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Ashley Kolling

Professor Daniela Koleva

English 110

5 December 2018

Why the Arts and Humanities Deserve

the Same Respect as STEM Programs

In “The Utility of the Arts and Humanities,” Michael Bérubé discusses artists and

humanists who work in universities, and what value they offer to society. In his role as a college

literature professor and humanities program administrator, Bérubé saw first-hand what the arts

and humanities brought to the table in both the academic arena and in society as a whole. These

disciplines are not secondary to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) programs.

They are valuable in and of themselves. According to Bérubé, the arts and humanities are such

exalted and self-justifying endeavors of academic labor that devotion to these disciplines is more

than justified without having to explain their value to society. Devotion to the multiple forms of

human cultural expression, rather than to the research and development of patentable forms of

knowledge, is warranted because the arts and humanities offer more than just a dazzling form of

entertainment for society to consume. Bérubé suggests an alternative way of thinking about the

utility of cultural work and argues that the arts and humanities do enrich life and teach us what it

is to be human, which are useful on their own merit. While Bérubé notes that “artists and

humanists unfortunately tend to think that all sciences are somehow socially useful, and that they

cannot possibly compete on that score,” (Bérubé 25), he goes on to explain how the arts and

humanities are at least as valuable than the most marketable STEM disciplines, and they are

perhaps more valuable to society than several of STEM fields. Bérubé seeks to write that the arts
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and humanities do not revolve around science, math, and technology. They serve a purpose

beyond what they can do for the STEM fields.

The first argument Bérubé mentions is that scientists and techies took the easy way out

by using machines and technology to help them solve problems faster, whereas humanists tend to

think creatively and take their time to make decisions. Roger L. Martin’s idea of the practice of

integrative thinking is one example of how humanists think creatively and take their time in the

process, along with all the other skills developed in the arts and humanities that Scott Hartley

and Cathy N. Davidson and David Theo Goldberg mention. Bérubé disagrees with the strategies

that scientists and techies use to promote their fields of study and how they use those strategies.

In discussing the importance of the arts and humanities, Bérubé explains how society in general

perceives the arts, humanities, and sciences by claiming, “the arts enrich life, the humanities

teach us what it is to be human, the arts deepen our spirit, the humanities preserve our common

cultural heritage, bleat, bleat, bleat, surely we can all utter such phrases in our sleep, even or

especially if we believe some of them. By contrast, scientists are relatively unconflicted about

defending their disciplines in terms of social utility, even when they reach for their bromides,

which usually have to do with humankind’s unquenchable thirst to know and explore” (Bérubé

25). Bérubé is arguing that the value derived from the arts and humanities is much more

important than most people recognize. As a result, artists and humanists are forced to work much

harder to justify their importance, whereas scientists simply have to state that they are important

because science is important. This is not to say that the sciences are not important, however, but

it is important to acknowledge that the benefits and functions of the arts and humanities allow us

to understand what it means to be human and what it means to go through life. Hartley similarly

views the skills developed in the liberal arts to be vital in our technologically advanced world,
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and he states that the “fuzzies” and the “techies” working together creates something very useful

and successful and that one is really not more useful than the other. When you boil it down, the

authors agree the skills developed in the arts and humanities are vital skills to have in our world

today.

Bérubé’s second argument in his text is that human appreciation and understanding of

history is of great importance and history is not simply an unfolding of unique events. He states,

“history must always be interpreted anew with each passing year, with each passing generation”

(Bérubé 37). With our actions always changing and evolving, they must always be interpreted in

a way for others to understand. Bérubé describes how his version of history as a humanist is

completely different from that of E.O. Wilson, a scientist who argues that all human knowledge

can and eventually will be unified under the rubric of the natural sciences. Bérubé’s sense of

history is hermeneutic, whereas Wilson’s is anti-hermeneutic. That is, Wilson’s sense of history

is that history can be quantified and subjected to empirical tests. Bérubé’s sense of history, on the

other hand, cannot be interpreted as easily. It requires the human mind, and its complex

capabilities, to decipher its meaning through critical thinking rather than empirical tests.

Davidson and Goldberg also discuss the importance of history to the field of humanities.

