The Decline of the Humanities in Adventist Education: Part 2
“If you don’t believe that what you’re doing here is just as important as surgery in an emergency room, you shouldn’t be here,” a history professor announced to the class, “here” meaning the curriculum track to a history-related career. I certainly did not consider the two equally important, which is why I was only touring from the campus’s science quadrant.
As I recall it, the day I decided not to go to medical school my family had contracted COVID-19. I fled the sickhouse to study for the MCAT in a fluorescent lit public library. When it was time to leave I relocated my educational efforts to an empty Starbucks. I was exhausted from memorizing material, and once my brain had its fill of information, I shut off Khan Academy and grabbed my new favorite novel to read while I walked the neighborhood.
Before long, unexpected thunder and thick rain yanked me from the captivating story and sent me sprinting down a sidewalk. While rushing for shelter I reflected on my aversion to the medical work consuming my days and the solace I found in literature. Despite my distaste for the field of medicine, my fellow classmates and I were convinced that it was the only way to help our community. Part one of this series, explores the history behind Seventh-day Adventism’s waning interest in students obtaining humanities degrees. The question surrounding why non-humanistic studies are respected and degrees in liberal arts are devalued remains to be discussed. The answer to this conundrum can be difficult to address. As society becomes more rooted in consumerism, human value is driven by productivity. As a result, appreciation of the humanities is eclipsed by a desire for practicality and profit.
Makoto Fujimura, an artist and theologian leading the “slow art” movement, reflects in his book, Culture Care: “Utilitarian pragmatism is tied to a world in which vision is stripped of transcendence…Utilitarian thinking is often disguised, but it still can result in lifelong entrapment if it is allowed in. Take the example of college. Most of us have been pragmatists, seeing college as a transactional entity in which the student spends four years of time and tuition to receive back a lucrative career. Parents advise children to major in something “useful” rather than in the humanities, often under threat of withholding financial support. Desiring a sustainable career is noble, but such recommendations debase education – and our humanity. The pragmatic goal of having a useful degree can calcify into a dogma – or worse, reaffirm an unquestioned assumption – that you are only worthwhile if you are useful.”
Through self-isolation, Adventist culture successfully escaped most of the effects of neoliberalism blossoming in the second half of the 20th century. This evasion becomes apparent when I try to explain Adventism to friends unfamiliar with the religion; often coming across as a hyper-religious hippie movement. Adventists intentionally congregate within communities and establish Blue Zones; they even carry similar banners as the anti-capitalist and anti-consumerist groups of the 60s, 70s, and 80s.
The cultural spectrum of Adventism exceeds matters of education and can be divided into two groups; conservative and progressive. Each side of this binomial function favors a “practical,” non-humanities education for different reasons. Different roots for a similar, sad-looking plant.
In this self-isolation, conservative Adventists may be overtly influenced by the denomination’s historical skepticism for the humanities rather than pragmatism. For context, In 1874 Battle Creek College, now Andrews University, a Seventh-day Adventist institution in Michigan, offered a five-year degree in the classics and employed educators with tenuous Adventist ties. This supports the idea that the first Adventist schools focused on institutional independence – not sectarian education. Battle Creek College sported a conspicuous lack of Adventist-specific education, and operated similarly to the public schools its teachers had previously attended and taught at.
Interestingly, James White strongly supported this model and its secularity. As a result, the shifts to a more Adventist-centered education model occurred following his death. “It was Ellen White, who had always been much more suspicious of the intellect than her husband, who inspired the revision of educational policy…In advocating a biblically based education, White rejected the classical curriculum of the church’s pioneer educators. She broke, too, with her husband’s emphasis on intellectual development. She urged a practical, sectarian education that was better adapted for ministerial training.” Her thoughts on education were of course codified into the book Education, which is more widely read and adhered to than any letters to individuals James White penned on the topic.
On the other end of the spectrum, progressive Adventists tend to live, work, and read outside the denomination’s community. They are less influenced by works like Education and more influenced by concepts like neoliberalism. Eugene MaCarraher, author of The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity, describes the modern infatuation with increasing wealth (which could include social capital) as not inherently bad, but bereft of attention to crucial qualities. “Fixating on material progress evidences a failure of moral imagination. The way we evaluate the economy is asking, ‘How much stuff did we produce last year?’ We don’t ask whether any of the stuff that we produced actually contributed to human flourishing.”
