Recently, one of my friends made a joke about how becoming a humanities major is a waste of time because you can’t make money. As an English major, I wasn’t really happy when she said this. For one thing, it’s inaccurate. There are so many things you can do with a humanities major and making money with a degree like this is possible. Also, it doesn’t take into account the many reasons people choose their field study besides money. All areas of study are valid and important. Yes, STEM saves lives, but in its own way, so can the humanities.
Everyone has a favorite TV show, book, song, movie, play, or piece of art. Maybe you watch/read/listen to it when you’re tired or upset. What would you do without that release? Entertainment enriches our lives in countless different ways. In addition to being an escape, it allows us to see ourselves within fictional characters and learn about new perspectives. When you watch movies with your friends, art is bringing people you love together. When a little girl reads a Supergirl comic book, art is empowering her. When you cry listening to a sad song, art is accessing your empathy. None of these things would happen without humanities and arts majors.
Humanities people also do more than create art and entertainment. We study history to learn about the mistakes humans have made in the past, which can help to prevent them from happening again. We read literature to understand the countless aspects of the human experience. We learn languages to communicate with the people and cultures around us. We think, read, and write critically. We do all of these things with an interdisciplinary mindset, crossing the knowledge from different classes to help us understand the world and human race around us.
None of this should be considered frivolous or unimportant. All students and subjects should be valued for what they are good at and interested in. It’s important to recognize the importance of each and to make sure we don’t try to value one type of knowledge more highly than another. After all, even though humanities are important, so is science and math and business and all the other disciplines. As a society, we need doctors and computer scientists and accountants and CEOs. But it can be easy to forget that we also desperately need the arts, that arts form our culture and our lives.
You may be reading this and wondering why I chose to write a whole article responding to one thoughtless, but well-meaning, joke (especially considering I make similar self-deprecating jokes all the time). But this is a deeper issue. Anyone who chooses to purse humanities or the arts knows that people are constantly devaluing the work that you put into your education or poking fun at your chosen field. Everyone has heard of public schools facing budget cuts where arts programs are abandoned, despite the research that shows schools with arts programs have more successful students and a lower rate of dropouts. President Trump has even proposed de-funding the National Endowment for the arts, the National Endowment for Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, despite the many reasons he should not do that. Personally, I’m tired of having to explain to people why they need to recognize the importance of the arts in the success of our society, as well as our students.