Maine Humanities Council

Celebrated Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer signs Vecka nr.II, a reflection of his poem "Galleriet," an artist book by multi-award Iraqi-Swedish Modhir Ahmed, By Tokistar (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons

Each year, I eagerly await the Nobel Laureate in Literature. Being an aficionado of things Swedish, including the language, I always listen to the first announcement made by Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, and watch the reaction of the largely-Swedish crowd of reporters. Like most other literary types, I have my own list of who should win and who should have won, and express pleasure or bemusement or curiosity based on that. This year, however, when Englund made his announcement of Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer as the 2011 Nobel Laureate in Literature, my cheer rivaled those of the reporters.

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On August 14, the New York Times published an opinion piece by Neal Gabler about how big ideas area disappearing from our society due to, among other things, the rise of social media.  Gabler makes many interesting points, but early on writes, “If our ideas seem smaller nowadays, it’s not because we are dumber than our forebears but because we just don’t care as much about ideas as they did.” This becomes a refrain to express concerns about the 140-character world of Twitter and the seemingly-unlimited unfiltered information available online.

Social media does indeed open up the world to conversations of tacos had for dinner, but it and the Internet also open up the world to so much more. No longer are only the Western Gods of Thought  sources of ideas, bestowed on high to grateful mortals. Ideas belong to everyone. The Internet is a democracy in the truest sense.

I feel this strongly. As a writer of historical fiction, I rely on the Internet and its amazing sources—from scholars to non-academic people who write about their memories—for excellent information. As a humanities person, I learn from my social media contacts. On Twitter, I follow fascinating individuals, from historians to PhD students to a London cab driver. They often share profound thoughts—through those 140-character bundles, or linked blog posts—that I not only retweet but discuss over the dinner table and muse about far into the night. A post by an independent scholar, for example, posed a fascinating historical perspective on the police’s reaction to the London riots.

And claiming that no profundity exists in 140 characters or less ignores the profundity that is present in so many other cultures, including, for instance, the entire tradition of Japanese haiku. I argue that Bashō‘s and Shiki‘s works can tell modern readers much about the human condition and a powerful way—and non-Western—way of thinking.

Maine Humanities Council programs celebrate the fact that everyone, from a young child to a low-literacy adult to a professor at a private college, has ideas worth hearing. To us, inherent in our mission, lies this powerful truth: that ideas are common currency for everyone.

—Diane Magras

by Erik Jorgensen, Executive Director

Update:

Thanks to Ron Bancroft for an excellent column (Tuesday May 10) about low civic awareness among American students.

I was saddened to read yesterday what has become a perennial story – the increasing lack of awareness of civic issues among American students. Saddened, yes, but surprised only by the sense of crisis in the report. For after what seems like decades of breathless accounts of high school students who don’t know what century World War Two happened in, or who wrote the Gettysburg Address, is it really a surprise to hear that eighth graders don’t know much about foreign policy, the Bill of Rights, or other civics topics?

What other outcome could be expected after a decade or more of educational priorities sidelining social studies and history as being nice but non-essential? This sort of knowledge is not gained by osmosis, and if our society does in fact think it’s important to understand the civic underpinnings of this country, there appears to be a reasonably simple solution: history and civics need to be treated as a core subject, rather than an add-on.

Almost every day, we at the Council interact with imaginative and thoughtful social studies teachers from around the state, experts who not only teach civics, but communicate their passion to their students. I don’t think the problem stems from a lack of good teachers as much as from curricular and assessment priorities that always seem to relegate history to elective status.

You show me a kid who’s been instructed by one of these teachers, and I’ll show you a citizen.

During a recent staff meeting, MHC staff discussed how the Oxford Junior Dictionary is removing words pertaining to religion, monarchy, and so-called British history to replace them with more modern language (a limited number of pages being the impetus). A small outcry ensued as everyone read through the list and came upon words that had a special meaning. “Coronation,” “empire,” and “decade” represent some of the monarchist words, while “sin,” “saint,” and “devil” are among the religious ones. But it was words like “beaver,” “cheetah,” “porcupine,” and “newt” that were more upsetting, and especially “corgi” (Toby, the office dog, is such a one). “Acorn,” “blackberry,” “cowslip,” and “sycamore” were others that garnered groans of dismay. We supposed this list to be representative of British history. The replacements included “blog,” “attachment,” “cut and paste,” vandalism,” “dyslexic,” and “colloquial.” “Negotiate,” too, is an interesting and necessary addition.

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