In Tough Times, the Humanities Must Justify Their Worth

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/books/25human.html?%2334;%20February%2025,%202009=&_r=1&sq=&st=cse&scp=1&%2334;Patricia%20Cohen=&pagewanted=all

by robg • 17 years ago

8 32 17 years ago

nytimes.com

gaius2• 17 years ago

There’s a lot more to a liberal education than improving the economy. I think that is one of the worst mistakes that policy makers often make not being able to see beyond that

If all you have to offer is intangible benefits, then you are welcome to all the intangible support from the taxpayer you want!

MikeMacMan• 17 years ago

How about fluency in a foreign language? Is that an intangible? How about the ability to write a lengthy, well-cited, well-reasoned paper in English? Is that an intangible skill?

gaius2• 17 years ago

You speak as if no engineering graduates possess these skills.

Kadin• 17 years ago

Those are fine and exceptionally useful skills in combination with others, but on their own do not offer many opportunities. Someone whose only skill is fluency in a foreign language is limited to working as a translator; someone whose only skill is writing is pretty much limited to working as, unsurprisingly, a writer. I'm not saying that either field is unimportant but they're extremely competitive fields with a high ratio of qualified candidates to good-paying jobs.

In contrast, someone with a scientific or engineering degree and fluency in a foreign language or the ability to write well, has a very good chance of never being out of demand.

The problem isn't with liberal arts skills, it's with students who pursue them to the exclusion of -- rather than in addition to -- more practical curricula that are actually desired by employers.

yummyfajitas2• 17 years ago

Writing lengthy and well cited papers is a bad habit I developed in humanities classes.

Your paper must be at least $N pages long, and must cite at least $P primary sources and $S secondary sources.

Writing papers which are as concise as possible (without being unreadable) and minimize external dependencies is a skill I learned in math graduate school:

Your paper has been automatically rejected due to a length greater than 4 pages.

While interesting, your paper will only be accepted if you clarify the following unclear points.

I learned more about good english writing (as opposed to writing content-free puffery) from coding than I did from humanities classes.

tjic• 17 years ago

Speaking as someone who double-majored in computer science and a humanity (history) at a top-tier university, I think that the humanity degree should be firmly classified as entertainment, or enrichment.

If you're rich, and have $40 (or $140k) and four years of your life to devote to it, then, by all means, go get a humanities degree.

I think that it's just as useful and enriching as spending $140k and four years learning to become an expert windsurfer, or skateboarder, or glass blower.

However, for anyone who doesn't consider $140k and 4 years "discretionary entertainment budget", then a humanities degree is a huge waste.

People justify humanities degrees as teaching you "how to think" or "how to write".

Hogwash.

Most engineers that I know think far, far, far better than most humanities majors. The humanities only rarely require critical thinking. Further, they don't even train you, in any real sense, how to reason by analogy or how to write well. At most, they filter the folks who already know how to do these things.

Having attended an Ivy League school and seen both types of education, I would not recommend the humanities to anyone other than idle children with trust funds.

jaytee_clone• 17 years ago

So true.

I'd been happy if the education system pick a side and either focus on career preparation or humanity enrichment. But nowadays it pretends to do both and failed at them miserably.

Thus I can't help but think that the system is just a giant marketing scheme to make $140 off a hardworking family.

patio112• 17 years ago

I read a very disturbing argument once which comes back to me when discussing what higher ed does and does not do. Paraphrased:

"The higher educational system is the only authority in America which is socially permitted to discriminate based on IQ, via entrance requirements. This is pretty useful, and accordingly everyone else pays them astounding amounts of money to do it. Given that they have a monopoly on discriminating based on IQ, they don't need to do anything else well."

edw519• 17 years ago

I'm so glad I learned this lesson quickly.

I went to a liberal arts college to be an English major.

First term freshman year, I also took a math class. It took about 6 days to change my mind. Who knows what my life would have been like if I hadn't.

logjam• 17 years ago

Odd. My experience is just the opposite.

I think you might have been more content at a trade school, not University. They have different goals. Pressure to dumb down the University to serve as simply a cog feeder for business has always been there.

