CUNY Pathways: An Assault on Orality and Performance-based Learning

I teach in the Humanities Department of NYCCT, CUNY.  CUNY is currently going through a university-wide restructuring of the curriculum called Pathways.  A longer description of Pathways (which has been publicly condemned by the Modern Language Association) is available here:  http://www.psc-cuny.org/our-campaigns/faculty-staff-and-students-mobilize-pathways-town-hall.  In short, all courses on the books on each and every campus--from Brooklyn to the Bronx-- has to go through a rigorous review and application process to see if it fits into the new core curriculum.  If a course is not accepted in the university-wide core curriculum, the course cannot be be included as a "Pathways Certified Course" on a student's transcript.  What this means is that if a transferring student has taken Chinese Language I at CAMPUS A, but that course was not accepted into Pathways, the credits will not be counted towards a language requirement at CAMPUS B.  So the student will have to take language from scratch again.  By the way, the process for approval happens at the college level; so the success of a course depends entirely on the review process at the local level -- there is no coordination between campuses about requirements for similar courses.

The consequences of not getting a course into Pathways have been enormous.  Students do not consider taking non-Pathways courses because they recognize the limitations on the course -- non-transferrable and not available for financial aid.  Registration numbers have fallen in non-Pathways elective courses, sections have disappeared, and the need for instructors of these courses has gone with them.

So, what kinds of courses are having trouble making Pathways? Performing arts courses are rejected outright.  Music Theory could make Pathways, but Music Performance will not (Theatre History: yes; Acting: no, etc. -- though there is no guarantee that history or theory would make the cut either).  Six definitional categories within Pathways have been established ("Individual and Society, "U.S. Experience" etc.), and course applications for Pathways must justify their adequacy for one of the six categories.  

I teach in the Humanities Department at NYCCT. Based on my own experience there, I can attest to the fact that courses in Communication, Theatre, and Music have been routinely rejected from the Pathways core curriculum. What I find disturbing about this fact is that the pedagogical engine of these courses runs on the energy of oral transmission and construction of knowledge. Learning outcomes in speech, communication, and performance courses are built around living, social activities that cannot always be evidenced in writing. By its own design, Pathways has marginalized courses that champion vocal and somatic expression. To someone who has read his share of Bhabha and Spivak, this is an alarming regression. Like the histories and customs non-Western cultures that were extinguished through the colonial suppression of oral and performance practices, spoken-word curricula are under attack at one of the most culturally diverse universities in the United States.

In particular, I can speak to how our Voice and Diction course has been damaged. The strictness of Pathways and a severe constriction of liberal arts electives that students can take has caused a dramatic drop in enrollment. Sections have been cancelled and adjunct faculty have lost teaching opportunities. Changes in TAP funding, which will no longer pays for an elective unless it's required or recommended, has discouraged enrollment as well. 

Unfortunately, Voice and Diction is a course that so many of our students (and some faculty) desperately need. Research has shown that articulate, comprehensible, and expressive speech is crucial in order to establish oneself as an effective and functional participant in academic and social communities. It is the single most important quality a majority of employers seek in potential employees.  At our technical college where career development is a basic objective, courses like Voice and Diction should be permanent, core fixtures. On practical, professional, and intellectual levels, without Voice and Diction a very large portion of our student body will not be able to function or advance in their chosen disciplines. 

The King in the Car Park

This Channel5 documentary (England) -- and the "performance" of Philippa Langley (lead Richardian in the restoration of King Richard III's historical and material images) in particular, is an incredible study in theatrical reanimation.  Restored behavior -- as defined by R. Schechner -- but with particular effort to fight theatre with theatre.  Shakespeare's play about the last Plantagenet King is, of course, not the only piece of Tutor propaganda supporting the playwright's contemporary rulers -- but it is the most famous and the most influential.  No other vehicle been more effective in disseminating a narrative of cruelty and deformity than Shakespeare's history play.  On the other hand, the discovery of Richard's bones in a parking lot is a drama for 21st-century audiences that matches the play's pathos, but in order to flatter rather than disfigure.  (I want to make it clear that as far as I'm concerned, I've never read Shakespeare's play as a wholly unsympathetic attack on the king--I think the Richardian's are a bit too literal minded.  For one, the character's cunning is not an entirely unlikable feature.)

When I say Ms. Langley is 'performing,' I mean so in a number of senses, not the least of which is her performance of research, discovery, and restoration.  There is also more than a small amount of theatricality to her persona, as one can see clearly in the documentary on the recovery of Richard's bones from the parking lot (see below).  Most interestingly, the protagonist of the drama is not a living human being, it is an object: the bones of the fifteenth-century English king.  Reminiscent of Hamlet at Yorick's grave, the work of the supporting players in the documentary is to bring Richard's bones back to life.

I am not particularly interested in confirming the validity of the King Richard III Society's claims, or duplicating their affections for the king; nor do I condemn Ms. Langley for her (unacknowledged) theatrical investigation of an historical subject.  What I am interested in is how the recovery of Richard intersects at the history of his body.  Further, I find it astonishing (but not surprising) that the work of reconstruction done in the documentary and at the University of Leicester is wrapped in multiple, supple layers of drama: a plot devised as a detective story, 3-D mask-making, deep emotionality (occasionally cut with a dose of irony), revelation, peripeteia, and finally resolution in the public display of Richard's bust.  Near the end of the documentary, Ms. Langley states (with Richard's clay head peering at us over her shoulder): "...after everything that's happened, after everything we've been through, to see the real Richard III [she points to the painted, clay resemblance of Richard III]...um...I'm just full of joy."