When college and university administrators refer to students as “consumers” and the prevailing motivation for obtaining a college education equals professional employment after graduation, faculty in the humanities find themselves disheartened by the dwindling number of students pursuing degrees in their disciplines. Institutions increasingly encourage students (or consumers) to major in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) programs. Certainly, humanities professors cannot make the mistake of underestimating the value of STEM majors. However, as the market-model university has emerged, the humanities seem to have lost their prestige in academia and their relevance to college students’ lives and society as a whole.

The humanities are indeed still relevant and critical to not only higher education but to a democratic society. The humanities reaffirm the broad goals of higher education which include “cultivating the mind rather than as purely vocational training for a career” (Longxi, 2012, p. 73). The work of humanists aims to explore what it means to be human and to interpret economic, environmental, technological, medical, political, and sociological changes and determine ways in which they affect our human-ness. In a sense the work of humanists builds upon knowledge created in the social and hard sciences. Rather than reject the humanities in favor of the sciences or vice versa, scholars in each of these disciplines must recognize ways in which they can productively and creatively support one another’s academic pursuits. If such a crisis in the humanities exists which so many humanists tend to bemoan, universities must develop alternative approaches in the market model university in order to offer a possible outlook for the future of the humanities.

Humanists encourage students to explore their very souls as a means of improving the self, defining the ideologies by which they want to live, and shaping the society in which we all must coexist. Bok (2013) delineates three goals of undergraduate education in the United States which validate the purpose and value of a liberal arts education:

The first goal is to equip students for a career either by imparting useful knowledge and skills in a vocational major or by developing general qualities of mind through a broad liberal arts education that will stand students in good stead in almost any calling. The second aim, with roots extending back to ancient Athens, is to prepare students to be enlightened citizens of a self-governing democracy and active members of their own communities. The third and final objective is to help students live a full and satisfying life by cultivating a wide range of interests and a capacity for reflection and self-knowledge (p. 167).

A liberal arts education supports each of these educational goals and provides students with skills beyond those they will need in workplaces. Nussbaum (1997) provides another rationale for the necessity of the liberal arts. A liberal education “liberates the mind from the bondage of habit and custom, producing people who can function with sensitivity and alertness as citizens of the whole world” (Nussbaum, 1997, p. 8).

Dating back to the Colonial era, American universities embraced classical curriculum and emphasized mental and moral discipline through the study of classical subjects, similar to the long-standing tradition in European universities. However, the combination of the Industrial Revolution and the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890 resulted in a turn to the sciences and more practical courses in agriculture, engineering, and home economics, bringing about the erosion of the classical curriculum. In addition, influential educator, Dewey, felt that only the ruling classes who could afford “to participate in luxurious display of uselessness” received a liberal arts education, and he aimed to “to reinstate the dignity of ‘instrumentality’” (Liu, 2008, p. 36). For Dewey, that meant making education student-centered and focused on the objective of producing “capable, critical subjects for robust participation in American political and economic life” (Liu, 2008, p. 36). Dewey perceived education as a way of resolving social problems and declared the humanities ill-suited to the needs of industrial life; students needed to learn how to make a living and contribute physically and productively to society (Liu, 2008). Thus, universities responded to market pressures by creating more specialized degree programs, particularly in science, agriculture, and engineering, which would provide students with practical skills they would need to compete in the job force.

Enter the “crisis” in the humanities. But is there really a crisis? Are our disciples indeed dying, as so many art and literature professors declare? Perhaps not, but humanists must evolve to some extent. Mulholland (2010) advises, “to stop the ritual mourning of the crisis and ask ourselves what we want the humanities to look like within a corporatized college or university” (Mulholland, 2010, A40). First, humanists need to make the case for what Longxi (2012) calls the “timelessness” of texts. That is, a text can be “read, understood, interpreted, and appreciated differently by people in different times, while at the same time [retaining] its own identity and values that constitute a measurement of rule…against which the present can be judged” (Longxi, 2012, p. 71). In addition, humanists must expand their definition of “text” to include not only electronic documents but any artifact created by humans and which exists in the human realm. In “Blue Humanities”, Gillis provides his “reading” of the sea, explaining ways in which different disciplines and different communities have interpreted the sea and how those interpretations have changed over time. Further, he discusses the impact of these interpretations on culture and ion our relationship with the sea. http://www.neh.gov/humanities/2013/mayjune/feature/the-blue-humanities

This approach to texts “recognize[s] the intertwining of topics of study that might be termed ‘the humanities’ with all the other disciplines that help to illuminate that relationality; such a reflection surely opens out to every other discipline” (Barnett, 2013, p. 48), thereby proving the relevance of the humanities and demonstrating ways in which the humanities can benefit from, rather than compete with, the sciences.

Are the humanities, in fact, on the brink of extinction? If so, what are some ways the humanities should respond to maintain, not only their survival, but also their relevance?

Katie Jones
Doctoral Students, HSU Doctorate in Leadership Program
English Instructor and Writing Center Coordinator
Department of English and Modern Languages
Angelo State University
njones5@angelo.edu

References

Bok, D. (2013). Higher Education in America. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Harpham, G.G. (2005). Beneath and beyond the “crisis in the humanities.” New Literary History, 36(1), 21-36.

Liu, C. (2008). American intellectual traditions: The demand for relevance and the crisis of the humanities. Western Humanities Review, 34-48.

Longxi, Z. (2012). The humanities: Their value, defence, crisis, and future. Diogenes, 58(1-2), 64-74.

Mulholland, J. (2010). It’s time to stop mourning the humanities. Chronicle of Higher Education, 56(37), A40-A41.

Nussbaum, M. (1997). Cultivating humanity: A classical defense of reform in liberal education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Tuchman, G. (2011). The humanities, higher education, and social class: The best that has been thought and memorized. Western Humanities Review, 38-48).