Nowadays, with the growing technocratization and industrialization of global society, the significance of education in arts and humanities is gradually becoming overlooked, since the most radical materialists claim that the knowledge of Shakespeare or Milton is not likely to help in treating serious diseases or gaining appropriate income. This position is to some extent justified: studying arts or humanities for the sake of those sciences (not for personal growth or professional development) is naturally an altruistic and enthusiastic intention, yet it doesn’t really contribute to social change. Nevertheless, these disciplines can bring not merely abstractive benefit to the certain society, but also activate and support the industrial and technological development. More importantly, arts and humanities provide basic cultural knowledge about social and historical context, and therefore constitute the foundation of education and practice.
First of all, in order to improve the understanding of the area, it is important to identify and articulate the main purpose of arts and humanities. Social sciences are generally aimed at rethinking and reassessing human experiences, drawing interrelations between various social phenomena and therefore making appropriate recommendations for the future. Adams and Goldbard distinguish several purposes of arts: “The arts can awaken curiosity, present new perspectives, and convey different ways of understanding our environment and ourselves. Through the active engagement of the arts, we think and we feel. Arts, therefore, are at the very core of learning” (Adams and Goldbard, 1990, p.67). In my opinion, arts and humanities are inseparable disciplines: art education provides a powerful methodological basis for social or political research and both disciplines finally integrate into social ‘ethos’, the complex of norms and principles of coexistence within human society. Arts and social sciences, as Glidden (1990) believes, are the major fields which allow both conscious and unconscious progress of human creativity, inventiveness and personal flexibility – the scholar therefore claims that the two academic areas are influential opinion and personality-shapers, which implicitly and naturally construct the foundation of social life.
In response to the statement about the need for discontinuation of arts and humanities education in colleges and universities, I would like to refer to E. Hirsch (1987), who writes that any training is useless without proper cultural literacy teaching. The scholar criticizes contemporary education system in terms of the lack of background information and contextual learning. Hirsch holds that without the context of the certain text, its content is not likely to be understood clearly, especially by college or university students, who still haven’t obtained appropriate life experience and are incapable of distinguishing between moral and social categories (such as ‘right/wrong’; ‘constructive/destructive’; ‘helpful/useless’). This background knowledge in fact determines and constitutes cultural literacy, since it is the main stipulation for successful communication. In addition, the scholar claims that Americans should receive this background knowledge beginning from.
Hirsch writes: “Research has shown that reading doesn’t follow and orderly pattern, as used to be thought. We don’t first identify words, then word meanings, next combine word meanings to get the meanings of sentences and finally combine sentence meanings to get the meaning of the whole text…[…] This model […]presents a highly misleading picture of the way we understand texts” (Hirsch, 1987, p.33). After Hirsch’s experiments, the research suggests that those individuals, who are not given background information, do not understand texts appropriately, i.e. perceive them being in the state of illiteracy.
Furthermore, according to the writing, cultural literacy is determined by the depth of understanding of one’s national culture, but in daily routines cultural literacy can be exemplified by a simple situation: a person takes a newspaper and comprehends everything they are reading about. Profound understanding of mainstream culture is an important feature each American should possess and make use of, and this is equally associated with messages from other cultures – in terms of our modern world, information about Iraq war and Muslim world in general. Intercultural communication thus should include primarily the knowledge about the context and the nature of the culture (ibid). In this sense, all empirical sciences (business, economy, medicine) are to great extent reinforced through incorporating arts and humanities into curricula: historical and ethical issues exist in each specialty. Moreover, without proper knowledge of history of specialty and its ethical concerns, an individual graduates from college or university practically unprepared, since he/she is literally unaware of the basic rules and principles of professional performance (Dannerbeck, 1989).
