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What Good Are the Humanities?
Marco Rubio insulted me; see the video here. He said I was useless, and called me a fool for practicing my useless profession. It was the final proof that Republicans are anti-intellectual. Or so the stories say. Actually, I don’t believe a word of it. All I can say for sure is that he said that we shouldn’t denigrate vocational training, and that having more welders and fewer folks like me is a good way of increasing overall wages. And that was only after he went over a pretty solid laundry list of economic policies supporting freer markets and fiscal sanity.
While I could dwell happily enough in a world in which I’m proven wrong about this, I can still vote for a man who insults my profession, provided he’s the best man for the job. (Never mind that the best woman for the job also happens to be the only presidential candidate who studied philosophy . . . and has also made more money than most welders . . . and is a Republican.) Anyway, though it now seems like last year’s news, it’s still a good excuse to hear from the Ricocheti on the following question: What good are the humanities?
Please select the option that best describes your view:
- No good at all! Nothing but intellectual pretension! This country needs more welders and fewer philosophers!
- They might have been good once, but the Left owns them now. They’re more trouble than they’re worth. Ignore formal education in the humanities. Let the university bubble burst. Anyway, you can read Shakespeare on your smartphone.
- Long live the humanities! Even under Leftist influence, the humanities are great! They teach us how to think, and Shakespeare is better when you study with a specialist. We still need Socrates and Herodotus. Every welder should have to study a little bit of this stuff in college!
- Reform education! Bring back the Trivium. Stick to the basics: literature, history, art history, and philosophy. We need the humanities, done rightly.
- You, Mr. Augustine, are a perfect example of why this country needs more philosophers.
- You, Mr. Augustine, are a perfect example of why this country needs fewer philosophers.
- Actually, in my opinion, ______________________________________.
I rest my case.
I am delighted to live in the McGuffey School District. Yes, that McGuffey. William Holmes McGuffey, who was born in the entirely undistinguished hamlet of Claysville, PA, a couple of miles down the road. Of course, he is best known for his series of school books, the McGuffey Eclectic Readers. (I love that the word “Eclectic” is in there. That’s why I always use it, although many refer to them simply as “McGuffey Readers.” But, they’re ‘eclectic,’ and it’s important to remember that). We need more ‘eclectic’ in the world.
Here is McGuffey’s Fourth Eclectic Reader, a book in the series which is intended for the middle-school years. It’s delightful. As many have said, almost everything’s available on the Internet any more.
Sadly, the best known feature of today’s McGuffey School District is that we’re the high-school football team that other schools’ supporters “Moo” at when our team runs onto the field.
Still, when it comes right down to it, I want the farmers on my side.
Eclectic farmers, that is.
How else is one supposed to get into law school so one can become an elected official, climb the greasy pole of North American politics, and live the high life at the taxpayer’s expense?
Most politicians have humanities degrees.
Ok, but is the value one gets from a humanities degree so much greater than simply reading the books oneself that it’s worth the expense?
One does not pursue a degree to learn. One pursues a degree to receive the approval and certification of the institution.
The learning can be done at much less expense.
The question was “What good are the Humanities?” not “What good is a Humanities degree?”.
I rest my case.
Regards,
Jim
Here’s a hypothesis about what has happened to academia. In the early 1960s, science enjoyed enormous prestige–having played a key role in nuclear energy (not yet demonized), space travel, electronics, medical advancements, etc etc. What to do if you’re an academic, but not in a scientific field?
If you’re in sociology or political science, you advertise that your field can make great contributions to practical governance, especially when borrowing tools from the hard sciences (viz mathematical modeling)
But what if you’re in literature or philosophy? You can talk about how these fields help one learn to think, but that’s old stuff, not comparable with the glamor of science or the hoped-for glamor of social science.
You could preach radicalism. That at least ensures attention from your students, maybe even from the wider society, and makes you feel that you’re not being left behind.
Not a complete explanation, but a significant part of it, I think.
I was beaten on a technicality!
