The Importance of Studying the Humanities for an Individual and Society

I vehemently believe that studying the Humanities is integral to our development into a healthy society and continuing democracy. Studying the Humanities allows for the development of the ability to critically evaluate writing and language used by other people. Being able to analyze such things are important to our ability to filter out false information and make educated opinions based on the information we are given and realize whether or not we are missing any integral information. This idea is supported by Margarita G, who states, “The Humanities teach close reading and critical analysis, and these are powerful ethical tools, genuinely threatening to the status quo because they are transferable. If you can read a poem critically, or a movie critically, then you can read a newspaper article or an advertisement or a contract critically. You can read a teacher or politician. You can read information or propaganda. You can even read your family and your culture and your own deeply held beliefs. In other words, studying the Humanities gives you the tools to take apart whatever it is you’re told. Not just to appreciate the rhetoric, but to actively see through it.” in her video The Dead Poets Society: Why we (don’t) study the humanities. The struggle with studying the Humanities is that it is not always taught well, and that can lead to misconceptions on the importance of this line of education. As explained by Mandy Pipher in her article Devaluing a Humanities Education Ultimately Devalues Humanity Itself, “When done right, what students learn from a good English education is how to think and how to parse language. They learn how to identify nuance and complexity in subtle messaging. They learn about the complicated interactions between words, personal experience, and truth.” But that relies on a good English education, which is not always a guarantee, because it relies on the teacher having and being able to teach those skills, and then on the student’s ability to learn from that person’s particular teaching style and their want to learn. While these things do not always need to line up perfectly to get the point across, it is very easy for them to not line up at all and for nothing to be taught because the student cannot learn. At that point, the student becomes far more susceptible to falling for propaganda, confirmation bias and believing cherry picked information without a second thought because they do not know how to identify and work against it. That is the worst-case scenario, and why I believe a studying the Humanities is entirely integral to our society becoming accepting of differences between individuals, and being able to transform into a true, healthy democracy.

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