We Need a Sales Force for the Humanities
Fewer and fewer students are buying into one of the richest and most vibrant areas of study. It’s time to change that.
In recent years, the Humanities and liberal arts are being given short shrift by many in the public sphere. Marco Rubio famously commented that the world needs more welders, not philosophers, and that the former make more money than the latter. Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin suggested that students should not receive money from the state to fund an education in most non-STEM fields. Slate has a wonderful piece about comments made by Wells Fargo, Mitt Romney, and Rick Scott, among others — all disparaging the study of liberal arts and humanities in higher education.
All of this is part of a general closing of the American mind about what education should be. Verlyn Klinkenborg at the New York Times explains:
Undergraduates will tell you that they’re under pressure — from their parents, from the burden of debt they incur, from society at large — to choose majors they believe will lead as directly as possible to good jobs. Too often, that means skipping the humanities.
In other words, there is a new and narrowing vocational emphasis in the way students and their parents think about what to study in college.