I have a degree in biochemistry, formal and informal training in computer science, a minor in English, fluency in a foreign language I learned at university...and then this silly professional degree.

My science and professional degree == the critical thinking skills I frankly could have obtained, free of charge, learning automotive repair at my local community college.

Humanities work == understanding and appreciation for how different people(s) think, exposure to the "why" rather than just the "how", development of a yearning to create, deep appreciation for the things that make life just a bit more than our checking accounts: reverence for nature, beauty, compassion, truth.

And yeah, an ability to think far more critically about things a little heavier than syntax errors, an ability to weigh evidence, work with these nebulous, imperfect, non-Platonic things called people, and make correct, critical decisions that incorporate science, ethics, economics - choosing harder rights over easier wrongs.

To paraphrase a fellow Dead Poet, there's a hell of a lot of 6 inch pipe to lay out there. It will pay well. You'll revel in the comforting, solid duality of pipe and wrench.

You may come to that end pipe cap wondering if that was all.

TriinT• 17 years ago

Well, everything you learn in a 4-year humanities degree, you can learn in your free time when you're in high-school. English? History? That's not Quantum Field Theory. You don't need 10 years of training to learn humanities. Just grab a bunch of books and read that while you're a child / teenager because children and teenagers do have the time for it.

I advocate more math for everyone: if the "soft" majors like humanities and economics were humiliated on a daily basis with math problem sets, they probably would grow to be more humble, logical and (nasty side-effect) bitter people. Mathematicians and natural scientists do know how hard it is to actually KNOW something, how to try to falsify your own hypotheses, etc. That makes one a better citizen than knowing Japanese, Literary Criticism or why the French Revolution happened.

History is really interesting! Seriously! Why wait until you're 18 to study it when you can read about the Greeks and Romans when you're 10? I loved History when I was a kid. Humanities education is vital, but it should be cherished and nurtured and provided to students between the ages of 10-18. That would be possible if most people didn't put their brains on hold during high-school.

Ravenlock• 17 years ago

I'm with logjam on this one. I double-majored in Computer Science and Theatre, and while I do now use my Computer Science degree to make money, I don't believe I learned almost anything in my computer science classes that I couldn't have learned - and mightn't have learned better - either (a) on the job somewhere out of high school or (b) on my own through books and online resources.

The creative and teamwork experiences I got on the theatre side of things, however, are absolutely tangibly valuable to me now in my day-to-day dealings with coworkers (current and potential). Did a humanities degree "teach me how to think"? No. Did it provide me with several different ways of thinking, and help me appreciate better how different my natural thought processes might be from those of other people? Absolutely. I'm sorry, but there are in fact a lot of very narrow, closed off, fit-the-stereotype maladjusted computer professionals out there, and yes, they're unpleasant to work with. Becoming more socialized is a perfectly valid thing to expect out of an education, and a humanities degree certainly puts focus there that doesn't exist in more technical degrees.

Of course, the fact that my particular theatre program was filled with enthusiastic, smart, engaging professors who encouraged lively participation, debate and creativity while the computer science program was nearly lifeless has probably colored my perceptions, but I imagine that paradigm is not limited to the university I attended.

philwelch2• 17 years ago

"The humanities" are really something of a grab bag when it comes to categorizing fields of study. When it comes to categorizing the different departments of a university into colleges or whatnot, things like "engineering" and "science" clearly share some type of methodology or otherwise easily fit together. But "humanities" ranges from downright useful stuff like foreign language and history to things like philosophy and English (which can be studied fruitfully but most universities fall short due to some bad fundamental approach like postmodernism) to crap like "ethnic studies" and "women's studies" (identity politics: the department).

smhinsey• 17 years ago

i was debating with myself whether or not history was being included under the humanities umbrella. there is definitely some irony in well educated scientists/engineers loudly proclaiming the futility of the study of history. (as is being done elsewhere in this thread, not necessarily the article)

ionfish• 17 years ago

Do you really think that the study of philosophy in "most universities fall[s] short due to some bad fundamental approach like postmodernism"? I am dubious about this, especially if we drop the 'like'. A couple of (hopefully) enlightening links:

http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2005/10/the_myth_of_th...

