Elizabeth Steuerwald
Mr. Jennings
Honors English III
10/23/12
In Defense of the Humanities
It’s no secret that in today’s society math and science are being heavily emphasized. Sometimes, it may seem, to the detriment of other, equally important subjects, namely the humanities. Students are encouraged to take more challenging math and science classes to better ready them for a job market in which jobs relating to these subjects are in high demand. Programs like PLTW and STEM exist to further this purpose. One priority of the United States is to produce more scientists to fill a gap left by ageing and retiring scientists who first started working in the 50s. Another priority, perhaps one shared by the Western world in general, is to compete with nations like India and China who are turning out a large number of scientists, engineers, doctors, etc. at an alarming speed. With all this emphasis on math and science, it seems like the humanities have been forgotten.
The humanities, as defined by a Duluth college of liberal arts, compasses the following subjects: the arts, English, foreign languages, history, and philosophy. I don’t think the humanities have ever held a position of high esteem, even before this emphasis on “hard” subjects. The humanities were often ridiculed and their majors ridiculed as well, perhaps because they were not seen as a “real” major, like law or engineering. People who majored in it may have come across as hoity-toity or like a “hipster”, to use a common phrase nowadays. Maybe it was because it’s not clear what you would do with something like a philosophy doctorate. You can’t exactly make good money these days as a philosopher, although one would have to wonder if being a philosopher ever brought home the bacon, which is probably why that standup philosopher in History of the World Part 1 is collecting unemployment insurance.
Nowadays with the recent economic turmoil that’s pretty much the only thing on everybody’s mind: money, especially high school students. They want to know much their prospective career path will pay and more often than not they choose fields with a purportedly high figure. Careers relating to math and science, like doctors and scientists, do have a reputation for earning a lot of money. The humanities, not so much. So what do the humanities have to offer in our modern society?
David J. Ferrero, a former journalist and high school teacher, offers his opinion on why the humanities are essential. Schooling has, historically, had three roles: personally, economically, and civically. But in today’s society the personal and civic levels have been “subsumed” by the economic one, and with it the entire purpose of the humanities, which was supposed to create good, well-informed citizens “through a broad, humanistic liberal arts education”. Now it is harder to find where some subjects, particularly history, fit into this new version of schooling, almost to the point of shoehorning it in. Others still retain their importance somewhat, but Ferrero gives the example of how knowledgeable a businessman must be of China’s history to conduct his work there. It most likely isn’t essential, but he would definitely need to have at least a passing idea of its culture and be proficient in Mandarin. It’s just common sense, in my opinion, to know a little about the place where your company is sending you. It wouldn’t be a good idea to accidentally insult possible business associates.
Ferrero gives his take on how we can still learn from the humanities. First, the humanities would expose people to a broader range of leisure activities, allowing for a greater choice and enjoyment of various forms of entertainment, like plays alongside sports and various artists and writers, and will be able to apply the knowledge they have acquired through these classes to a modern setting, like contemporary literature and their favorite TV shows. Second, they teach us about “human achievement”, which incorporates history in teaching us about people, both ancient and contemporary, who have achieved great things that greatly impacted lives other than their own, even those that aren’t positive. Gaining a complete understanding ofthese peoples’ endeavors gives us a wider range of opportunities to “both improve the world and find our place in it”. Lastly, the humanities help to preserve tradition and for democratic societies it can keep that democracy going by creating well-informed citizens more willing to perform their civic duties (i.e. voting; no word yet on jury duty). While there are some people who do think the humanities should have a bigger role in education, it won’t be easy to elevate the humanities, thoughthey are tolerated with the way some schools implement STEM and the ACT’s Standards for College readiness into their curriculum.
In my opinion, history serves a much greater purpose than it is given or recognized. A common shortcoming among the American youth nowadays is disinterest in the world. They don’t care about what’s happening in another country as long as they can connect to Facebook. Sometimes they don’t care what’s going on in their own country. History’s greatest contribution to education is teaching about other countries so Americans aren’t so ignorant about them. In a world torn apart by strife, understanding is the best tool available to fix it. Knowing about cultures and ways different from yours and having a real understanding of them, not just passive learning, enriches your life and widens your understanding and view of the world. This ties in heavily with what Mr. Ferrero said earlier. In this time of globalization, it isn’t a good idea to ignore the rest of the world and its problems because they often affect us here at home just as much. History also gives us a greater understanding of the past and we must not ignore the past for we will be doomed to repeat it. Everything today has been shaped by something that has happened before us. I’d think that would be pretty important. We know everything we know today because someone recorded it and by studying the past, we now know it and have probably improved and tweaked it. You don’t just come up with something complicated like quantum physics or E=mc2 without knowing the basics and unless you discovered it on your own, how are you going to know what someone else did before you?
