ROOTING FOR HUMANITIES

This graduation season, we’d like to offer a little advice to Texans preparing for college. As you pick a major, remember that the humanities matter, perhaps more now than ever. Yes, we know we’re at the dawn of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), when technology is replacing millions of jobs and everything from big data to biotechnology is changing the way we think about work and education. We also know the response to these changes is often to prune humanities courses in favour of technical training programmes. But we believe this is a mistake. In a time of great disruption, the humanities, and the perspective and analytical skills they provide, will become more important. Technical and vocational schools are crucial, as is job training for 4IR. But that should not come at the expense of a liberal-arts education. Classes in literature, philosophy, history, religion, political science, languages and the arts are essential. The very notion of what it is to be a free citizen in a republic was irst formed then expanded by the works of Plato, Shakespeare, Smith, Jefferson, de Tocqueville, Whitman, Dickenson, Du Bois and Baldwin. As philosophy professor Scott Samuelson wrote in a 2014 article “Why I Teach Plato to Plumbers” for The Atlantic, “We should strive to be a society of free people, not simply one of well-compensated managers and employees.”

The Dallas Morning News