Why lessons from humanities and the arts matter History shows learning Great teacher used theater to listen is a core skill to empower students
wrestle with why she would make that decision in the first place and when you do that, your own understanding of the world gets bigger.
Listening is what I train my students to do in my classes as well. They listen to Benjamin Franklin and W. E. B. Dubois, to William James and Milton Friedman, to name just a few of the voices my students encounter. They don’t have to agree with all or any of these figures, but before they can debate the ideas, they have to listen and understand them.
There is no question that the COVID-19 pandemic is creating difficult challenges for American higher education. Already we are hearing calls from some quarters that higher ed needs to “re-tool” and focus even more on skills training for the job market.
In fact, five years after graduation philosophy majors have higher incomes than business majors according to one study, but that isn’t the point. Higher education has two purposes and they are equally important. One of those is to position graduates to take their place in the economy. The other, however, is to prepare students to assume their role as citizens of this nation. That’s why the founders of Ohio State University chose “Education for Citizenship,” not “Education for a High-paying Job,” as the university’s motto.
It is an impoverished view to see higher education as mere credential mills for employers. Worse, it is downright dangerous for the future of this country. That’s what’s at stake if higher education abandons the humanities in favor of more “marketable” programs. Actually, that shift is already happening at a number of schools.
“To learn, you have to listen,” wrote Thomas Jefferson, and he was right. Look at our public discourse right now and it seems obvious we need more people willing to learn by listening. If you want those kinds of citizens, the humanities remain the best training to get them.
Steven Conn is the W. E. Smith Professor of History at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
A common life experience we've all had was that one great teacher, a guiding presence who made us laugh, think, question, argue, even cry while in the process of learning. Psychologists say learning is a "permanent change in a person’s knowledge or behavior due to experience,” and anyone who has ever had experience with that certain teacher of memory might be changed forever.
I was changed by a great teacher whom I hadn't thought much about lately. But that changed recently.
While watching CBS Sunday Morning, I learned about the July 3 passing of Dennis Cunningham, age 85, the former New York-based CBS arts and entertainment critic.
But before Dennis Cunningham became known by millions for his witty yet erudite reviews of stage and cinema, he was my English professor at Lasalle College — now Lasalle University — the most incredible teacher I’ve ever known. He ran the school's summer theatre program and taught a full academic load in the English Department, which also featured such heavyweights as Dan Rodden, a playwright, along with Charles V. Kelly, who had a very famous theatrical first cousin by the name of Grace.
Cunningham's favorite course was Elizabethan Theatre, as it became mine, due to the energy and creativity of this truly great teacher. When I saw his television death notice, I thought about how he deployed his gifts as a teacher.
For one class about Marlowe’s mighty line, his lecture started out in the hallway. He then dashed into the room, climbed on top of his desk and intoned:
Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Like Faustus, I might have considered selling my soul so I could take yet another course and occupy space like a giant sponge in his classroom, absorbing all that I could of his creativity and genius. I still remember how he could create the most enduring moment from the most mundane. He had that power over me and everyone else in his gravitational field.
But the summer theater director and Elizabethan player was much more than theatrical. As a teacher, he was the real thing.
The ravages of time tend to erase so many powerful moments in our existence, but when I saw Robin Williams perform in Dead Poets Society 20 years after that Elizabethan Theatre class at Lasalle, I was seeing him channel Dennis Cunningham in an extraordinary effort to make meaning from the written word for a classroom of teens distracted by that big world outside the classroom.
Not long after the release of Dead Poets Society, we took our then 10-yearold daughter to New York to see The Phantom of the Opera. As we strolled down Broadway, I noticed a quote from a review featured prominently on a marquee with this identifier: Cunningham — CBS.
“That’s my teacher!” I proudly informed my daughter.
Through Marlowe, Shakespeare and others who spoke the King’s English, he taught us the importance of precision in language to attain success in a career and in life.
Remember that great line from Seasons of Love in Rent?
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
Five hundred twenty-five thousand journeys to plan
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure the life of a woman or a man?
But in measuring minutes, how do you measure a lifetime?
I hope this reflection has helped share the full measure of this one life, that of the greatest of teachers.
Denis Smith is a retired school administrator who lives in Westerville and supports Otterbein University's Department of Theatre and Dance as a testament to Dennis Cunningham.