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Showing posts with label humanities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label humanities. Show all posts

Barking up the wrong (money) tree

Posted by moses @ 12:11 • , , , , , • 0 comments


Recently, someone asked, "Do the humanities have a future?" They certainly do have a future, but I'm not optimistic it would be something that I would consider to be good.

Not everyone thinks the same way, though. In the first place, their notion of what is good for the humanities is different. Some cite the proportionately higher numbers of humanities graduates employed in management roles as a sign that the humanities are in a good place. Others reporting less stellar outlooks note that someone with a humanities degree still tends to earn more than someone without a degree, and that when the economy picks up, questions regarding the future of the humanities will die down again as graduates have a much easier time finding work.

However, these seem to be rather odd things to say where the humanities are concerned. In modern society, common wisdom has it that education and industry should function symbiotically, with schools feeding industry with the manpower and skilled personnel that it needs. But the humanities often impart a very different worldview, one where human life is far richer than simply work life; one where the goal of learning is not just to make money or to become a useful cog in the industrial machine.

If one takes the lessons from the humanities seriously, then one would be quite ill-suited for the kind of life where economic concerns are to be privileged above everything else. One would therefore be at a disadvantage in an environment driven overwhelmingly by competition for economic advancement. Thus, someone who has a bad career progression in modern industrial society, or someone who is consumed by internal conflict, seems quite a natural product of education in the humanities today.

So if the success of the humanities is to be measured by society by how well their graduates are advancing themselves economically, then I'd say that the future of the humanities is bleak indeed. How can it be otherwise, when they are made to produce what they were ideologically never supposed to produce?

I've got soul but I'm not a soldier

Posted by moses @ 08:31 • , , , • 0 comments


This week hasn't been a particularly good week and I haven't had the energy to read the local newspapers. But it did set me thinking about my own world, and I recalled a little detail from years ago.

When I was in junior college, my class went on a field trip to a naval base. On a ship we met a young naval officer, a graduate of the National University of Singapore's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (I confess that for some of us its initials are like a bad word). He was a political science major, and he had this to say about his course: It was bullshit.

Unlike wearing uniforms on a metal deck, of course.

I'm not totally certain whether he thought his course was bullshit because of its quality in FASS, or because it was cool to deride 'less tangible' subjects like that as bullshit. If it was the latter, as it seemed in the context of the conversation, I'm afraid I have to say tough luck dude. You relinquished non-conformity when you donned your uniform.

And, anyway, so many people say the same thing that it's about as cool as your grandma's granny undies. Try harder next time.

The simple truth is some people just can't handle the intangible stuff that we learn in the arts and social sciences. It can be hard indeed, and I'm feeling the uncertainty of the future. I'm stressed about that, but I don't wish I had done something else. If you guess that it's because people like me simply love what we are studying, you're right.

But it's not just that.

Being intangible means they don't guarantee straight answers. And, maybe by extension, it also means they don't guarantee straight paths. The things you learn may or may not be applicable in your jobs in the future, but since when is education just about learning technical skills anyway? Whether you make use of what you learn or not is up to you. And I think being enriched by your education in the arts and humanities would mean that you'd be a more complete person. That can get you places, as long as human beings are social creatures and as long as economic production remains a social activity. It might even mean you're flexible enough to fit into a variety of roles because your skills aren't fixed in a given technical area.

So I think there are two issues here. The first is local people's lack of ability to be imaginative and to accept more uncertainty. And the second is local students' and graduates' lack of ability to apply what they've learned in school except where it's pretty obvious (like in exams) – and that will certainly be problematic if your subject is the less tangible sort.

As a consequence, many would choose to take the more convenient path if they could, to do what gives them more certainty. Like joining the navy. And that, my friends, is the proof that uniforms don't prove anything.

What a wuss that guy was.