Making Leaders More Human

The case for humanities in a STEM-focused world

A new policy

In Australia, the government is about to more than double the cost to students for humanities subjects at university, while slashing fees for certain, so-called job-ready subjects, mostly in the sciences.

This despite the fact that almost all the government ministers who planned this policy change majored in humanities during their (long-ago) university years.

Also despite the fact that employers, business groups, universities and members of the arts and journalism communities have spoken eloquently and passionately about the vital importance of the skills that humanities subjects teach.

Skills like critical thinking and analysis, communication and debate, and building persuasive arguments.

Skills like thinking around a topic to see it from different perspectives, putting yourself in the shoes of others with totally different lived experiences, learning empathy and the far-reaching consequences that small actions may have on those you might never expect.

Surely these skills can never fall out of usefulness?

Skewed priorities

Arts and humanities have never received the value in Australian society that sport has received. The arts of all kinds are consistently underfunded and its practitioners belittled. Debaters and those considered ‘arty-farty’ or ‘over-educated’ or ‘toffee-nosed librarians’ are said to be out of touch, not real Aussies, intellectual elitists. We condemn those who ask hard questions, teach us about ourselves and represent us to the wider world.

Now, there is no doubt that science, math, technology and engineering are extremely important in our increasingly tech-reliant world.

But the human world is still full of — well, humans.

That includes you

People who need to be cared for, mentally and physically, from infancy through to old age. People who need counselling and mentoring, not just nursing and medicating. People who need to be entertained, to be challenged and stimulated, to think about the world around them and their role in making that world either better or worse, fairer or less fair, safer or more dangerous, accepting or intolerant, kinder or meaner.

Music, visual arts, writing, literature, philosophy, sociology — the list goes on. Some of these have been considered essential components of education since education was invented.

Humanities graduates get jobs just as easily and successfully as STEM graduates. That has been proven. The difference is that STEM graduates tend to get jobs that directly reflect the studies they undertook. Humanities graduates can be found in all industries, at all levels, doing all kinds of things. A graduate who majored in communication, minored in Japanese and studied editing might be found creating website copy, building social media marketing campaigns, writing articles for international companies or teaching English. Someone who studied creative writing, philosophy and human behavior might find themselves designing recreation programs in aged care, hosting podcasts or writing safe work procedures for small businesses.

It’s harder to identify what components of a humanities graduate’s degree actually led to their paid work.

But how is being versatile and capable of applying skills to a variety of contexts a bad thing for employment prospects? (hint: it’s not. On the contrary. Humanities graduates can weather storms of industry-specific unemployment much better because of this versatility).

Rather than punishing people for choosing to study humanities, for choosing up-in-the-air, head-in-the-clouds, impractical ideas training over down-and-dirty, mechanical, algorithmic, scientific training, why can’t we acknowledge the value of both?

Why can’t we see that blending science with humanities gets us graduates who are strong in critical thinking and science literacy?

Humanities has so much to offer

If STEM and humanities were mandatory components of all degrees, how would STEM be improved?

• Science would not be hamstrung by scientists who are so focused on a small area of expertise that they can’t see how other disciplines or other viewpoints might inform and improve their projects and lead to better results. They might also be better at communicating their findings and gaining societal buy-in for vital programs such as renewable energy and the phasing out of plastics.
• Coders, internet programmers and designers and real-world engineers would be better able to design tools that suit a diverse range of people rather than people who are just like them (mostly white, English speaking and male).

Humanities helps other disciplines to be better.

If humanities subjects cost more, the people who study them will be the ones who can afford to. If history is anything to go by, this is the pool from which tomorrow’s leaders will be drawn. So, the government policy will promote a wealthy elite of leaders, when it really needs no more extra help in this regard.

It will also restrict the number of people who develop the critical thinking skills that are more important today than ever before.

Asking questions and discussing possibilities, trying things out for oneself, phrasing what went wrong and what could be improved for next time, pondering possibilities and throwing ideas out there — all these things are typically humanities ideas.

And we need them.

Thanks for reading!

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