why humanities?

I’ve been running across this question all over the place recently. Stanly Fish (Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor and a professor of law at Florida International University, in Miami, and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago) has blogged on the value/need for humanities education twice in the past month. His first post on the topic received 484 comments and his follow-up garnered 448 comments. I remember reading through every single one of those comments, cursing, jeering, cheering, muttering, and eventually drooling as my eyes twitched and spasomed (brain rot from reading too many comments…dangerous and painful infliction…curable, though…as long as you spend an adequate amount of time away from the computer screen).

Today I received my first newsletter from bigthink.com, the site billing itself as the youtube of ideas. The featured user question, from cuixotiq, was, “what purpose does forcing the study of the humanities (or the ‘lofty’ subjects) – be it literature, art history, philosophy et al – serve for the career-driven college student?” Oh, that nasty little bugger…what a way to word a question: “only you non career-driven students have the time for the lofty humanities…”

Anyway…you can read on for my quick, off-the-top-of-my-head, response…or you can go over to bigthink.com and pitch in with your own opinion.

I might be a bit biased, as I am by profession a humanities librarian, but I’ll give my take on this question anyway. Why humanities, the idealistic answer: our democracy depends upon a well-educated, critically-thinking population. Study in the humanities provides the chance for students to practice thinking analytically, critically, and speculatively (necessary to cultivate productive, responsible, and civically-minded members of our society). Why humanities, a practical answer:

• According to a study by the National Commission on Writing, “providing writing training [to college graduates employed by states] costs taxpayers nearly a quarter of a billion dollars annually.”
• In the private sector: “Business professionals and instructors often view writing skills as one of the most important qualifications that employees should possess. However, many business employees, including recent college graduates, have serious writing deficiencies, especially in their ability to use Standard English. As a result, American businesses spend billions of dollars annually to remediate these writing deficiencies” (College Board, the National Commission on Writing for America’s Families, Schools, and Colleges, 2004).

Maybe with a bit more focus on the importance of the humanities, we can rectify these problems before sending our graduates out into the professional world. It’s not necessarily easy to identify all of the directly-transferable job skills for any given job…how one might master those skills might even be more difficult to identify. Maybe we should focus on providing an education that ensures our graduates at least have the skills necessary to read something, analyze it thoroughly (from multiple points-of-view), and produce a coherent response to it…Should we accomplish this, my bet is that any other requisite skills will be acquired much more easily.