Readers of Academic Questions are savvy enough to be skeptical of the higher-order skills that professors and administrators emphasize when they declare the goals of their practice: critical thinking, problem solving, collaborative learning, etc. We have heard for decades these “cross-disciplinary skills” intoned by the higher-ed establishment as if they marked an unquestionable step beyond the old ways of instilling domain knowledge. What is memorizing the outcome of every major Civil War battle compared to acquiring the infinitely applicable skill of “thinking historically”? Why teach the specifics of Hamlet and Macbeth and Learwhen you can train students to submit any literary content they encounter to critical theory? And why choose one content over any other? An English major can hone his interpretative knack on pop culture as easily as he can on the classics. The object doesn’t matter, only
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