Akshat Shekhar | Eat, read and be merry

So Many Activities | The value of the humanities is being diminished by failed and misguided advocacy in its favor

By Akshat Shekhar 09/28/14 9:47pm

W e all fall upon occasions where we need to create awkward 300-word biographies of ourselves for public consumption. The formula for successfully doing so is relatively straightforward: school, major, hometown, grade, some extracurriculars and a funny interest or two so we don’t seem too uptight. For as long as I can remember, I’ve put down that I am an “avid reader” as one of my biodata, a description that was only strictly true until about eighth grade and that I fulfill nominally today with the occasional political biography over the summer.

The world of humanities educators has struggled recently with people like me, students who — although theoretically having the necessary interest and aptitude — seem to have no time for casual exploration of the humanities and are loath to pursue a perceived professional dead end formally. There have been so many articles in magazines, school newspapers and papers of record detailing this decline that it would be reductive to hyperlink just a selection. The public response by education leaders, naturally, has been an extensive attempt to convince our generation of students not to extend our estrangement from the humanities into a full-blown divorce.

The collection of arguments employed for this purpose, however, has been horribly misguided and dramatically out of tune with what most students are looking for. This unofficial PR campaign has failed to produce any significant results. Let’s run through some of the most prevalent themes in these overtures to see why they have failed to gain any traction.

First comes the “fight fire with fire” approach of offering the prospect of entrance to an equally alluring lure of professionalism: law school. The argument goes that studying Hume or Dostoyevsky will build the kind of structured thinking that will shine through in a law school application — or at least get you through that first-year contracts class. The narrow assumption that students would flock to the humanities as long as they had a safe professional “exit plan,” and that law school represents some kind of catch-all escape route for these students, rings hollow. Furthermore, due to the mechanistic nature of law school admissions, this appeal, even if successful, would more likely send students to the easiest dregs of Penn Course Review than to complex engagement with literary themes.

The next bucket of cases centers around vague, almost meaningless benefits, such as “learning how to learn” and “learning for its own sake.” The latter advantage is particularly dubious; roller coasters are ridden for their own sake, the experience to be quickly forgotten once the seat belt is unbuckled. In the current environment, would a student really embark on a course of study whose benefits leave him as soon as he obtains a diploma, just for its own sake?

Even weightier promises of understanding the Great Conversation, what it means to be good or the meaning of life seem perversely out of scope. Imagine if running clubs catered to college-age students by advertising long-term artery benefits more vocally than pitching endorphins or a sense of achievement. The biggest stereotypical knock against the humanities lies in the perception of its inutility in “real life,” and the allure of large intellectual breakthroughs (maybe, eventually) fails to combat that image.

A much more effective tack would be to pitch the upside of the humanities as social and immediate rather than intrapersonal and far off . People are willing to engage in so-called nonfunctional activity if they can clearly foresee some related payoff; there’s a reason Pottruck is filled with bench pressers even though the number of situations where one actually needs to get 250 pounds off his chest in “real” life is miniscule. Similarly, we should frame the humanities as mental exercise, as Lumosity on steroids, as enhancers for our personalities and communication that make our thought clearer, our decisions quicker and our comebacks wittier.

By pulling forward the future benefits of the humanities to the present day, we offer a refreshing contrast to the monotony of Excel and lethargy of lab write-ups. Advertising the field as a potential boost to both your cover letter and your raillery at Smoke’s gives the Great Works a practical edge that students can buy into. Offering a way to become interesting as well as more interested? That sounds even better tha n discovering the meaning of life.

Akshat Shekhar is a Wharton and Engineering junior from Boston, Mass. His email address is ashek@wharton.upenn.edu. “So Many Activities” appears every other Monday. 

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