http://el-prod.baylor.edu/certain_doubts/?p=453

philwelch2• 17 years ago

I used the "like" because most folks only know postmodernism. I actually did my first degree in philosophy and while postmodernism was nowhere to be found, there's enough continental philosophy around to waste everyone's time. My school was very analytic, but from talking to other philosophy students online, analytic philosophy isn't all that popular or well-known among undergrads. I think analytic philosophy is great, though of somewhat more limited interest since it's less amenable to bullshit, grand abstractions, and other bad philosophy. It's also a bit arcane and technical at times.

DeRose is a good analytic philosopher and I always enjoy reading him, so thanks for the link.

Not that all continental philosophy is crap (existentialism seems interesting and worthwhile) but a lot of it is, and in many circles, a low opinion of Hegel gets you a lot of credit.

ahoyhere• 17 years ago

A "liberal" education was meant to teach you the tools you needed to grant yourself a free existence... including rhetoric (to both identify and fight against, and use for yourself), critical thinking, analysis, history (things to do and not to do), persuasion, philosophy (self-understanding), and so on.

EDIT: These are incredibly valuable, far more than any kind of job-training education. BUT, that's assuming that's what you actually get. Based on my knowledge of universities... that's not what you get.

biohacker423• 17 years ago

My computer science degree required I get a passing grade in a public speaking class.

biohacker423• 17 years ago

...a traditional liberal arts education is, by definition, not intended to prepare students for a specific vocation. Rather, the critical thinking, civic and historical knowledge and ethical reasoning...

It strikes me as obvious that critical thinking ability is best trained with math.

Civic and historical knowledge can be learned much like any specific skill can.

So it wood seem the humanities are a very round about way of teaching critical thinking. But I think the last paragraph strikes at a core truth rarely spoken out loud:

That may be unfortunate but inevitable, Mr. Kronman said. The essence of a humanities education — reading the great literary and philosophical works and coming “to grips with the question of what living is for” — may become “a great luxury that many cannot afford.”

Within the above paragraph is the hard truth that a humanities education is most often a way to show off class and breeding. Class and breeding are highly correlated with wealth.

evgen2• 17 years ago

> It strikes me as obvious that critical thinking ability is best trained with math.

Writing a cogent and convincing argument is not a problem that can be solved with linear algebra. Ethics is not the differential equations of competing interests. That you would consider a good math education to be a core component of critical thinking appears to serve as an example proof of why engineers are poorly trained in critical thinking skills.

biohacker423• 17 years ago

Proving a mathematical theorem is the kind of absolute proof no amount of cogent and convincing arguing will ever touch.

Ethics is a set of rules, critically occupied with filtering out simple egoistic urges from greater human goals.

I think you're confusing critical thinking with empathy and emotional insight.

To understand humans, you have to understand our emotions and that requires empathy. Combine empathy with critical thinking and you can have insights about our emotional lives.

Engineers are not poorly trained in critical thinking skills, quite the opposite.

Some engineers are very empathic people. A few seem to posses a distinct lack of empathy and little intuition as to how other feel. But those individuals are rare and not confined to engineering.

Convincing arguments depend on who you're trying to convince, know your audience. The same argument won't convince engineers and astrologists.

Any good engineer has excellent communication skills, they wouldn't be a good engineer otherwise. And cogent convincing arguments are an intimate part of every engineer's life.

The study of math, physics, logic, will greatly improve your ability to come up with convincing arguments.

phicou• 17 years ago

And math, real math, is not about the mindless execution of predefined algorithms such as linear algebra. It is about understanding those algorithms, using higher-order logic to understand what is universally true, conditionally true, and so forth.

yummyfajitas2• 17 years ago

From the article: The essence of a humanities education — reading the great literary and philosophical works and coming “to grips with the question of what living is for” — may become “a great luxury that many cannot afford.”

Good Will Hunting rebuts this quite well:

You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library.

A humanities education is not a luxury that no one can afford. A humanities degree is.

In Tough Times, the Humanities Must Justify Their Worth

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