Relevant? It's Relative. And No, That Probably Won't Be On the Final

What is this "real world" I keep hearing about?

Whatever it is, I am sick of it.

I mean, I'm cool with the notion of reality. I live there, mostly. But if I never hear about the "real world" or "relevance" or "transferrable skills" as the criteria for university curricula again, it'll be too damned soon.

My objection to "relevance" as a curricular benchmark has nothing to do with Ivory Towerism or some snobby hostility to practical education. Quite the opposite, in fact. But the way the rhetoric of "transferrable skills" gets used is so limiting as to be an utterly cynical cave-in to anti-intellectualism or, more usually, solipsism. Lurking in the concept of "relevance" is the insidious idea that education isn't meant to shape a student, just help him get a better job. Maybe if we would embrace the somewhat old-fashioned idea that education is about recreating selves, not ass-kissing the selves we already have, we could see that knowledge might have relevance beyond its capacity to cash out in the next five minutes.

I teach literature. What are the "transferrable skills" imparted by studying literature? Well, they include critical thinking, enhanced communication ability, patient analysis, a greater awareness of the world around us, which is full of language and text.

All these skills are "relevant" or "transferrable." But the paradox is that these skill don't get imparted by teaching to the "real world" application. They are imparted by challenging students to work through a text, attending to its formal features and its embeddedness in its historical moment. This is what gives a literary education its relevance. Not some watered-down hackneyed "look here, kiddies, Shakespeare is just like us. Now write an essay on How Shakespeare is Relevant to My Life."

I can't think of anything more valuable in the "real world" than to disabuse young adults of their misconception that if something doesn't directly and IMMEDIATELY correlate to their own precious lives that it's worthless.

The Merchant of Venice might not help you get a better score on Guitar Hero II, but reading it might just make you a better and more able thinker.

It's the same for all "pure" knowledge classes. Do you need calculus everyday? Maybe not. Does learning calculus help your mind learn to think? You bet. Education (whether in an institution or on your own) makes your world bigger. That seems pretty damned relevant.