The humanities give us a better understanding of the world around us just as much as math and science, it’s just a different way of thinking and we are often taught that there is nothing wrong with being different. High school AP US history teacher Mr. Esselman, who understandably isn’t happy with his department being subsidized, encourages the big wigs trying to reform our education system to look at employees who work for the top corporations and enterprises in the sciences and tech fields. There you will find, he says, people with a broad understanding of what’s important in society. Microsoft in particular has a huge range of interests and incorporate the human element into their work and products. Some of them may even be a liberal arts major or minor. I heard a recent report on the news that says most people with a job don’t have a degree in their current line of work or something to that effect. Just because you’re a scientist or a computer person doesn’t mean you don’t have a background of other subjects that could still be useful to you. This is something that the people pushing STEM, PLTW, and others probably don’t realize.
A problem I see in endorsing STEM is that not everybody can be a scientist and the field is extremely competitive anyway, so some Indians and Chinese might end up taking those spots. But in India and China that’s pretty much all they’re pushed to do because it’s the most profitable and the majority of the population is poor. It seems like America is trying to model itself after these two countries, but America operates much differently than they do, so we need to take a different approach. Some people are better at other things than science and they are probably modeling their career paths after what they want to do. This is even encouraged by real doctors working today. It’s all about what you want to do. America has an individualistic approach compared with the collectivist one that India and China have. A poor person has a much better life than in either India or China and gets second chances, explaining why you may have a job but not a degree for that job.
STEM still has a practical angle for people not shooting for a math or science-related degree, which it can keep, but that’s not what everyone wants to do for a living, and certainly not for the rest of their life and it shouldn’t be forced upon us because it isn’t going to happen. A recent study finds that reading scores among 12th graders have dropped and that reading for pleasure declines with age. It seems that 9-year-olds are our only hope and there’s a possibility that even they will lose their love of reading as they age. Does this mean that we now have to institute an English-heavy curriculum? If Americans are having trouble in one area, then they are probably having trouble in more. What I’m trying to say is all core subjects should be emphasized the same amount. Cutting off or deemphasizing a couple isn’t going to help success in math or science fields at all because they are all related and interconnected and valuable even if it doesn’t seem like it now. As this study shows, it can greatly hurt performance in other subjects. We all use the skills we have gained and learned differently, in different amounts, and at different times. Life is a big variable and possessing a variety of skills to deal with whatever comes our way next is invaluable. Taking away some of those skills in the hopes of boosting others isn’t going to work and chances are you won’t stay in the same job forever, so it just limits future job opportunities and we really need right now is a higher unemployment rate. Even if we lose our job we can always get a new one or go back to school. It’s called second chances. And within a competitive field, what’s the statistic you’ll get that job? The ones that don’t make it need to have something else to fall back on and it’s probably not a good idea for it to be in another competitive field. The Indians and Chinese don’t get second chances. The humanities will help us better understand why that isn’t possible in either country and hopefully foster a sense of compassion for them. An important part of the humanities that seems to have been lost in today’s world, one of the goals of school that has been “subsumed”, is creating better persons, a rare creature that is both endangered and needed the most. If an Indian or Chinese is honestly better at their job than an American, then the better worker should get hired, regardless of nationality, then we can be confident that a particular field is full of the most competent workers available and it will enrich that field and be recorded for future workers in that field to expound upon. It’s all about expanding our knowledge, not competition between nations, in any job in any subject. Doing otherwise doesn’t make much sense.
Works Cited
Clemmitt, Marcia. “Reading Crisis?”.CQ Researcher. 22 Feb. 2008: 169-192. Print.
Esselman, Brian. Personal Interview. 10/19/2012.
Ferrero, David J. “The Humanities: Why Such a Hard Sell?”. 68.6 (2011): 22-26. Web. 24 Oct. 2012.
“What are the Liberal Arts?”.University of Minnesota Duluth College of Liberal Arts.Web. 24 Oct. 2012.