Responding to the statement concerning the low connection between arts, humanities and objective reality (e.g., “reading Shakespeare won’t help anyone cure cancer; reading philosophy won’t help anyone get a job”), I would like to take historiographic approach to the arousal and growth of empirical sciences. Arts and humanities in fact were the ‘initial’ scholarly disciplines, which gave birth to the other fields: technology, law and business (Adams and Goldbard, 1990): it is commonly known that Greek philosophy was borrowed by Romans and consequently became a core of Roman legal issues and legislation, the studies of famous political and social scientists (like Rousseau, Hobbes and Marx) determined the sunrise of economics and business in more contemporary meaning (Glidden, 1990). Furthermore, Descartes, an outstanding thinker and philosopher, was also proficient in mathematics and physics, and more importantly, insisted on the need of providing each learner with the philosophical background of the discipline. In addition, Clark (1990) proves that arts and humanities go beyond the ‘raw’ theorization or conceptualization: “They are in their different ways more directly connected to the actual texture and pattern and flux of human experience. They are less abstract in certain respects than the sciences, as well as most social sciences. They deal more immediately with the visible, audible, and palpable — with representations of life as we know it, or as it might be, or as it might at least be imagined” (Clark, 1990, p.55). In fact, social sciences like sociology, psychology and social work, as well as most political academic disciplines, are research- and integration-oriented, because increasing mutualism and convergence among social and technological sciences: for instance, sociopsychological approaches are used to explain organizational culture and dynamics, social work is close-knit to health care specialties, since both are aimed at normalizing one’s physical and social functioning, political science and law are in many aspects indivisible, since the scholarly inquiry into political atmosphere determines the modification and adjustment of legislation.
As for the roles of arts in education, they provide students with the most essential abilities, applicable both in the classroom and at the workplace: critical, logical and creative thinking, effective writing and communication, academic analysis, precise cognition and comprehension (Douthit, 1991). I content to the fact that mere reading philosophy is not likely to support an individual in labor market competition, but through understanding and synthesizing basic philosophical principles the person can enhance self-awareness, the knowledge of social order, so that he or she feels and appears more confident and assertive during the interview with potential employer.
Furthermore, arts and humanities are an introduction into the universal developmental framework, since they allow the identification of one’s capacities and finding the balance between the student’s talents and interests. Individuals vary in terms of the qualitative intellectual characteristics. “The intelligences include: linguistic (found in a poet), logical-mathematical (found in a scientist), musical (found in a composer), spatial (found in an architect), bodily-kinesthetic (found in a dancer), interpersonal (found in a leader), and intrapersonal (found in an actor)” (Glidden, 1990, p.11). As one can presume, human beings are cognitively attracted to diverse fields, so the implementation of the project concerning the eradication of arts and humanities from college curricula is likely to result in the low satisfaction with education, and literal exclusion of the individuals, who do not possess the essential logical or ‘spatial’ thinking. On the contrary, liberal arts education provides harmonious academic and professional evolution and finally shapes healthy and ambitious personality, who realizes his/her own value and effectiveness.
To sum up, arts and humanities constitute the roots of the most modern educational fields, so it would be unwise the teaching of such sciences to dilatants or “part-time instructors from industry”, who do not possess expanded and integrated knowledge in philosophy, literature, psychology and sociology, and thus are likely to turn out incapable of explaining the interdependence between the past human experiences and the current situation. As a result, social development will be thrown into stagnation, because scientific inventions cannot be made without analytical and creative approach to the research field.
Works cited
Adams, D. and Goldbard, A. Crossroads: Reflections on the Politics of Culture Talmadge, CA: DNA Press, 1990.
Clark, W. H., Jr. Literature, education, and cultural literacy. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 1990 24(1): 49-56.
Dannerbek, F. J. Contemporary European studies: A model for interdisciplinary studies. ADFL Bulletin, 1898, 21(1): 21-23.
Douthit, N. The dialectical commons of western civilization and global/world history. History Teacher, 1991, 24(3): 293-305.
Glidden, R. Finding the balance. Design for Arts in Education, 1990, 91(5): 2-13.
Hirsch, E. D. Jr. Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. Houghton Mifflin, Boston. 1987.