Reading, Writing, and Respectability
An interesting difference between Adventist colleges and other colleges are the reputation of humanities majors, particularly those that involve a lot of reading. When I arrived at Southern Adventist University as a history major the reactions I received from other students about my field of study shocked me. Pre-med students often commented “Wow, all that reading!? I could never survive in that major.” This puzzled me because they had to regularly stay up all night to memorize chemical mechanisms, something I cataloged as objectively “harder.” But even if extensive reading is considered “hard,” that doesn’t correlate to respect for the humanities at Adventist institutions.
Amanda Barnes, a senior at Pacific Union College and English major with a minor in history, observed a similar pattern. “There are status wars all across campus. Science people think we [humanities people] have it incredibly easy, yet science people say, ‘You write ten page essays – I could never do that.’ They respect the skill sets we have that make us good at specific things, yet they still think of us as lower status than science people. Even within the humanities there are status wars; English people, for whatever reason, look down on communications people. Professors are afraid of losing students to other departments and discourage them from taking a minor in history or English, telling them that those minors are useless.”
A Southern Adventist University senior, who wished to remain anonymous, also noted that there is an observable gradient of the respectability of majors on campus. “I certainly do feel that majors traditionally linked with more ‘professional jobs’ (physician, lawyers, etc) are more respected than let’s say art and history majors. These more respected majors typically include anything in the STEM realm, nursing, and business.”
By the time they enroll in an Adventist college, many students find they no longer need to take any humanities classes. Many have checked the general education boxes for U.S. History or English 101 with Advanced Placement (AP) courses in high school. They don’t need to take World Civilizations and therefore never fall in love with seminar-style discussions or classroom debates, the gateway for many students who transition to majors or add minors in the humanities. This is also true of progressive Adventists who attend larger, non-Adventist schools where AP classes are more likely to be offered.
Dr. Linda Tym, associate professor of English at Oakwood University, outlined humanities as the disciplines concerned with human life, including how we exist and what are the goals of human life. She noted a discrepancy in the ways that “The discourse around how people actually navigate their professional lives has changed significantly in the last several decades, but our assumptions about higher education haven’t.” She elaborated, “When the boomer generation came of age, if you had a college degree, you were guaranteed to have a top-notch job. Commitment to an institution or business meant that if you stayed within that institution for a long time, you would get a lot of benefits. There was a very stable ladder that you would begin to climb automatically if you remained with your institution. But things are different now.”
Tym taught at both Southern Adventist and Burman University. During her years of teaching students, she has observed that many parents assume their child will choose one stable career that they can work their way up through to obtain rewards, but that’s simply not the case anymore. Students – even in traditional tracks – rarely keep the same type of job. The Adventist educational system needs to realize that it can not merely pass on trades; it needs to teach students habits and skills, such as speaking, writing, and understanding the emotions of others. It is only by educating students in these fundamental skills that they will find success in a wide range of life paths and will have the capacity to insightfully choose these paths when the time comes.
A 2023 study by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences challenged the notion that humanities majors are financially worse off than their peers in other majors. The project examined career outcomes of humanities majors in every state and the District of Columbia. The data showed that humanities majors are not largely unemployed and that their earnings are very similar to or better than employees with non-humanities backgrounds, with the exception of engineers.
Science Stuff and Scaffolding
There may be incentive for schools to sink money into departments that have more physical materials to promote. Students and parents on a campus tour can be led through state-of-the-art computer science and biology faculty research labs glistening with specialized glassware and photo microscopes. A nursing building populated with practice dummies and cadavers is scintillating to nursing-inclined prospective students. Humanities departments can of course put funding to use in a variety of ways, including books, trips to academic conferences, study-abroad subsidization, equipment for art classes, etc., but many of the largest expenses to such departments are experiential, not tangible. Oftentimes, luxury is visualized more easily in the form of material wealth than it may be in the form of fully-funded study-abroad experience for art students whose benefit from the experience is entirely subjective.
