Keeping it Real (and the future of reading)

 

Whelp, I am insistently un-intsagrammable, not AI, real: pictured is the new reading set up.  The chair and stool were bought at an estate sale about two years ago and have been resurrected from the basement.  The lamp/ table was a gift from a colleague when my apartment burned down in 2014. I believe it had belonged to his grandmother in Florida.  The vacuum indicates that I am blogging mid-housework.  There's an outlet with no cover (oh the glamor!).  On the couch in the background, a black dog and a white dog.  Oh, and on the wall the one thing I made in art class last summer which was accidentally good(ish): "Prison."

I write to you from the doldrums.  1) Only read the newspaper if you are strong enough of spirit to cope with your own powerlessness in the face of terrible things; 2) Only attend academic Board meetings if you are strong enough of spirit to cope with your own powerlessness in the face of terrible things.

Re: #2

I teach at a liberal arts college in the US.  I like it.  I teach in an English department.  I was chair for ten years and saw enrollments in my major decline, mirroring national trends.  Yesterday, at the meeting, there was more data about declining enrollments in the Humanities, and rising enrollments in STEM.  It's not a surprise, it's just a reminder.  It comes alongside the imperative "we need to teach students AI so they are job ready" and a recent article about an MIT study showing how much stupider we get when we use AI.

Guh.  It  all makes me want to stab myself in the eye with a pencil.

I asked one of the two teenagers I live with, one who goes to Hackathons and codes for fun, what would induce him to study a Humanities major:

Teen: "Well, I am torn between Computer Science and History, but I'll probably take Computer Science."

Me: [mouth agape] "History?  I never knew you liked it."

Teen: "Yeah, but I won't take it because Computer Science will be faster and I'll get a job."

Me: [thinking I have the solution, perhaps to all problems with Humanities enrollments in the whole wide world] "Would you double major?"

Teen: "No.  Those subjects are, like, opposites.  It would take extra courses."

Me: "What if it didn't and taking the double major meant you covered a lot of your general education requirements?"

Teen: "Still no.  I want to be able to focus the majority of my effort on my major."

He can be a bit of a semantic arse, my teen, but I love that he word played his way out of the conversation.

What is the solution though? Reading fiction is an excellent thing for the brain.

Perhaps the advent of AI will send people to an English major because they really don't want to lose their minds?

Guh.  I still have the "poke my eyes out with pencils, I can't stand it," feeling: I'd like an iron clad solution please, one that isn't rooted in my just being scared of losing my profession, one that shows a cost/ benefit ratio in which reading fiction in fact pays off.  

Please advise, gentle reader.