This paper proposes that undergraduate curricula in applied and professional majors (e. g. education, nursing, business, engineering, and health management) may abandon general education far too soon, particularly classical literature. Doing so deprives students of the timeless and universally applicable insights that great literature provides. It is suggested that health science professors design curricula with ample room for academic electives and also consider ways that classical literature can complement professional courses. This article describes how Mary Shelley, by way of her classic Frankenstein, can help health science students explore the moral and ethical consequences of creating life. Examples of student writing are included.
Students hear it all the way from grade school: You can’t get a good job without a college degree. It comes from teachers, guidance counselors, and parents. Self-sacrificing moms and dads – sometimes after refinancing the family home -- send junior on his way with this admonition, “If you’re going to study for four years, at least get knowledge you can use.”
Such advice has encouraged a stupefying array of job-based majors. A recent surf of the web uncovered the following bachelor’s degree programs: “Hospitality Management” at Florida International University, “Tourism Studies” at Brock University, “Golf Course Management” at SUNY Delhi, “Sports Marketing” at University of Indianapolis, and “Welding Technology” at Idaho State University.
We all want knowledge we can use, and traditional academic fare can seem so irrelevant. Do you need quadratic equations to plan happy-hour for a Shriner’s convention? Must you locate the “fertile crescent” to plan a bus tour through the California wine district? Does Bernoulli’s Principle have anything to do with watering the greens? How’s the Crimean War going to help you arrange the “balls and tees” display at the country club’s pro shop, and what could molecular orbitals possibly have to do with spot-welding?
Well, maybe traditional academic fare has wider application than some think, and maybe professional curricula should retain more of that traditional fare. Some medical schools are doing just that, incorporating the humanities into the education of future doctors. Penn State’s College of Medicine, for example, has its own humanities faculty and required course work. “The fourth year consists of a minimum of four elective rotations and four required advanced experiences, including acting internships in a medical discipline, a surgical discipline, a primary care area, and a wide range of humanities selectives .” (http://www.hmc.psu.edu/md/curriculum/index.html?from=current)
Anne Hawkins, a humanities professor at Penn State Medical College, gets her student doctors-to-be to confront human mortality by way of Homer’s Iliad. She writes that the Iliad is “about suffering, death, and grief; about the fragility of all that is human.” To Hawkins, the persistent relevance of this 3000 year old poem “demonstrates its remarkable success in expressing and interpreting those elements in human experience that transcend enormous gaps in time, culture, and language…the Iliad speaks to issues of death and dying that are problematic in modern medicine…the Iliad can be seen as a poem that is primarily about death--and the fact of mortality.” (Hawkins, 181).
I agree with Professor Hawkins. Classical literature can provide highly relevant commentary on enduring human concerns. T his article describes how Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was used to address yet another enduring human concern: the creation of life and its moral and ethical consequences.
My teaching assignments have recently been expanded to include practical courses like Leadership and Management in the Health Professions and Health Care in the USA. It is easy enough to fulfill such assignments, especially since modern textbooks come with chapter outlines, chapter themes, discussion topics, downloadable power point presentations, and of course test banks with answer keys. Thus, teaching new courses is easy enough, but there are frustrations.
Professional or applied courses and their textbooks are often narrowly-targeted, one-dimensional, and boring. I wanted better reading at least as a complement to the required textbook, and I turned to the literary classics.
In a leadership/management course required of our nursing and health science students, I tried a British classic, George Orwell’s Animal Farm. It is, after all, about farm animals trying to manage their affairs according to a shared vision, so what could be more appropriate? Students read the novel in short portions over the course of the semester and looked for connections with the other course material. It is remarkable how closely the novel related to our course material and paralleled the textbook. Students liked it, and so did I (Metcalf, 2005).
I tried this approach in another course, a three-credit survey of the American health care system required of our health science majors. This time I chose an American classic, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey (Metcalf, 2006). It’s worth reading if only to learn who Nurse Ratched really is. More importantly, Cuckoo’s Nest describes two different, yet coincident realities: that of the patients (inmates) and that of the providers (doctors, nurses, care managers, etc.).
My students -- as aspiring health care professionals -- see health care delivery from the providers’ reality, but they are generally young and healthy. They have not yet experienced much of the patients’ reality. Cuckoo’s Nest helped them to understand the patients’ perspective, and I came to appreciate the obvious: “ Great literature has widespread relevance and application even in professional and applied fields like engineering, accounting, and health care management” (Metcalf, 2006).
Undergraduatehealth science majors at George Mason University are required to take HSCI 378. It provides an overview of the American health care delivery system. I like also to identify general themes about the American system. One such theme is that we are very close to creating life…with all of the concomitant moral and ethical consequences.
Mary Shelley wrote about creating a living creature some 200 years ago when science was quite primitive. Contemporary science has a sophistication that makes Victor Frankenstein’s rude methodology an absurdity. We artificially inseminate humans and clone sheep, and yet the moral and ethical consequences of creating life are the same today as they were two hundred years ago. I wanted my students to look to Mary Shelley to gain insight into these consequences, so this time I assigned Frankenstein as complementary reading in my sections of HSCI 378, Healthcare Delivery in the United States.
My intention was that Frankenstein should be considered over the entire semester so that we might consider the moral and ethical consequences of creating life as a course theme. I wanted students to perceive Frankenstein not as mere words on a page, but rather the mind of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, wife of the poet Percy Shelley and outstanding intellect in her own right. We were to have intellectual intercourse with her.