What about campus architecture? The way a school looks could impact what and how people study. People sink money into things they think are important. Money spent is evidence of the regard to which something is held. At several Adventist colleges in the U.S., the business department’s building is either considered to be the nicest or is the most recently built. Walla Walla University’s Bowers Hall brandishes enormous glass windows, spacious study areas, and a well-stocked computer lab; it is the most recently remodeled building on campus. Before its renovation, it housed the history, philosophy, and chemistry departments, as well as an archeological laboratory. Dr. Tym observed the same trend at Oakwood University. The McKee B & T business building “looks” the nicest. Southern Adventist University recently broke ground for its new Ruth McKee School of Business building, funded by a $20 million campaign. Once finished, it will be the first building seen when driving onto campus.
“We are not just constructing a building; this is a symbol of our enduring commitment to excellence, ethics and the power of God-enriched transformative power of education,” SAU president Ken Shaw told attendees at a ceremony for the building. He is right – buildings are powerful symbols for what is considered important and places students have to spend a lot of time in. After touring Harvard’s new Science and Engineering Complex, alumni and columnist for The New Yorker Nathan Heller mused, “In school, I had been friendly to the sciences, but I had majored in the humanities, and since then I’d never had a moment’s real regret. After half an hour in this new complex, I was prepared to do it all again and choose the interesting, vivifying life path of an engineer.”
It Takes a Child to Raze a Village
“My entire family was shocked when I chose not to go into the medical field,” reflected Barnes. “I got a lot of ‘You’re too smart to be a teacher’ and ‘Why do you want to throw your life away?’ I think the reasoning comes down to both status and money. You’re getting paid more, therefore your status is higher. My entire family is in the medical field, so that’s what they know and are secure with. But I think a lot of times instead of doing research into what other careers look like, parents try to dissuade their kids from doing anything that’s not what they do and know.”
The Southern student reflected on the impact of her upbringing on her choice of major. “As a child of immigrant parents, I was always inspired by the success stories of those who came from minority or underprivileged backgrounds; most of these individuals went on to become successful lawyers, doctors, and business owners. I self-imposed this need to become a doctor and my parents were more than happy when I announced that I would go to college as a pre-med political science major. However, when I dropped the pre-med label and switched over to psychology and international development studies (IDS), their enthusiasm dwindled. With that change and dwindled enthusiasm, came many questions and concerns. It was then that I felt pressure to once again switch into another career that would be more ‘acceptable’, respectable. With much evidence-based research, discussion, and prayer, my parents grew to understand and become even more supportive of my college career endeavors.”
There’s a common theme here, which Tym also observed; students and their families don’t really know their options. The Adventist community’s continuing history of very pragmatic careers reinforces the conception that these are stable and lucrative, simply because of visibility. Most families go to church with nurses, medical practitioners, and teachers. Students rarely run into widely respected, high-profile authors or public figures before arriving at university.
The anonymous Southern Adventist University senior observed that among many immigrant families and families where English is not primarily spoken, there is a common confusion that only certain types of careers afford financial security: “Spanish is mainly spoken in my home…I feel as though in households where English is not primarily spoken, majoring in the humanities is less ‘appealing’ than majoring in other fields such as STEM, nursing, or business. In my experience, this comes from a place of misunderstanding and lack of education. Growing up, I was raised within a community of first generation immigrants and Americans, many of which grew up in poverty. Coming to the U.S. was their solution to escaping their cycle of poverty, and in providing their children an opportunity to receive ‘better education,’ these children would then have to use this privilege to get a job that would ensure the continuation of financial stability and security.”
Barnes mused that it may actually be harder to complete Adventist college with only a humanities degree; “It is very expensive to study at an Adventist college. And I don’t think there are many scholarships coming from the humanities side.” She continues, “I have no humanities scholarships; money from my education study is what’s making it possible for me to study here. I do feel supported by my humanities community here, though other professors often try to dissuade students from pursuing humanities careers. If you’re not a nurse, if you’re not a doctor, who even are you? Are you even useful? Nope. Cool.”
There is of course nothing wrong with traditional careers and correlating lines of study. But we need to be more careful about the meaning we attach to them and the implications that meaning has for those in other careers or paths of study who struggle to remember that what they do is meaningful, real work. We need to remind each other of the ways in which we are contributing to human flourishing; that which gets recognized grows.
