BD:That said, you have to realize that the perception of the value of you vocation has a lot to do with the large number of clueless people who major in English because they can accomplish it after realizing that they couldn’t make it in science or business.
Its unfortunate that the clueless muck up the job market for the people who really care.
You’re suggesting that the comparatively restricted job market for English majors is largely due to the fact that some English majors aren’t very good at their subject or very interested in it? You imagine that if all English majors loved their subject and did well in it, businesses would suddenly want to start hiring English majors for many more jobs, say, as C++ programmers and system administrators and genetics researchers?
I think that’s nonsense. The job market for English majors, same as for most other humanities majors, is inherently limited no matter how good the applicants are. And that’s because the field doesn’t give the applicant a lot of specialized technical knowledge, and many jobs require that kind of knowledge rather than (or at least in addition to) the kind of broader education that an English major provides.
Majoring in English has some wonderful advantages, but it doesn’t teach you how to titrate a solution or design a circuit or run a CAD application, and a lot of employers want people who know such things first crack out of the box. Incidence of perceived cluelessness among applicants has jack shit to do with it. The most clueful English major can’t get an entry-level job that requires specialized technical training, and that IMO is the most important factor in determining what their job market will be like.
The idea that the cluelessness rate is higher among English majors than science or business majors because the latter are more selective is also pretty suspect. I’ve had plenty of clueless students who were science and business majors. They were smart enough to scrape through (or cheat their way through) the requirements for the major, but they were completely uninterested in the field except as a meal ticket to a “hot job” that was going to make them lotsa bux. (I saw that quite a bit among computer science majors in the IT-delirious nineties, alas, although I also knew several CS majors that were among the most brilliant students I ever had.)
“Hot” majors, I’d say, attract at least as many clueless and fundamentally unqualified students as “easy” majors. The job market doesn’t care.
A short joke, not meant to poke fun at anybody in this thread:
A young man graduated first in his High School class in northern Maine. He wanted to continue his education, so he applied, and was accepted, to Harvard. His first day on campus, he was a little overwhelmed by the hustle of “city living,” and managed to get a bit lost on his way to the library. He stopped a passing student and asked, “Excuse me, where’s the library at?” The student, noticing the young man’s flannel shirt and jeans, replied, “Here at Haaaaarvard, we don’t end a sentence with a preposition!” The young man responded:
I think that you missed my point and you might even dismiss your own arguments after examining the market forces.
I agree with you that the “clueless” or more appropriately labeled “uninspired” people exist in all vocations. But take for instance the field of chemical engineering. You could argue that there are uninspired Chem-Es out there but its pretty obvious that the general uninspired college crowd does not default to that vocation. If they did then Chem E jobs would soon be paying a lot less.
And take for example, if I have a degree in physics but I loved to sweep the street with a broom (I’m listening to Jimmy Buffet sing “It’s my job” right now) and it made me happy and I was dedicated and inspired to make the street spotless, it would not change the following realities:
1 - The other people who do my job weren’t drawn to it out of love for the work.
2 - A great number of society might think that I do this because I can’t do much else.
3. - I’m not going to get paid any more than others who do my job.
Any college degree takes effort, but face it, some degrees are tougher than others. The migration from tough degrees goes towards English, not away from it. That means people like Incubus can expect to have his salary pressured downward by the mob of people who can pass the tests but care little for the subject.
A good English teacher is hard to find. Not because they are scarce but because they are lost in the pool of “qualified” teachers.
I have a couple of things to say about this. First, she was talking to me at a time when I am rather susceptible to heckling. It happened right after my shift was over, when I was tired and my brain was fried. Don’t forget that the tutoring job isn’t the only thing I spend my days doing; on this particular day I had worked at my crossing guard corner, went straight to school, went straight back to the crossing guard corner after school, then went straight to the tutoring job. I was BURNT OUT at that point, and it was all my brain could do to have the hand-eye coordination to put food in my mouth and re-route enough power to the speech center of my brain in order to utter simple, yet coherent sentences. I DID in fact think of witty things to say, only I thought of them several hours later, (the “spirit of the stairs” as Neil Gaiman once put it). In addition, I was not totally certain they were no longer members at the center, and did not want to risk blowing up at a member and having them quit over it, or go out of their way to make my job miserable. Like the problematic co-worker I had some issues with, since this person is no longer going to be coming to the center, there’s no longer a reason to get all bent out of shape about this stuff anymore.