Grumble, grumble, grumble…
;-)
Taking upper-level “hard” and “soft” courses simultaneously is akin to being lashed to two horses, then torn apart.
The Internet is a poor substitute for rollicking dinner discussion.
Jefferson’s ideal America, was it not?
Or was it Tocqueville’s observation?
Or was it both? Or was it neither–only a myth? If so, a myth worth striving for–change we really can believe in.
There are questions that need distinguishing before they are answered:
I think you’re dealing with the third question. It can indeed be done at much less expense, and for many this is the better path. Read Shakespeare on your smartphone. Sign up for “The Philosopher’s Toolkit” and learn how to rival Seawriter and Gawron and Ryan M. and James of England for the position of Most Rational Person in the Ricochet chat room.
(Did I choose the best names? If I left you out and shouldn’t have, my regrets.)
But I can say for sure that for many reasons, several of which have been given, my directed and taught course of study in the humanities was way better than anything I could have managed on my own.
Well done. A wonderful hypothesis.
I tend to think like Chesterton: The true radical will, in such times, rebel all the way back into orthodoxy and tradition and (in all the best senses) conservatism.
I’d suggest that if our aspiring executive becomes a *real* executive, he’ll find himself pulled in multiple directions by multiple horses. Taking calculus and theory of automata simultaneously with Shakespeare and medieval theology might be good practice.
Your children are abnormal (and quite fortunate).
If my experience is any indication, most American teenagers — even the studious ones — are largely incurious, ahistorical, and manipulable. They regard learning as a chore, something confined to the classroom; thus, they know only what school teaches.
Paradoxically, college seems the best place to meet autodidacts.
Well, if we’re spitballing, I don’t concur. It is true that every division has “Science Envy” including every science that isn’t Physics. (The Mathematicians are special and excluded from this story.) Once computers allowed everyone to do regressions, everyone started doing “empirical” work, including the humanities. History pretends to be a social science, there are data-intensive and statistical analyses of literature. It’s a whole field. Econometrics basically colonized the entire university.
They were aided in this by the fact that even the sciences ceased doing science. They don’t do experiments anymore, they do statistically controlled quasi-experiments. So everyone pretends to do science. And as a result, everyone’s theoretical skills atrophy, because no one uses them. They just throw more data at the problem until it coughs up an answer. And as we all know, if you torture your data long enough, it will eventually confess.
Science without theory is magic and religion (I won’t even dignify it by calling it theology). But the magic impresses the State and the students, so they accept the magical dogma without complaint.
I wish I could have some influence on Big Education. I saw bright kids learn how to hate school, and then think that because they hated school that they hated learning.
I have 4th and 5th grade kids in Sunday School this year. I can tell you that I can run them through three lessons in the hour that we have. Those are canned lessons that are intended to consume an entire hour. But that would not be as much fun as what we do, which is to run through the appointed lesson, then spend the rest of time on their questions. I usually have twice as much time for questions as it takes to push through the lesson. The kids like that. They like learning. I frequently quiz them over previous material, and they usually recall the chief parts of the lessons, and they recall even more the topics we covered in question time. If you will actually listen to their questions and give them honest answers, kids can really raise their game when they are interested.
I hate it when I see parents underestimating their kids.
A splendid analysis. Especially the bolded sentence.
Your Sunday School kids are very blessed, for quite a few reasons.
How old are these friends and neighbors?
That was the case with the old people I grew up with as well. Most were born between 1885 and 1925, for most their education ended in the 8th grade, yet, they could recite scads of poetry and knew the novels of Scott, Dickens, and Twain like familiar friends. The postmaster’s wife liked to read Shakespeare, and we would discuss the plays after church. Many had worn copies of Milton on their shelves, they knew American and world history. They could argue with clear logic, good reasoning, and a solid moral foundation. Those that weren’t bookish respected or were awed by education. They all knew the Good Book frontwards and backwards whether they were Lutheran, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist or Episcopalian. Most were farmers, miners, or other working class types. My dirt-farmer grandmother could recite all of Gray’s “Elegy in a Churchyard”. All gone now, I miss them dearly.
