James Baldwin wrote the best reason for studying the humanities that I know of. I use it in my classes and it applies as readily to taking English lit as it does to studying History.
In the original quotation in Life magazine, he said "Dostoevsky and Dickens," but then Baldwin replaced that phrase with "books" when he used the quotation a year later. Here's what Quote Investigator wrote about that. (In either case, a great quote.)
quoteinvestigator.com/2022/01/20/p...
I’ve come to the conclusion that certainly not all, but too many people who go to college and graduate are fundamentally incurious about the world and the social and political relations among humans, and it makes me sad.
The way things work, currently, it's kind of enforced. Taking classes because you are curious and want to learn about something, and not because it counts towards your degree, is now a luxury reserved for the children of the very wealthy.
If I’m in an engineering major, there are a few ‘enforced’ humanities requirements. As a young person I may not be interested in those classes, yet college is supposed to help ‘educate’ one to be a more well-rounded person of the world. Additional classes is time/money limitation.
Yoinking this for when I have to retrain our guidance department on how to pitch my Latin class to HS freshmen, maybe next to the line from the Aeneid where the hero pushes down the pain in his heart and fakes courage with his face.
I remember when college was only for starting a career if one was a business major. Now they've somehow cornered the market on all occupations, even mine.
Very true - bit like the idea that books can be mirrors reflecting your own experiences, or windows allowing you to see those perhaps unfamiliar to you. Students in my lit classes enjoy seeing their own experiences as a kind of validation & learning about lives of those different than their own.
Baldwin was perfectly right. Our professor Antiquity and Patristics once said:
"Culture changed, mankind changed, but human beings are still the same". We can recognise ourselves in old texts.
Top 2 greatest writers in American history.
And one of the most versatile writers in all history.
I wonder how often Baldwin is studied in American Literature courses?
The man was an amazingly insightful writer perfectly capable of analyzing what he knows and what he doesn’t know.
Today’s writers are almost afraid to admit they learned something in the course of being introspective.
I rant about this all the time,as most university& college graduates do not take enough humanities. it's not mandatory.Higher education institutions produce widgets,persons who memorize everything taught&they have low empathy for others,as they did not get enlightened.Then they spawn more widgets.