I have some family members that sometimes give me the same spiel, “What do you do with an English major? Teach? What’s that? You might not want to be a teacher? Then why did you major in English?” :rolleyes: I took the major because it was FUN, and as a result, the five years I have spent in college have been fantastic overall. No matter what kind of major I chose, there would always be uncertainty in the career I pursue. With that in mind, I might as well enjoy school by doing what I want, and finding a way to make it work as a career for me, rather than try to live up to everyone’s assumptions.
About the grammar: Hey, I never said I was an English expert. After all, I’m still a student!
I have a couple of things to say about this. First, she was talking to me at a time when I am rather susceptible to heckling. It happened right after my shift was over, when I was tired and my brain was fried. Don’t forget that the tutoring job isn’t the only thing I spend my days doing; on this particular day I had worked at my crossing guard corner, went straight to school, went straight back to the crossing guard corner after school, then went straight to the tutoring job. I was BURNT OUT at that point, and it was all my brain could do to have the hand-eye coordination to put food in my mouth and re-route enough power to the speech center of my brain in order to utter simple, yet coherent sentences. I DID in fact think of witty things to say, only I thought of them several hours later, (the “spirit of the stairs” as Neil Gaiman once put it). In addition, I was not totally certain they were no longer members at the center, and did not want to risk blowing up at a member and having them quit over it, or go out of their way to make my job miserable. Like the problematic co-worker I had some issues with, since this person is no longer going to be coming to the center, there’s no longer a reason to get all bent out of shape about this stuff anymore.
I have some family members that sometimes give me the same spiel, “What do you do with an English major? Teach? What’s that? You might not want to be a teacher? Then why did you major in English?” :rolleyes: I took the major because it was FUN, and as a result, the five years I have spent in college have been fantastic overall. No matter what kind of major I chose, there would always be uncertainty in the career I pursue. With that in mind, I might as well enjoy school by doing what I want, and finding a way to make it work as a career for me, rather than try to live up to everyone’s assumptions.
About the grammar: Hey, I never said I was an English expert. After all, I’m still a student!
It’s fine in a formal context as well. Educated speakers “relax” it because it doesn’t make sense and isn’t a rule that ever had anything to do with the English language. A few linguistic vandals decided that English should be like Latin and crowbarred some rules in to make it moreso. There’s no reason to pay any attention to it, no matter how formal a context one is speaking or writing in.
Incubus, I was an English major and I’ve never regretted it. I’ve worked in publishing and education.
No one at Vanderbilt would have assumed that English was easy in comparison to a business major! That’s because those business majors still had to pass English 101 where five errors in a paper automatically earned an F. Then it got hard.
Just consider the source of the insult – a tactless, sexist, clueless control freak. How much is her opinion worth to you?
May your choice bring you even half the joy that the same choice has brought to me through decades of exploring the mysteries of language and literature.
Actually, English majors are potentially darn good programmers, if they are the kind who learn all the puntuation, spelling and grammar rules, how to compose thoughts logically, the difference between main and subordinate clauses, and so on. A program, just like an essay, must be planned logically in order to be effective. Both must be properly punctuated, internally consistent, and be free of spelling errors. Subordinate clause, subroutine, same concept. Modules within programs, paragraphs within chapters. It goes on. If you can think logically, you can write fiction, non-fiction or C++.
"context of formal be its fine as wellas speakers ?relax! it b’caux no cents of it no rule of theirself about lang guage of englash sum educated in like be latin make englash craft rules to make up lang guage moreso hardo ifso facto makenonevermind, goes anything ")
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That is very true and not as well known as it should be. If your composition skills suck your code is going to be very buggy, and hard for someone else to understand if you quit the project.
