On the day when the Browne Report proposes cutting all government funding for teaching in the Arts and Humanities in the name of making the British university sector “more competitive”, there has of course been much online discussion (notably on Twitter) of how to (and indeed whether we should have to) justify the arts and humanities in a shrinking academic economy. Several important opinion pieces have been cited:
- ‘That Full Complement of Riches’ (2004)
- Will the Humanities Save us? (2008)
- The value of higher education in the arts and humanities (2009)
For my part, the answer is very simply that the reason society should value a strong Arts and Humanities culture is not because of any measurable “value” in economic terms (although cases can and are being made for that), but because a civilized society benefits from having a large number of educated citizens with as varied backgrounds as possible who are able to (and in the habit of) critically examine an arbitrary statement or text.
I’m willing to concede that society gets very little (if any) measurable gain from my study of the role of marginalized women in Ancient Greek narratives of magic. But the fact that I spent so much time studying anything that closely makes me better able to critique the rhetoric of a politician, or to analyze the social impact of a controversial television programme (and I’m no scholar of political science or media studies, both of whom have important roles to play there). In short, my liberal arts education has made me a better citizen, and the students I have been involved in the teaching of likewise.
Others can and have made better cases than this, and I hope will continue to do so, in the comments here and elsewhere. This may not be an especially convincing argument for politicians, but it is, in my opinion, the truth.
There’s also been a rather long-running thread debating this and related issues in the Commentary and Letters sections of the Times Literary Supplement:
11/13/09 – Impact on Humanities, Stefan Collini
11/18/09 – T.P. Wiseman, John Stone, Philip Davis, Angela Leighton
11/25/09 – Ronald Macaulay, Tim Nau, Gordon Campbell
12/02/09 – Patrick Lyndon, Justine Pila, Michael Holroyd et al.
12/09/09 – T.P. Wiseman
01/06/10 – Gabriel Josipovici
01/10/10 – Tim Nau, David Herman
02/10/10 – Gabriel Josipovici
04/30/10 – Martha C. Nussbaum – Commentary (can’t find online)
05/07/10 – Keith Thomas – Commentary (can’t find online)
05/12/10 – Fernando Cervantes, James Morton, Jackie Cassell
05/19/10 – Tim Nau, John Deutch
05/26/10 – T.P. Wiseman, Theodore K. Rabb
There’s also “past, present, and future” from the British Academy, 2010. http://www.britac.ac.uk/policy/pastpresentandfuture.cfm
which “highlighted the “enormous reservoir of public value” which these disciplines [arts, social sciences] generate, outlining their contribution to Britain’s health, wealth and international reputation”.
also see the side panel in the above website – has links to 4 or 5 other reports. I need to do some reading!
John Theibault writes:
“An even more succinct case than Fish’s for the centrality of the humanities in today’s educational environment http://bit.ly/9sv0UP“
The open letter from Gregory A Petsko to the president of SUNY Albany makes the same point that I was trying to make in the post above, but more eloquently:
“I’m now Professor of Biochemistry and Chemistry. Of all the courses I took in college and graduate school, the ones that have benefited me the most in my career as a scientist are the courses in classics, art history, sociology, and English literature. These courses didn’t just give me a much better appreciation for my own culture; they taught me how to think, to analyze, and to write clearly. None of my sciences courses did any of that.”