We should start taking education in the humanities seriously again. A hundred years ago, students who graduated high school, and certainly university, would have a good grasp of the humanities such as philosophy, foreign languages, religion and literature. In everyday life, the well-educated could reference great works from Machiavelli, Shakespeare, Plato, or Kant. Additionally, university graduates would speak at least one or two foreign languages with a decent amount of competency (I know this continues to be true outside of most anglophone countries).
Today, we only pretend to teach these subjects, because we stopped seeing the value in teaching them in the developed world. To an extent, I understand this. In an increasingly technical world, we’ve placed an enormous amount of emphasis on the STEM fields. Yet, most people graduating from high school and university won’t work in STEM, but all of the students will have to deal with life.
An education in the humanities is the closest we can get to imparting wisdom and stimulating creative and critical thinking. You see, the humanities, particularly philosophy and literature offer a cheat code to life. The great philosophers and writers in history already addressed most of the situations we’ll encounter in life.
Today, in the West, I often see that the youth suffer a type of paralysis in action (or inaction). A lack of self-assurance, mental ruggedness, and a great deal of anxiety in dealing with situations they’ve never encountered before. We could give them a bigger boost in confidence in everyday life by actually teaching them what we pretend to teach.
I have appreciated having an okay grasp of algebra the few times in life I have needed to solve for “X.” But I’ve suffered from a broken heart, or had difficulty in making a career decision, or needed foreign language skills far more often in life.
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