Rationally Speaking #36 - Why Should We Care About Teaching the Humanities?

Rationally Speaking Podcast

New York City Skeptics

Society & Culture, Skepticism, Science, Philosophy

4.6 • 787 Ratings

🗓️ 5 June 2011

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Universities all around the country are closing programs in the humanities, at least in part because of the increasing widespread attitude that higher education should be treated as a business, and that programs that bring in money in the form of high tuitions from students and external grants are to be prioritized. SUNY Albany, for example, announced in the Fall of 2010 that the departments of French, Italian, Classics, Russian and Theater Arts were being eliminated. So, what is the point of studying languages, literature, history or philosophy? Can we, and perhaps more importantly, should we quantify their value? Can we have universities that focus only on science and marketable skills?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Rationally speaking is a presentation of New York City skeptics dedicated to promoting critical thinking, skeptical inquiry, and science education.
0:22.6	For more information, please visit us at NYCCEPTICs.org.
0:30.9	Welcome to Rationally Speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense.
0:40.5	I'm your host, Massimo Piliucci, and with me as always is my co-host, Julia Galev.
0:45.0	Julia, what are we going to talk about today?
0:47.1	Massimo, in this episode, we'll be talking about the increasingly embattled position of humanities departments and universities.
0:56.2	So that includes literature and literature theory, classics, history, philosophy, languages, and the arts. Enrollment in those
1:02.6	departments has been steadily falling, and a lot of universities have been slashing their humanities
1:08.0	budgets. And in some cases, the humanities departments have
1:11.6	actually been cut altogether. And that's what happened at SUNY Albany, State University of
1:16.3	New York at Albany last fall. The president decided to cut the departments of classics,
1:20.7	theater, French, Russian, and Italian. And so there's been a lot of debate.
1:26.8	I know, I know, I can see you're livid.
1:30.3	So the public debate in the media and on the blogs and so on about the what should be done about the crisis in the humanities, a lot of it has centered around how to justify the role of the humanities in the modern university.
1:48.5	And the humanities are in a relatively unique position in terms of justifying their place at universities, arguably at least, Masma.
1:55.2	I suppose you could disagree with me if you like.
1:57.1	But the way I would describe the situation is that science departments can point to technologies or discoveries that are generated thanks to them that are clearly useful to society in the world.
2:09.4	And then you have these more practical applied departments like finance or law or the pre-med classes. And those are clearly useful to the students themselves in terms of helping them find a job that they want.
2:20.2	Whereas the humanities departments
2:21.6	can't necessarily point to either of those benefits.
2:24.4	So the situation is a little bit more complicated.
2:27.9	So we're going to talk about the crisis facing the humanities
	...

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