Humanities Literary Studies 11 Post

Studying the Humanities is Undervalued in Society

In society, studying and pursuing the Humanities are generally thought of as being unimportant, when really the backbones of our society rely on the fundamental skills developed in these areas. Throughout my life, I have always been told that the importance of the Humanities are not as important and cannot be valued as high as other areas such as in sciences, engineering, and business. However, after reading these articles and watching these videos, that illustrate the importance of the Humanities, I realize that the influence of others has created a bias in my thoughts on this area. Moreover, this is an example that demonstrates the importance of the Humanities as a major part of them is critically thinking and developing your own ideas while ignoring the opinions of those around you. In Mandy Pipher’s article Devaluing a Humanities Education Ultimately Devalues Humanity Itself, she explains that “a good English education teaches: critical thinking; analysis of language; insight into the minds of people from different places and times”. With this in mind, the areas in which these skills can be used are not limited and can be used in basically any field. Furthermore, this is a strong contributing factor to why I think that the Humanities are essential to our democracy and society. Although the impacts of the humanities are important, I wouldn’t say that they are more important than other areas such as the sciences. In particular, the Humanities teach important skills such as how to close read and critically analyze something, whereas the sciences focus on practical ideas that are crucial to the physical health, well-being, and lives of people and the world around us. To a certain extent, the skills developed in a Humanities education can be carried over and used in the sciences, but they are not required or necessary to be an effective scientist. On the other hand, the Humanities are important because they focus on important areas such as language and expressing oneself through things such as music, pictures, writing, and speaking. In Margarita G’s video The Dead Poets Society: Why we (don’t) study the humanities, she conveys the idea that “In our current society, the study of literature is often portrayed both positively and negatively as a kind of mental hedonism, studying beautiful texts simply for one’s own personal growth and enjoyment”. I agree with this statement in the sense that I have witnessed this negative mindset that she talks about, and I disagree with the negative mindset. The purpose of studying literature is for much more than pleasure or self-indulgence, it is to learn about and develop the important transferable skills from studying the Humanities and literature. Overall, I believe that studying the Humanities is a far from frivolous concept, but the overall importance of the skills and impacts they have in our society and democracy are around equal to but not exceeding the importance of other educational areas.

 

 

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