such poor vessels for it that I don’t really care." One email mentioned student placement issues etc. in depts w/initial cuts. If that's true & they're like Div in 2010s, they should halt admissions.
I’m in the same spot. I’m sad for stranded students and for disciplines that are already under threat losing more scholars. For the school I can’t say I have much sympathy. At some point there had to be a reckoning
Thank you for saying that. It’s been 25 years and I still don’t quite know how to talk about my own Chicago experience which was both important to me and not great. I may never know and my silence may continue. Regardless, I am sad for others who want to try to make it work who are now under threat.
I took two years of Middle Egyptian at Chicago as an undergrad. You cannot learn that shit on Duolingo.
My view is that learning Egyptian is currently hard bc the verb has been mis-systematized, a situation disguised by teaching of random factoids. It's a young field and knowledge is like 85% there, and current systematizations do mostly produce good translation values. But, it will become easier.
Well, I won't argue the point, I understand your perspective. My perspective remains that real autodidacts are much rarer than this. Time and again the revolution in education writ large has been some form of auto-didacticism, way back to the time of MOOCs. It hasn't worked bc it doesn't work well.
I know plenty of people who do and can pick up new languages from books. They are really unusual.