article on drop in humanities/arts majors

mythmom
Thu, 11 Nov 2010 10:31:47 +0000

^^^Interesting, insightful and somewhat sad.

Without the arts and humanities civilization is robbed of some of its moral compass. A play like Oedipus, for example, trains minds to ponder moral questions of free will and responsibility. This may seem arcane until the State of Texas must decide if it’s okay to execute those without the mental capacity to understand moral issues or consequences.

(To be clear, I am opposed to the death penalty in all its incarnations, but that’s just me.)

We seem to believe the arts and humanities are frivolous, but Santayana’s quote (I think it’s his) that those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it seems particularly relevant here as we watch the US demonstrate the dictum in our unfortunate foreign adventure.

For me, building an atom bomb is the easy part; deciding if or when to use it the hard part.

The arts and humanities educate the sensibility to more sophisticated answers to these kind of questions, unless we’re satisfied with basic self interest and fundamentalist chapter and verse doctrine as the guides for our choices.

Without folks to study the arts and humanities there are no jobs for those who wish to spend their lives pursuing these questions, and I think society certainly is impoverished.

Should we tell our young people to only study what yields an automatic paycheck? What if they don’t excel in those areas? Won’t others always be hired above them anyway? How can we ensure they will perform well enough to earn that paycheck?

Do we really want to eliminate the study of other languages in an increasingly global economy?

It seems to me that if a segment of the society is willing to risk its own economic well-being to pursue those areas of study that do not present themselves as immediately remunerateable they should be encouraged. If a struggling actor, or PhD, is willing to support him/herself by waiting tables or driving a cab it should not call down the anger or condescension of others.

On the other hand, thank goodness for engineers, actuaries, scientists…Of course, their pursuits equally ennoble the human race.

I can’t for the life of me see what we’re arguing about.