According to Davidson/Goldberg, nothing can be fully understood without understanding its

history, and history has great value to human knowledge. They assert that the future lies in

educating students about history. This school of thought perceived by Bérubé and

Davidson/Goldberg contends that students need to be educated about where we have been as a

society in order to succeed in the future. Learning about history allows people to learn from the

past in order to make better decisions for the future

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As humans, we need to interpret things every day with human actions, signs, or

interactions in a conversation. By stating that human actions are historical, Bérubé is going

beyond the obvious meaning of this statement. What Bérubé means is that we need to interpret

the cultural meaning of our human actions with the skills taught in the study of the arts and

humanities. Bérubé claims, “when it comes to grappling with the larger social process by which

cultural meanings are established and challenged, the tenuous understanding of what a ‘meaning’

is, our endless debates over specific attributions of meaning, over our methods of interpretations

and our interpretations themselves, our struggles to grasp how things mean as well as what they

mean – this is where the humanities are uniquely useful” (Bérubé 37). Bérubé’s argument is

essentially trying to point out that it does not matter what method you use to interpret things or

what questions you ask yourself, because it will always be a challenge. As long as you choose a

method, it does not matter what method you choose, because in the end it will get you to the

same place. I contend that this is important to understand – that is, that humans use the skills

developed through an education in the arts and humanities to help them interpret the meaning of

things.

Bérubé introduces in the text the cultural left (liberals) and the cultural right

(conservatives). He states that cultural leftists don’t promote the benefits of theoretical or

speculative sciences such as eleven-dimensional string theory, for example, because the

speculative sciences do not have an obvious benefit to society. Specifically, Bérubé states, “the

reason that so few cultural leftists in the humanities care about new developments in theories of

matter or of the evolution of the universe is precisely that such theories have no social utility

whatsoever” (Bérubé 27). Bérubé also adds that when it comes to defending the utility of the arts

and humanities, the cultural right is every bit as ambivalent and divided as the cultural left is.
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Also, within the cultural right there tends to be moments where there is political vulnerability

very fast, “I sometimes think this is why the cultural right has urged us so often in the past

decade to return to the eternal verities of the fine arts: it is part of a two-step plan to eliminate the

Arts and Humanities from any serious social or curricular consideration” (Bérubé 31).

In the text, Bérubé explains what it is that humanists do and why it is so important. He

discusses that humanists challenge themselves to find answers to society’s problems and

undertake the difficult task of determining what it means to be human. Bérubé states, “It is no

wonder that most of us in the Arts and Humanities have been content to speak suggestively and

vaguely about the social utility of our disciplines, usually by insisting that the Arts and

Humanities enhance students’ capacities for creative expression and/or critical thinking” (Bérubé

33). This quote connects with his idea of what it is humanist do and what skills they gain from an

education in the arts and humanities, including creativity and critical thinking. This quote also

provides evidence for Bérubé’s claim that the arts and humanities do enrich life and teach us

what it is to be human. I agree with Bérubé’s argument that our interpretation as to the meaning

of things is very important and is essential in our everyday lives. Just as Hartley and

Davidson/Goldberg claim, the skills developed during an education in the arts and humanities are

important because they help us advance in this world today by being uniquely human. They also

allow us to use Martin’s concept of integrative thinking by taking opposing ideas and creating a

new superior idea to interpret the deeper meaning and understanding of things that challenge us

today.

Bérubé, Hartley, Davidson/Goldberg, and Martin all argue that the arts and humanities

are at least as valuable as the STEM disciplines, and they are in fact more valuable to society

than the STEM fields in many different ways. These authors strongly believe that the arts and
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humanities do not revolve around science, math, and technology. They are not supporting players

to be used to enhance the STEM fields. Instead, they serve a purpose beyond what they can do

for the STEM fields. I agree with this position, and like the experts, I believe that supporters of

the arts and humanities need to have confidence in the value that these disciplines offer to

society. Without that confidence, the arts and humanities are at risk for being undervalued and

ultimately ignored. Having the arts and humanities fade away quietly is not in the bests interests

of society.
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Works Cited

Bérubé, Michael. “The Utility of the Arts and Humanities.” Arts and Humanities in Higher

vvvvvvEducation, vol. 2, no. 1, 2002, pg. 23-40.

Davison, Cathy and Davidson Goldberg. “A Manifesto for the Humanities.” The Chronicle of

a. a. Higher Education. Academic Search Premiere,

https:/web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=61bc6026-5063-47c4-b4d4-

nnnnn66a2b09a226f%40sessionmgr4007&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zan

nnnnnXRl#A N=12430786&db=aphan.

Hartley, Scott. “The Role of the Fuzzy in a Techie World.” The Fuzzy and the Techie: Why

m Liberal Arts Will Rule the Digital World. Boston: Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin m.

vvvvvHarcourt Publishing Company, 2017, 1-30.

Martin, Roger. “How Successful Leaders Think.” Harvard Business Review. Online, June 2007,

zzzzzzhttps://hbr.org/2007/06/how-successful-leaders-think.