Preparing the next generation

I've been thinking a lot lately about the "next gen" English major. Maybe it's because I'm preparing to teach a writing tutor practicum in the fall, so I'm thinking about preparing English teachers for today's classroom. Or maybe it's because last week my colleagues and I sat down to review our Rhetoric and Writing major curriculum, so I'm thinking about the "value" of an English degree. Or maybe it's because I'm on a committee charged with recruiting new English majors, so I find myself wondering after every meeting what attracts students to English.

English majors have a lot more possibilities than just teaching writing nowadays. Case in point: My husband, who has a BA and an MA in English but is actually an attorney (one who works in healthcare administration, not as a trial lawyer, in fact). When I started out as an English major, I had in mind becoming the next great American author, though admittedly I was convinced I might need to teach to support myself before my first novel hit it big. I look at today's English majors and I think to myself, in our visually-saturated culture, what do you want from your English major?

Our committee polled the English faculty for some slogans we could put on the lanyards, jump-drives, coffee mugs and posters we're going to distribute as "swag" at all recruitment and orientation events. Here's a sample of what we came up with:

English majors: We help you get the words out
Write or Wrong - Workshop It
Write Your Heart Out
English Majors Have Character
English - Because Numbers Don't Count
English Majors luv txt
There's no tense like the present
English - because we already know American
Just in case you run into subtitle
English - Go Words!
English - You just wouldn't understand

It's this last slogan that makes me simultaneously laugh and cringe. I laugh, because I know it to be true: Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I teach the hell out of short stories, essays, and rhetorical theory that many of my students would never bother thinking about on their own. I long ago accepted that I am the weird one in the room, not because I love learning, thinking, writing and reading - many of my students do - but because I see the intersections between those activities in a way many of my students, bright and wonderful as they are, simply don't.

Yet I cringe, because it strikes me that as institutional entities English Departments may be watering down what it is that we do, what we offer. Our Rhetoric and Writing emphasis has opted for the language "marketplace-oriented writing" to describe what we teach. I don't disagree with this assessment; we teach technical writing, grant writing, web authoring, all useful skills in the marketplace.

But do students major in English because they're worried about the marketability of their degree? Do they become English teachers to pass on a marketable skill? Or is it more likely that English majors become English majors because they understand the preciousness of this statement: "English Majors: Without us, you're stuck with reality TV"?

I understand the need to evaluate how our degree programs prepare students for life after college, not only for financial success (which is certainly not unimportant in our floundering economy) but also for professional success (offering them a skill, a craft, they can really use). But I'm wary of creating a new generation of English teachers, authors, critics, or hell, even lawyers and businesspeople who feel like others "understand" what it means to be an English major. I want us to hold onto our weirdness, our bookishness, our obsession with the life of the mind ("Real Life Sucks - Live in Ours"), even if it means we don't go mainstream, can't easily convince worried parents that their child really will make a living from reading and writing.

I want a next generation of English teachers who live by this slogan: Because the world is in the hands of its author, major in English. That may mean we have less people clamoring to be English majors than pre-med, pre-law, computer science or business majors, but I think it's time we accepted that it's okay to be small. Hey, it might even mean we're elite.