Value of Humanities education

Dr Ruwantissa Abeyratne

The relevance of educating our children in the humanities is fast receding, giving way to undue emphasis on economic literacy and business education. Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago Martha N Nussbaum, in her book ‘Not for Profit - Why Democracy Needs the Humanities’ (Princeton University Press: 2010) states: The humanities and arts play a central role in the history of democracy and yet today many parents are ashamed of children who study literature or art.

Literature and philosophy have changed the world, but parents all over the world are more likely to fret if their children are financially illiterate than if their training in the humanities is deficient.

These words echo the sage observation in 1917 of Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore who said: History has come to a stage when the moral man is more and more giving way, almost without knowing it, to make room for the commercial man, the man of limited purpose.

This process, aided by the wonderful progress in science, is assuming gigantic proportion and power, causing the upset of mans moral balance, obscuring his human side under the shadow of soulless organization.

Modern society

There are two issues in determining the value of these statements: the first is, what is the contribution of the humanities to modern society; and the second is, how do the humanities affect a modern democracy. In this context, a modern democracy has to be defined.

As Karl Popper said in his book ‘The Open Society and Its Enemies’ published at the time of World War II, modern democracy is not about who rules but is about how a State rules. In other words, the mechanism of checks and balances is the crux of what separates a modern democracy from a dictatorship. Therefore a modern democracy revolves round the nature of State rule, which can be distilled into the most fundamental concept of good leadership.

A good leader is one who influences the behaviour of other people toward group goals in a way that fully respects their freedom. A simplistic definition of leadership is that it is the art of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common goal. Put even more simply, a leader is the inspiration and director of the action.

He or she is the person in the group that possesses the combination of personality and skills that makes others want to follow his or her direction.

Peter Drucker, the Harvard management guru, defines a leader as someone who has followers... and goes on to say to gain followers requires influence. Warren Bennis is of the view that leadership is a function of knowing yourself, having a vision that is well communicated, building trust among colleagues, and taking effective action to realize your own leadership potential. Kenneth Boulding says that good leaders are made not born. If you have the desire and willpower, you can become an effective leader. Good leaders develop through a never-ending process of self-study, education, training and experience.

Value-systems

Political leadership involves all the above elements, but must, in essence involve empathy, respect and understanding. A political leader has also, according to Prem Misir, to combine two behaviourial styles the first being empathy and concern relating to people, which includes respecting people and developing mutual trust. The second is concern with project-completion tasks.

Some studies have shown that leaders are effective when they combine both behaviours. Misir states that political leaders have to not only press the flesh but also be knowledgeable about issues and have the capacity to resolve these issues.

A good leader can attenuate values from the humanities which bring to a society the elements of empathy and concern and helps build respect and mutual trust.

In this context Nussbaum refers to a greedy desire and aggression in modern society that makes people veer from respect for democracy towards economic success. She quotes Mahatma Gandhi who believed that mutual respect and equality in people must essentially stem from self-realization attained through an inner struggle by each person.

A major feature of humanities which brings to bear its incalculable value is that humanities is the study of values in and of themselves.

Humanities pose a challenge for the skeptics to understand what is often taken for granted, namely, the fundamental outreach and importance of languages which bind people and societies together and literatures and other narratives/texts, as well as philosophical and historical considerations which incontrovertibly frame human consciousness and intellectual activity.

Words and narratives have power, enable us to give meaning and are rooted in culture, beliefs and value-systems. For example, democratic achievements such as the abolition of slavery, universal suffrage for women and the eradication of racial segregation and bigotry, which are achievements of modern democracy, were begotten by a cohesive articulation of values expressed through various texts including fictional works, erudite essays, legal treatises and other uses of rhetoric which eventually resulted in entire societies being convinced of the need to change their beliefs and outworn fetishes and value systems, purblind mental models, governance and modes of production.

Intellectual debate

Scholarship in humanities is achieved by approaching knowledge in a certain way that juxtaposes a close interpretive examination of languages, meanings, values, culture and aesthetics. Above all, the humanities question social and political myopia using such media as fiction, music, cinema, drama or intellectual debate and bring to bear the fundamental premise that we can live in a multicultural world in harmony, mutual respect and understanding.

The deep-seated empathy and incisive analysis provided by the humanities help people to see themselves as others see them and understand their problems. Humanities provide realization of others problems and needs and help in building capacity for concern for others in their misfortunes; promote racial harmony and responsibility to be accountable for ones actions. As Socrates observed: an unexamined life is not worth living. Within this context, the humanities provide a sound foundation for successful democracy and can no longer be impugned as an expensive irrelevancy.