Humanities Express

From the Dean

"Experience is the best teacher, and a fool will learn from no other." I can still hear this proverb being spoken by my favorite teacher who voiced it frequently during my high school years. She invoked this bit of folk wisdom to remind us that our youthful arrogance was no match for her experience in and of the world as she tried to persuade us that our future success depended on mastery of subjects like English, history, foreign language, and even math and science. Despite her best efforts to convince us of the intrinsic value of our liberal arts classes, her recitation of relevant personal experience tales did little to erase our youthful skepticism or our knowledge that there were no jobs out there called English, history, math, or most other liberal arts fields. Our belief in the inherent uselessness of these subjects made it difficult for her or anyone else to convince us that there was an organic connection between the study of the liberal arts and success in real-life occupations—the kinds that provided our parents with paychecks. Despite the seeming futility of her efforts, she persevered in trying to instill in us the importance of seeing our educational endeavors as a pathway rather than a gateway to meaningful employment.

I often remember that teacher, that time, and a younger self as I field questions from high school students who visit the College of Humanities as potential majors. As dedicated administrators and teachers, we try to impress these students with the quality of our programs and the academic opportunities that we can offer them while on campus. However, we cannot help but be aware of the fact that behind most of the questions that we get from students are concerns about the career possibilities for someone with a liberal arts degree. Although most of the students who express interest in pursuing a major in a humanities field enjoy reading, or digging into human history, or exploring other cultures or linguistic complexities, they often find the decision to commit difficult. In making the decision, they often must convince not only their anxious parents but also themselves that the intellectual and personal benefits of pursing a degree in a field with no obvious career path are worth their investment of time and money.

What all of this means for those of us who believe strongly in the value of the liberal arts is that we must do a better job of making the case to students and parents that the future of those who receive degrees in the liberal arts can be both personally enriching and the foundation for rewarding careers in numerous fields. The case for the liberal arts is not difficult to make. As scholars and teachers, we seek to instill in students a respect for critical thinking, the development of interpretive skills, and a reverence for the power of imagination. We understand that in the world beyond the university, students will need conceptual skills and intellectual habits that will enable them to negotiate a future in which ever-changing technologies, advanced scientific understandings, unprecedented globalizing forces as well as environmental change and social reorientation will be the norm. In the humanities, for instance, we take for granted that well-developed aesthetic sensibilities—the capacity to appreciate art, literature, drama, and music—are intrinsically valuable, but we also believe that students who have well-honed critical abilities and interpretative skills will be tomorrow's most effective information managers, purveyors of ideas, and demystifiers of the ideologies born in and of the age of technology.

We also believe that the students that we educate today will be the ones with the skills and orientation necessary to pose critical questions and will have the zeal to pursue creative alternatives, options, and possibilities. We know that the liberal arts have the potential to provide all of our students with the power to become independent thinkers and to develop intellectual habits that will make them lifelong learners. In the end, they will leave us with a strong sense of what constitutes the best in humanity: an ability to empathize with diverse others; a passion to serve just causes; a facility to discern the difference between the worthwhile and the ephemeral; a concern with how to ensure social justice in a world of escalating inequalities; and the courage to promote tolerance, compassion, and understanding in the world.

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