The lady is a jerk. Lucky she doesn’t post here, we’d cut her to ribbons.
I got my undergraduate degree in English because it was the easiest thing for me to do at the time, my education having been interrupted by wanderlust and the war, and I had more credits available in that and still didn’t know what to do with my life.
I went on to get my graduate degrees in Cultural Anthropology – cause I LOVED it – and found out how hard it was to actually make a living in anthro. I was the Assistant Curator of Ethnology at the Bernice P. Bishop Museum in 1982 - 1984, making $5.25 per hour. I started teaching on the side, at community colleges, and that was more lucrative, but still not a living.
Then I discovered the huge demand for technical writers, particularly in cutting-edge industries (VeriFone) and for the U.S. Government! Not a six-figure salary, but about half that, certainly enough to live comfortably in Hawai`i!!!.
No complaints. I studied things I love, did work I enjoyed, live in Paradise and I’m now independently wealthy (though not rich). I retired at 55, have a house on an acre with a stream on O`ahu (in the country, where it’s quiet), all thanks to having that undergraduate degree in English.
You go, and leave those who laugh behind in the dust. oops, that should be
I’ll never forget this one professor I had that taught business writing, a course required for many business and technical science majors. He had those of us who were actually English majors raise our hands: all two of us. The rest of the students laughed. He then related the story of how he earned his masters in English, and went on to become a very successful manager of a mattress store for 30 years. Again, the students laughed. He then roared at all the laughing students, saying that had his degree not taught him to write and communicate effectively, he would’ve ended up a bum on the street instead of a college professor. They shut up quick. And then he spent the rest of the class period informing them of the multitudes of jobs to be had with an undergrad in English.
Then again, I’ve actually taken classes with a few English grads who now have absolutely no idea what they wish to do for a living. Mind you, this is after graduating - you’d think they might have taken the past four years to give it a little thought. Oh well, all types, I guess.
English majors ROCK! 'Cause we’re the only ones that know or care that only three words in present day English have retained the Old English pluralization ending -en!
But like I said…we’re the only ones that are supposed to care…
Ok, ok, I guess you do care since you asked. They are children, brethren and oxen. All other words in PDE are pluralized with the ending -s.
Now, was this knowledge any kind of revelation for you? Did the skies open with a chorus from heaven as an ethereal epiphany tumbled down? Not likely - this kind of knowledge has practically no real-world application whatsoever, and that’s what’s so fascinataing about it for me and I’m sure for other students of English in this thread.
I’m saying that particular rule isn’t a valid rule. There are rules that arise from the use of the language, or from observations about the use of the language. When English grammar was codified, it was not a question of some Tolkien-esque linguist thinking up fun structures for a language and then declaring them to be law. Codified English grammar is a result of observation of how the educated people of the time actually spoke and wrote the language.
With a few exceptions. The rule about prepositions was the result of someone publishing a book of “rules” that included several made-up ones intended to force English to be more like Latin. The whole “Latin is superior” thing was fashionable at the time, and so it got taught in schools. It had nothing to do with how English was spoken.
It’s the folks who decided that English should obey Latin grammar no matter how different those languages are who had no regard whatever for the rules of English. Tell me, if I decide that, say, English should be more like the Celtic languages and declare that the use of the words “yes” or “no” are incorrect, would that be a valid rule? No? Okay, let’s say I find some Celtophiles at the local school district and manage to get it taught in class. Kids who write or answer yes or no are marked wrong. Is it a valid rule now? That’s exactly how the preposition bullcrap came into existence.
Who gets to make up rules and shoehorn them into the language? And if it’s such a good rule, why is it so damn awkward to follow? I’ll tell you why–it’s not English.
I hold in the same contempt, btw, the proscriptions against singular their, and split infinitives, for precisely the same reasons. And, may I add, many of the finest writers in the language have ignored them as well.
