“There will be more incentives to electrical engineers than French literature majors. There just will.” – Matt Bevin, Governor of KY
“I would not be studying history unless you have a job lined up.” – Jenean Hampton, Lt. Governor of KY
I am a double major in Biology and Chemistry, and I would probably identify with electrical engineers more than I do French Literature scholars. I like watching videos on mathematical proofs for fun, but I would need maximum willpower to get through an act of Shakespeare. Even as a science major, I believe that the recent rhetoric against humanities is very misplaced.
The common argument favoring areas like engineering over the humanities is monetary based. Having scientific or technical ability is far preferable because it can generate more money than a humanities major can. However, a career’s value to society is more than its raw economic output. Teachers and social workers make much less compared to doctors, but almost no one would question their value in making communities a better place.
I argue that the technological revolution has actually added value into humanities careers. An interconnected global economy and the internet age have made the world an increasingly smaller place. While robots and machines can learn hard technical skills, they really cannot replace human communication.
Any history major can tell you that people are really bad at first impressions. History has shown that whenever societies meet, mistrust and misunderstanding will follow, sometimes even leading to wars. People who study humanities study the human experience. Historians study it through the perspective of the past. Literature scholars study it through the perspective written work. Therefore, people who understand the humanities understand culture and people better than anyone else, and they are in the best position to facilitate proper communication and understanding among the world's people.
The humanities also have a direct application in the sciences. Ethics is a philosophical subject, and its importance in scientific research cannot be understated. The disregard of ethical principals is not just exclusive to Nazi research during the Holocaust as it has even occurred in the U.S. The Tuskegee syphilis experiment and the Willowbrook hepatitis study are prime examples of this. In the Tuskegee study, scientists refused to give or inform the patients that there were cures for their syphilis in order to prolong their study. The research subjects were all African American, and even the "progressive" scientists saw them more as animals than people. Willowbrook was a state school for children with intellectual disabilities, and scientists studied hepatitis in these children by intentionally giving them the virus claiming that it was justifiable since the children would most likely get it anyway. While both of these studies sound like something that would have happened in the far past, it might surprise you to know that they both continued as late as the 1970s. If ethics had been respected, neither of those tragedies would have happened.
While I can speak about the importance of humanities to the world and to science, I cannot give a personal anecdote about studying humanities because I am still a science major. However, Matt Bevin could certainly give a personal testimony to the value of a humanities degree. Yes, the same person who wants to subsidize the hard sciences over the humanities is himself an East Asian Studies major. He even studied abroad in Japan and became fluent in Japanese. Learning about another culture broadens the perspective of one’s own views, and this can certainly lead to a successful career—a United States governor for example.
