Can You Imagine A World Without The Humanities?

Robert Matz explained in his article, “The Myth of the English Major Barista”, that “there was a time when we understood that English majors, like other majors in the liberal arts, end up with far more than a salary — they develop the sense of ethics, history and culture, and the habits of open and reasoned deliberation, that the coffeehouse ideal represents and that are essential to functioning democracies, not to mention to lives well lived.”

I think that it’s commonly heard amongst anyone with a liberal arts degree that the degree is either worthless or it’s just a gateway into saying you’ll end up as a teacher or some kind of journalist. There is nothing wrong with these jobs but we all seem to be pigeonholed into one thing, which is where things get messy. These positions, funny enough, seem to all be interchangeable with each other when talking to the right set of people. All three of the articles spoke to this idea but Matz in particular hit on a point that resonated with me. The humanities, for me, has always been about the arts, history, and culture. To me, it’s the very thing that makes the world run. It seems this very idea is often glossed over, however. Like Matz said, that coffeehouse ideal is something that we value even if we don’t necessarily realize it.

Let’s take something very basic into consideration. If we stopped caring about the humanities, who would make the art we put in our house or something as mundane as a piece of furniture? Not to say that every single person doing these things has a humanities degree but the foundation for all of these things are inherintly based in the humanities, which is why its so important. If we went a step further and took into consideration something like a tv show, this point is made even more clear. How would you feel if you were told that the writers of your favorite show was fired because what they did ‘wasn’t really essential’. What do you predict would happen?

Senator Marco Rubio made a statement that was funny to me, but I think it proves my point. He questioned whether it was worthwhile for students to “study, you know–I don’t want to offend anybody–Roman history. Are there any Romans here?”. I can’t personally speak for any Roman History majors but if we were to assume that same person applied all of their knowledge to a massively popular movie, tv show, or book series that is revered by many, would we be as quick to write them off and question whether what they did in school was really important or not? What about if we were to say to that same person outside of the entertainment industry that their study of history doesn’t matter because “nobody cares about the Romans”? If this was the case then could we just as easily remove the subject from school entierly? If something as basic as this doesn’t matter, what other things revolving around history could we cut out? Wouldn’t it be strange to find out that any history that doesn’t involve America past the 60s has permanently been cut from curiculum with the justification of “well, does this really matter” in mind? (Say goodbye to any and all history references/memes that have been made ever because no one under the age of 20 would know what you’re talking about). This is an extreme but I think it’s something that can put things in perspective to a lot of people. I could keep going on but the point is that the argument of the importance of the humanities is something that some people only really consider when something’s directly being taken away from them.

There were also several mentions on salary and specifics on who usually ended up in low-skill jobs in the three articles. It’s been shown that these numbers aren’t as alarming as many would have you believe, however, and that although it’s often seen that humanities majors seem to have a fraction of a percent more of a likelihood to be hired into these positions, it does not account for the amount of people that end up in high paying jobs directly after their part-time job as a service worker. As someone that’s worked in retail since high school, I, and many others college students like me, see it as nothing more than a stepping stone. Career wise, I like to view my choice in pursuing English with the idea in mind that “The world is your oyster”. This was something that was stated in one of the articles too but as an English major, there is next to no field that I couldn’t get into if I really wanted to, which to me makes this one of the most versitile majors I could have picked. The constant existential dread/idea that i’ll never get a job I want still haunts me but again, that idea is based on the idea that every decision i’ve made from the point of declaring my major as a freshman has been nothing but wrong, which was stimulated by the same people that question why I’d pick a major like English to focus on. Still, I can’t really imagine myself as pursuing anything outside of the humanities. To do that would be setting myself up for failure.