One thing that has been bugging me during the tuition fee debate, has been the way a lot of people are shrugging off the humanities and arts degrees as a it of a cop out. The idea seems to be floating around that Sciences are vital, but arts can be done without and so students wanting to study literature, history or classics must pay more while sciences could still get government funding.
Now, whilst I am perfectly understanding of the fact that Science is important, I am starting to feel a little put upon, having people tell me that I'm not really doing proper subjects for A levels. Even the science subject I've chosen (Biology) is 'not a proper science' and so am I less deserving of a university degree because I want to take English Literature at university and not become a doctor?
Okay, so I may be slightly biased because I want to be an English Student and not a physicist, but we who study the arts and the humanities have our own contributions to make. I do not deny that we need Doctors, Physicists, Biologists, Chemists and Mathematicians. We need people to tell us where we came from, to work out why we're ill, to find new cures for diseases and unwrap the solar system so we know more abour where we might be heading. Yet our leading politicians did humanities or arts. They studied History or Classics and learnt about ways in which power can be abused and governments can turn to extremes.
The books, newspapers and magazines you read every day are, on the whole, written by those who studied humanities. This does not apply to all of them obviously, there are many books by well-known scientists and columns by doctors and documentaries on the solar system, but if professional scientists are anything like the budding ones I know, then they certainly had help! The people I know who are taking three sciences and maths at A level are now, in their second year, struggling with the 8 mark questions which test quality of written communication on our papers. Fast forward twenty years and they will probably find it difficult to write their Christmas cards (no offense meant you lot, but you know my views on this matter)! Yes, some scientists will be able to write beautifully on their subjects, but others, so used to the brief sentences and scientific language of their usual published papers struggle to make their points clear to the laymen reading them, (and I do include myself there). In the articles we read in lessons at school, it is easy to distinguish between the articles written by scientists themselves, and those written by journalists who have researched the topic. Trust me, the publishers who studied those humanities were needed for the documentaries and books you enjoy.
Drama and music should also not be overlooked, though often considered 'soft subjects'. Would you have taken Mozart's piano away and told him to take up astronomy instead? Could you deprive yourself of the wonders of plays and films and the possibilty of being transported through time and space with no effort whatsoever. What would you tell Lawrence Olivier he should have done instead of act?
Besides which, drama and literature have often been ways of expressing moral ideas to the general public in a more accessible form, from the morality plays of the Medieval age, to Bertolt Brecht's 'Good Person of Schezuan'. It is also true that many community programmes which help the poorest and most deprived people are run by music, dance or drama companies. It gives children and teenagers an interest, could even change their lives, is that not worth the money?
It could also be said that too much scientific knowledge is possible. Now, before someone leaps down my throat at this, I do not mean that we should renounce all knowledge of evolution and modern medicine and throw ourselves back into the dark ages I so enjoyed studying, but did we really need the atomic bomb to be developed? And if it turns out, as scientists are researching, that they could have found an enzyme that could slow the aging process, aside from it's use for sufferers of Porgeria, do we want to live another lifetime each, sapping our planet's resources? And finding a cure for Malaria could save around two million people each year, but most of these are in some of the most deprived areas in the world, where there is already not enough food to go around and, harsh as it sounds, we don't have the resources.
Besides, science is often cold and removed. Literature is full of real, human emotion. History tracks people's development, not through physical evolution, but ideological, explaining how it is we have democracy today in the UK and why we need to remove prejudice from society to truly prosper. Drama is a tool for social awareness and brings a great amount of pleasure to many, and music has always been instrumental in passing on stories, feelings and the beauty of the world from the ancient civilisations to Lady Gaga.
So think. Is it really worthwhile to tell us that an arts or humanities degree is not worth the time or money spent? Should students really be encouraged towards sciences by extra funding? Or is there a need for culture in our society that is firmly embedded and cannot be ignored. I believe so.
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