Robert Zaretsky: Looking at an Old Syllabus With New Eyes

Robert Zaretsky is a professor of history in the Honors College at the University of Houston.

The distant but growing sigh rising across the nation is the sound of humanities professors writing—or tweaking—their syllabi for fall classes. Like Labor Day, the writing of the syllabus has become an empty ritual of late summer—a thoughtless activity that has overtaken (or shunted aside) the practice it is meant to sustain.

Strictly speaking, a syllabus is a course outline that tells the student what books to read and when to read them, what papers to write and when to hand them in, and what subjects will be discussed and when students need to be ready to discuss them. In a word, it is a checklist. It is also the dark side of teaching—or, more accurately, of the telling of the past.

For most humanities disciplines, the syllabus is harmless, and often even helpful. It is both a checklist and a contract offered by the professor. It resembles the bullet-point pamphlet the plumber walks you through, patiently explaining all the things he will do in return for sticking you with a bill rivaling your child's college tuition. With the syllabus, a professor informs the student: Here is what I will do, here is what I expect you to do. Just as a homeowner may decide to turn the malfunctioning outdoor Jacuzzi into a compost bin, the student will decide if she truly needs a course on, say, medieval scholasticism....