Finding Comfort

I just spent a couple of days in Cambridge, MA sitting in on presentations to The National Math Panel, a panel established by our government to improve math education in this country. Needless to say, I found it rather depressing, and I needed some comfort. Where did I go? To the Coop, which used to be a university bookstore (shared by the different institutions in the area), and is now a "Saks Fifth Avenue" Wannabe, selling all kinds of overpriced junk, and oh yes, tucked away, over there, in a far corner on a distant floor, is the textbook section.

Back when we climbed aboard pterosaurs to fly us from our dorms to the classroom buildings (and called them "pterodactyls"), I used to spend hours at our university bookstore, browsing not just the "fun" shelves that contained popular books of the day, but all the course shelves as well. My thoughts went something like this, "when I’m no longer in school and have more time, it will be a good idea for me to do all my book shopping at college bookstores, see what they’re reading in classes I’d like to take and buy the books, so I can continue my education." Nice, in theory, but, like many nice theories, difficult for a normal human being to put into practice, especially this human being who never ended up living within ten miles or so of a college bookstore. And I didn't know in those days that such distracting things as Amazon and Powells.com would arrive on the scene. Thus, I’ve never done it. Still, whenever I’m anywhere within striking distance of a college bookstore, I will usually spend some time in it.

The labels in my college bookstore indicated exactly what each course was (e.g. "ENWR 101: Introduction to Writing"). I haven’t visited that bookstore in a number of years, so I don’t know if they still label their shelves so effectively, but I discovered that the M.I.T. Coop was not quite so meticulous. I found, as I browsed the shelves, that the labels just read "ENG 3127." I was left to my own devices to figure out what that course was. I could at least decipher the "ENG" that stood for "English," and not "Engineering," which it easily could have (that is, unless for some reason, they’re now reading Norton Anthologies in engineering courses). The ENG offerings were in short supply, and most of them seemed to be pretty standard, with the exception of one interesting-looking course that must have been a study of the graphic novel. If my tastes ran more towards technical problem solving rather than everyday problem solving, I would have found myself in paradise, but since they don't, I lost interest fairly quickly among these shelves. I left and took the "T" a couple of stops to the Coop at Harvard Square.

Here I found shelves and shelves of PSY and ENG offerings (much more my thing) and a real challenge to my problem-solving skills. Once again, only course numbers (why are they called "course numbers" when they typically include letters? They should be called "course codes," which would be much more appropriate for this post) were provided. The offerings in the psychology department weren’t so mysterious. It was quite easy to discern which one was developmental psychology, which was cognitive psychology, which was psychobiology, etc. The English department, however, provided a little more intrigue.

Again, I had no problem with some that were obviously Shakespeare courses or poetry courses, and ENG 778 must be a 20th-century literature course similar to the one I took, as I recognized many of the titles: The Crying of Lot 49, The Great Gatsby, Lolita, Invisible Man, The House of Mirth. Other books, although we didn’t read them, still fit the category: Farewell to Arms, Don Delillo’s White Noise, etc. Although I didn’t take such a course, ENG 90YX was pretty easy to label as LGBT literature (or whatever it might be called) or maybe a gender identity in literature course (given that clever "YX" in its "code"), with such titles as Funeral Rights, Orlando, and Kiss of the Spider Woman.

But then I came across these courses that were a little more challenging. ENG 180 initially seemed to be some kind of cool crime and mystery course with the likes of In Cold Blood, The Complete Sherlock Holmes, and The Library of America’s Crime Novels, but then it became a little more complicated when I noticed Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, The Great Gatsby, and If He Hollers Let Him Go, not exactly titles that this librarian would have filed under "mystery." Could it be a course on crime and evil minds or something? And then I found some real stumpers. Take a look at some of the titles for ENG 97: Gulliver’s Travels, The Rule of Four, The Bluest Eye, Measure for Measure, Night, and Life of Pi. Well, I’d love to take the course, but I’ll be damned if I can find the connection among all those titles (maybe it was something on how can you possibly read The Rule of Four after having just read Gulliver’s Travels and not be repulsed by the obvious rapid decline of what the general public considers "great literature?"). I had the same reaction to ENG 166X with such titles as: Jane Eyre; Ian McEwan’s Saturday; Winesburg, OH; Heart of Darkness, Wild Sargasso Sea, and Kim.

I’m sure some completely unimaginative person would point out to me that I could easily look up the Harvard course offerings online and find out what all these classes actually are, but that wouldn’t be half as much fun. And that’s the problem with unimaginative people, isn’t it? They've lost the ability to have fun (if they ever had it). I’m glad to see that one of this country’s high-ranking colleges obviously has some quite imaginative professors, stringing together unlikely titles in what must be some very fun courses. This means they can’t all be stuffy, petty, boring bureaucrats, more concerned about test results and college rankings than anything else.

How’s that for comfort after a dismal meeting that had left me wondering if there was any hope for 21st-century students?