CONTEMPORARY PHILISTINISM: STEM VERSUS HUMANITIES

The pretentious word “philistinism” refers to“the fact of not liking or understanding art, literature, music, etc” according to the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary (“philistinism”, n.d.). In other words, philistinism undervalues the humanities and liberal arts education. The Guardian article “The war against the humanities in Britain’s universities” by Alex Preston depicts that STEM majors (science, technology, engineering, and maths) are promoted at the expense of humanities. The rationale is that the stem subjects are profitable courses whereas the humanities bring less tangible results. Underfunding of the liberal arts educations will adversely affect the development of a society. Many people in academia believe that the humanities are still pertinent.

Liberal arts education facilitates the children’s development in a well-rounded way. It implies fostering creativity, critical thinking, and disclosure of a harmonic and independent personality. Zhao Young, who studies the Chinese education system, provides evidences from the empirical research on the negative consequences of undervaluing humanities. He emphasizes that the Chinese students severely lack independent and creative thinking; as a result, multinational corporations hire only 10 % of the Chinese graduates due to this “creativity gap”.

 Another argument in defense of the liberal arts education is the profusion of the global leaders with the degrees in this field. The Professor of the University of East Anglia, Churchill stipulates that almost all prominent politicians majored in liberal arts except Angela Merkel, who majored in chemistry. The problem – solving skills and an ability to challenge the assumptions, skills that developed during the study, enabled the world leaders to get their leadership positions, claims Churchill. Consequently, the absence of STEM background is not likely to decrease the people’s chances to succeed.

One must admit that the science widens the frontiers of knowledge extremely rapidly, so we need specialists to handle this process. However, neither humanities nor STEM should be given the preference at the cost of one another. The process of relocating the funding toward hard sciences initiated by the British government makes the brightest minds from humanities leave the academia. Professor Dame Marina Werner retired from the University of Essex due the pressure imposed on the university to become the fund-raising, profitable enterprise. She expressed her advocacy of the humanities in an eloquent article in Times Higher Education. I support her claims that studying humanities also beneficial as well as teaching engineers. History can tell us about the mistakes of the past, art and cultural studies enable us to understand the richness of people of different ethnic groups and beliefs. Psychology, in turn, fosters the sense of empathy and skills to interact with the different temperament and personality types. Philosophy is the study of human thought.

Today we witness how the humanities are suppressed by under the auspices of the officials seeking for profit. STEM majors are perceived as the panacea for the global market and investments. The British newspapers describe how this tendency annihilates the best universities of Britain by cutting the funding for humanities. Now only the students from the wealthy families can allow pursuing liberal arts education. However, in this race for profit one forgets what intangible benefits the humanities can bring. Therefore, the academics are relentlessly defending the humanities.