|
 Peg's
Polemic
Every
month, philosopher Peg Tittle casts off the calm, measured and qualified
style of her profession to deliver her opinionated and impassioned
column, exclusively for the TPM philosophy café...
Number
30. Useless
Humanities
That
a humanities degree is useless for the workforce says more about
our workforce than about the degree. It says that we value, that
we'll pay for, someone to provide cars, electric toothbrushes, and
running shoes. But not beauty and insight.
It
doesn't have to be that way. Imagine a world in which companies
had, along with finance departments to look after their money and
maintenance departments to keep things clean, art departments -
to make the place beautiful. Municipalities could have art departments
too, right alongside their legal departments and transit departments
- to keep the city beautiful. Or entertaining. Or edifying. Depending
on your view of the role of art.
Provinces
could have, in addition to the Ministries of Environment, Energy,
and Revenue, a Ministry of Music. Yes, of course, there is a Ministry
of Culture and Recreation, and that's close. And there are provincial
arts councils. Close again. But they're just administrative bodies:
there are no practicing artists on staff whose job it is to do
their art. (The Ministry of Environment, on the other hand, has,
for example, biologists on staff whose job it is to do biology.)
We'd
have municipal and provincial concert halls and theatres and galleries
with full complements of staff - i.e., full-time paid musicians,
playwrights, actors, painters, providing a year-round schedule of
daily events. Attendance would be free of charge, just like driving
on the roads.
Imagine
a world in which video stores had as many videos of dance performances
as of war movies. A world in which poets and short story writers
and novelists read in movie theatres. And people paid to get in.
As many people. Hell, our lit grads might make a living!
Imagine
a world in which we valued knowledge about ourselves as much as
knowledge about our money. And we paid philosophers, psychologists,
and sociologists as much as we pay financial advisors.
Imagine
a PR department hiring a historian to manage the information, to
develop true, coherent archives. With intelligent analysis.
We
have concert halls, libraries and museums. We have jobs for musicians,
poets and historians. But we have so many more banks and stores
and restaurants. We thus have so many more jobs for business majors
(the managers and the accountants) and non-majors (the clerks and
waiters), for people whose raison d'etre is to make or serve profit
- not beauty, joy, insight, or understanding.
Is
it truly supply and demand? Do we really have the world we want
to have? Yes and no. If we asked the philosophers and psychologists
and sociologists, we'd know that we want what we're used to - so
supply creates demand as much as, if not more than, demand creates
supply. And we'd know that pressure can modify our wants - customs
and marketing strategies can compromise our autonomy if we don't
pay attention. To our real desires, our real goals. To our joys,
to our hopes. (Every now and then, I think things may be different
in Europe. But how would I know - it's not the sort of thing that
the U.S. or even Canada puts on the news. Around and around...)
And
anyway, so what? So what if a humanities degree is useless in the
workforce. Not all value need be tangled up with the economy, with
business, with the workplace. (I think you've mistaken your job
for your life.) Not everything has to have a price. Not everything
need be, or can be, sold. Or bought. Some things just are.
(The appreciation/recognition of) beauty and joy. (The cultivation
of) curiosity and interest. (The achievement of) exhilaration and
understanding.
.
Peg's
Polemic will next be updated mid July 2003
Previous
polemics
29.
28.
27.
26.
25.
24.
23.
22.
21.
20.
19.
18.
17.
16.
15.
14.
13.
12.
11.
10.
9.
8.
7.
6.
5.
4.
3.
2.
1.
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