In various countries in the last few months, a trend of cutting back money going to this area in local culture and universities has become obvious. Governments are clawing back funding and placing it into areas that they deem to be more economically fruitful. These include most notably the sciences and the effort for these countries to create unique selling points through technology. The hope is that these measures will create new jobs and allow these countries to once again flourish.
Well pardon my obvious bias, but this is absolute nonsense. How can anyone possibly make a judgement on what projects and areas will become profitable when they are in their genesis? In fact, massive 'economic worth' has been gained through breakthroughs in the humanities, that bring in academics from all corners of the world, sell books and give more monetary value to a country's culture.
This is a fine argument that many more intelligent than I will be able to properly mount and pursuit. I find myself reluctant to give my full backing to it however, as it engages these governments in their own discourse. That is truly what is at stake here, a fundamental misunderstanding of the importance of the humanities. People are taught another method of thinking. Whether you agree or not with a certain thinker is almost irrelevant in many academic circles, the important point is how you create an argument to defend your position. Thinking outside formulaic scientific discourse is so important that an assassination of the humanities amounts to a direct attack on our ability to think and articulate new things.
This is not an attack on the humanities, it is an attack on Humanity.
-The English Student
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