Justifying the humanities

The NYTimes published an article a few days ago about the declining value of a humanities degree in a time of recession: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/books/25human.html. As usual, they stick to Yale and Columbia when looking for admininstrators to interview (note to the Times: please stop that). Hordes of people have posted to the blog, either to decry the uselessness or irrelevance of humanities study as it is currently practiced in US colleges, or, frequently, to defend the humanities something that magically "trains the mind" and "makes life worth living."

I've never understood that romantic celebration of literature, the arts, or the "great thinkers" as stepping stones to a more fully examined life. Most canonical writing has absolutely nothing to do with my life: I don't read Virginia Woolf for insights into my family relationships, I just read it because it's aesthetically and formally interesting. I study music history and music theory, but it illuminates my auditory experiences, nothing more. I share some people's worry that humanities disciplines (literatures, history, art and music, religion) are just arenas in which the privileged and wealthy can afford to play.

For me, English, the flagship discipline of the humanities, stands out in the list as being demonstrably worthy of funding, societal support, and a steady stream of majors. My own justification for the study of English literature at the university level-- and consequently, for studying English at the graduate level in order to teach university English classes someday-- involves the relationship between literature and language. The discipline of English is pedagogically crucial for all of us. It promotes a highly advanced form of literacy, which is necessary for skillful participation in our public sphere. Students, using a basic canon of literary texts as fodder, get to practice close reading; they grapple with complicated writerly techniques such as metaphor and allusion; they deal with forms of the English language from various historical periods, and learn something about the importance of historical context for understanding any document; they make long textual arguments, with some awareness of other textual authorities. All of this familiarizes someone with reading fast and well, and with asking, repeatedly, the questions why and how.

I still think that English, and the other humanities, are intellectually stimulating in their own right. But they've always also felt like an indulgence, a guilty pleasure enabled by upper-middle-class parents. I think the literacy argument for the relevance of English literature exposes that it does indeed have practical benefits.