Jeff Zander-Informal Writing #7

Informal Writing #7

Belinda Pramar and Gordan Hutner are debating whether the humanities should be kept in college education or not. These next two paragraphs are their statements to each other about the subject.

Belinda Pramar:

I believe that in college education, more focus should be put on technical degrees rather than the humanities. Since our world is in need of more and more technically skilled workers, a shift in education is a very logical choice. As I say in my article, “I Wasted Four Years of My Life—Don’t Make the Same Mistake”, “every month we see entirely new kinds of products funded. These are inventions that we couldn't even conceive of 10 years ago”. This means that every month there grows a need for more and more technically skilled people, and that there is less of a need to be taught the languages or philosophy. If there is not a switch to more technically orientated education, then the kids coming out of college with humanities degrees will have nowhere to go for jobs.

I was a language major in college and I struggled with this same problem during my initial job search after college, as a state in my article. In many job interviews, the interviewer said, it’s great that you can speak different languages, but can you do anything else? Because of this, it took me a long time to find a job that suited me and when I finally did, the vast majority of the job dealt with technology. My question is, do we really want our children to go through the stress of trying to find a job when you and they know that they are underqualified?

Gordan Hutner:

I believe almost the exact opposite. There is a very real catastrophe happening in this country as we speak. This catastrophe is exactly what you are describing Ms. Pramar, a reduction in teaching the humanities in our higher level educational institutes. As I say in my article, “The Real Humanities Crisis is Happening at Public Universities”, “A democracy can only be as energetic as the minds of its citizens, and the questions fundamental to the humanities are also fundamental to a thoughtful life (What is the good? The nature of beauty? Do we need God?). What does it mean for a culture if these means of grappling with human experience become unavailable on public university campuses?” By this I mean to ask the question, how is our country going to benefit if we start phasing the humanities out of education? If we eliminate the humanities all together in this country, we will have a bunch of technically minded people running around with no imagination, not asking the hard questions, and our country will suffer for it.

As I say in my article, I have a plan to save our country from this fate. The plan I present in my article is a three step plan starting with providing a steady source of income to support humanities within universities. Next, I believe that universities should allow the programs to evaluate their curriculum without it being centered on how many students enroll or “generating grants”. Third, Universities must redesign their educational programs so that they include more humanities classes, not only classes required to graduate and earn a specific major.