We read, kept personal notes, and discussed the novel nearly every week, and I read summaries aloud from Sparknotes, a web-based site that provides chapter summaries, chapter analyses, and more (<http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/frankenstein/>). It divides the novel into11 segments which fits a 14-week semester quite nicely. I assigned reading accordingly. Students were asked to write reactions to the reading for each of the 11 segments and show them to me in class -- not quite journaling, but close.
Near the end of the semester, they wrote reaction paragraphs. My instructions were:
Complete your reading of "Frankenstein" and develop a one-paragraph essay examining how Mary Shelly provides insight into the moral and ethical consequences of creating a living creature.
Focus your essay very, very narrowly. Since your essay is to be but one paragraph long, you might want to address only one idea, or one concept, or one insight.
I recommend one "pre-writing" session in which your just write down as many ideas as come to your mind. One of these ideas is likely to be more attractive than others. You might take that idea and develop it into a one-paragraph essay.
When you are satisfied with your essay, share it with someone whom you respect and allow them to provide you feedback. Think about that feedback and revise it one more time.
Bring a hard-copy of your essay to class on May 4. See you then.
Student writings were varied. Many felt that the creation of life is not a domain in which humans should participate. Natalie Murray and Michelle Robinson are representative of that view.
“Only the perfect Creator can roll a mass of cells in his palms and sculpt a complex unit of life, containing curling grins, knobby knees, eyes that open and shut, eardrums and organs, blood and sweat – but not only giving it life but also packing exquisite qualities and complex characteristics into it. --Natalie Murray
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“In examining Mary Shelley’s writing, we can see the similarity in her ideas presented and the relation to the technological advances in healthcare today pertaining to creation of life. Much like Victor Frankenstein, our population today has become fascinated with the technology that has permitted us to do just what Victor did in having the power to create a life. In doing so, such as with in vitro fertilization, we are tampering with some type of nature that was not meant to be created by us, as humans.” -- Michelle Robinson
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Sherry Hepler feels that the monster began life as an adult who simply lacked the developmental maturation that a childhood would have provided.
“The monster was created as an adult-form of a human being however had a child’s mind. He wanted to be loved, nurtured, protected, and taught how to understand and live in the human world. However, since he was not a creation of beauty, he was labeled as a monster but within his soul he wan an innocent child-like being with much curiosity and many questions.” Hepler continues, “I feel for children who are rejected because they may be different from other children (deformed, handicapped, emotionally-challenged, etc). These children are like the monster in many ways; they may feel isolated from the world; not accepted by society; and don’t understand the meaning of love. Just like Victor was the teacher to the monster, as parents, we are the teacher to our children. Ultimately, we are the caretaker to their future.” – Sherry Hepler
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Victor certainly fails at parenting. He creates a living creature and immediately abandons it. Dr. Frankenstein is the ultimate dead-beat dad. Irena Reus calls him irresponsible.
Victor was absolutely irresponsible and selfish, driven by obsession to succeed and taking no considerations or precautions on the effects of his surroundings…Victor had forfeited his obligations towards his “creation” and as a result paid for everything he has done at the expense of absolutely innocent people...” -- Irina Rues
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Nancy Potter reflects on what humanity is and contemplates the near future in medical science.
“Shelley’s store revolved around the question of whether or not the monster was human. The monster expressed in many ways his belief that he was human and he felt he deserved the same basic human rights as hi creator. I feel that if our practice of science progresses to the point of cloning humans, we will have to fact the same question and dilemma that Victor and his monster faced. Each clone will no doubt feel the desire to be recognized as human or they may one day force themselves into a position of power over their creators.” -- Nancy Potter
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So, Mary Shelley was 200 years behind us technologically, but 200 years ahead of us philosophically. Her monster was a crude collage of human scraps that were magically brought to life, ludicrously far-fetched to the 21 st century mind. Still, she engaged the same moral and ethical dilemmas that we must now contemplate within a scientific capability that far exceeds hers. What she contemplated in fantasy, we may have to contemplate in reality.
Can Shelley’s Frankenstein provide us an important head start in addressing that dilemma? I’d like to think my students would answer resoundingly, “Yes…and she provides a great read in the process.”
Like Professor Hawkins of the Penn State Medical School, I have used classical literature to elucidate issues of concern in professional curricula. Moreover, I have found this literature to be imminently relevant to students of today’s health professions.
I am not a humanities professor and thus I argue not to protect my professional “turf.” My concern is that too much general education is crowded out of the undergraduate study of students in professional majors. I urge humanities professors to insist that their disciplines comprise an appropriate portion of all students’ education. I urge my colleagues in the health sciences to design undergraduate curricula with ample space for academic electives and also look for ways in which to enhance professional courses with classical literature.
What is too often dismissed as irrelevant is eminently relevant, particularly to students of today’s health professions.
Hawkins, Ann Hunsaker (1998). Confronting Mortality: The Iliad’s Androktasiai. Literature and Medicine 17(2):181-196
Shelley, Mary Wallstonecraft (1988 Reprint). Originally published in 1818. Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus. Washington, DC: Orchises.
Kesey, Ken (1962). One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. An authorized reprint of a hardcover edition published by the Viking Press, Inc. New York: The New American Library.
Metcalf, James (2006). Reading “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” in an Undergraduate U. S. Healthcare Course. Journal of Health Administration Education. 23(3):
Metcalf, James A. (2005). George Orwell’s “Animal Farm:” A Case Study in Leadership/Management for Undergraduate Nursing Students. Nurse Education in Practice. 5:252-254.
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/frankenstein/
http://www.hmc.psu.edu/md/curriculum/index.html?from=current (accessed 7/21/06)
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