David Brooks calls for a new emphasis on a classical liberal arts education in difficult times, instead of the pursuit of career-oriented professions:
“Studying the humanities will give you a familiarity with the language of emotion. In an information economy, many people have the ability to produce a technical innovation: a new MP3 player. Very few people have the ability to create a great brand: the iPod. Branding involves the location and arousal of affection, and you can’t do it unless you are conversant in the language of romance.“Studying the humanities will give you a wealth of analogies. People think by comparison — Iraq is either like Vietnam or Bosnia; your boss is like Narcissus or Solon. People who have a wealth of analogies in their minds can think more precisely than those with few analogies. If you go through college without reading Thucydides, Herodotus and Gibbon, you’ll have been cheated out of a great repertoire of comparisons.“Finally, and most importantly, studying the humanities helps you befriend The Big Shaggy.”This holder of a bachelor’s degree in history hasn’t felt so good about this in a very, very long time.
What’s The Big Shaggy? Gotta read the whole column.
Good read. I approve of Brooks’ message, though perhaps less of his approach (at least the initial one: “Go study humanities in uni because it will be good for your career” - people are not keen on humanities because the job market isn’t). One small problem with this piece:
If you spend your life riding the links of the Internet, you probably won’t get too far into The Big Shaggy either, because the fast, effortless prose of blogging (and journalism) lacks the heft to get you deep below.
This is very true in most cases (I can say that as someone who works with journalist texts a lot). But oh how much better this op-ed by Brooks would have been if it weren’t… well, a journalist piece. Because the idea behind it is good, but it lacks the depth to really drive the point. And that’s a shame, because the point is well worth driving.