So we really, really need the humanities. We just don’t really need the college degrees. We could use a good bit of # 4.
I think definetly 4, with a good deal of 3 thrown in, and throwing out the modern liberals wouldn’t hurt.
In the academy it is interesting to see where liberalism has done the most damage.
I’m currently working on three related projects. All three require an examination of historical, literary, and theological texts. As I find more links as I pursue bibliographies and my own searches, outside of the field of history, I am finding that current students of literature and theology are mostly shallow beyond belief. The titles related to my research printed between 1890 and 1950 are amazing examples of erudition. There are gaps and some opinions and conclusions that don’t stand up well today, but there really is amazing research that is totally missing from modern works. The historical texts are usually much better. The information age and modern library and archival practices have helped the historian, but seem to be missing entirely from theology and literature.
This isn’t to say that some splendid modern theology isn’t happening, but there is much that is missing. Plus I find more and more outstanding thinking in works written before 1860. There really were giants in those days.
The modern academic mind often is so narrow as to be worthless, and the insights that are genuine and interesting are misplaced, contextless, or given in inappropriately weighted emphasis based on the current academic and political orthodoxies and fads. Exceptions granted on a case by case nature.
Double post.
I’m somewhere between 3 and 4. The humanities are in need of reform — some of which may take the form of #2 — but there’s still plenty of great stuff out there in college to be found.
Besides the usual PC criticisms, which I endorse, my major objection to the current system is confusing academics with vocational training, as if getting a history, philosophy, or literature degree is a useful means of demonstrating one’s employment potential. They’re wonderful, important, and commendable in themselves, but they’ve (generally) very little to do with renumeration and we should be clear with students about that.
Excellent point. I think the two are often conflated. In fact, society tends to conflates a degree with knowledge and subject mastery, when all it often means is the bearer of the degree was successful at going to school.
Speaking from experience, a degree in music does not a musician make.
The problem is that government financial and regulatory subsidies let people indulge the fantasies that all subjects, institutions, and students have equal merit.
That’s simply not the case.
Some subjects have different depths. Contrast the demand for basketball players graduating college with that for engineers. At the top end, there’s more demand for basketball players, but it drops off a cliff once the final NBA roster spot is filled. A person who is 50% of a Wozniak will have a great career in computer engineering. A person who is 50% of a Jordan will be selling shoes at Footlocker.
The humanities have neither the high top end demand, nor the depth. The free market may only require a couple of French Literature PhD per year and zero terminal lower degrees. There is simply no reason why any place other than Harvard or Yale should be giving them out.
This is even more the case in the modern world. We no longer have the excuse that second-tier universities or even first-tier ones need to maintain humanities departments in order to diversify student experience. If some student at Mizzou or MIT wants to take a French literature elective, they should be able to do it via telecourse from a school that does it right.
Yeah, without sitting down with a cup of tea and spending a good bit of time thinking through the available positions and articulating them way more carefully, the best I can say about my own views is that they’re somewhere between #s 2, 3, and 4.
Thanks, Tom (or someone) for the Main Feed promotion!
(Since my party was called anti-intellectual for this, I re-edited to restore the mention that Carly’s also a Republican. But then the embedded video disappeared.)
(When I think, “humanities”, I don’t think of the current Leftist-poisoned abomination, as mentioned in some of the options you listed, but their [true] un-Left-ified essence….)
My preference:
4.5 Let’s not “make” option 4.0 happen. Let’s free education from the State and let the chips fall where they may. I dearly hope (and am pretty sure) a significant part of the result — if we give it time to arise — would be the trivium and the basics.
There are humanities, and there are humanities. I’m just fine with criticizing classes in “Bead-making Practices of Neolithic Lesbians.” But schools are certainly are turning out students who are clueless about history. (For example, our own President.)
see the classics in the slums