Minister of Education Ronald Jones divulged that none of this year’s 34 national Scholarships and Exhibitions was awarded to a student who had pursued the “humanities”, and went on to comment that “Persons in society seem to frown on the humanities . . . .”
This development – and our Education Minister’s interpretation of it – should constitute a grave cause of concern for the entire nation.
If, indeed, such critical subjects as history, English literature and religious studies are being downplayed and underappreciated in our schools and homes, then we can be sure that our nation is on a path to decay and cultural and psychological disorientation.
The humanities are those branches of learning that place “man” and his/her interests and development at the centre of its focus, and are distinguished from the natural and social sciences. The subjects that comprise the humanities are history, literature, philosophy (including ethics), and, properly conceived, religion.
Arguments over the relative merits of the humanities and the natural sciences have been going on for a long time now, and one scholar who convincingly put the case for the humanities was the late Dr E.F. Schumacher of Small Is Beautiful fame.
Schumacher took on Lord Snow – the British champion of the natural sciences – after Lord Snow had bemoaned the fact that the great majority of citizens knew nothing about the “Second Law of Thermodynamics” – a piece of scientific knowledge which, according to Lord Snow, should be the equivalent of knowing the works of Shakespeare.
This is how Dr Schumacher answered Lord Snow:
“The Second Law of Thermodynamics is nothing more than a working hypothesis suitable for various types of scientific research. On the other hand, a work by Shakespeare: teeming with the most vital ideas about the inner development of man, showing the whole grandeur and misery of a human existence. How could these two things be equivalent? What do I miss, as a human being, if I have never heard of the Second Law of Thermodynamics? The answer: nothing. And what do I miss by not knowing Shakespeare? Unless I get my understanding from another source, I simply miss my life.”
And, of course, for “a work by Shakespeare” we could substitute In The Castle Of My Skin by George Lamming, The Trilogy by Kamau Brathwaite, Black Jacobins by CLR James, or How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney.
As Schumacher explained so clearly, science produces “know-how”, but “know-how” is nothing by itself; it is a means without an end. The essence of education must therefore be the transmission of values – values that root us and give us a sense of self and a perspective, so that we acquire the wisdom with which to use and direct “know-how”.
But values do not help us to pick our way through life unless they become our own, a part of our mental make-up. This means that they must be more than mere formulae or dogmatic assertions: that we must think and feel with them, that they must be the very instruments through which we look at, interpret and experience the world.
And for education to give us any of this, it must be centred on great works of history, classic novels, penetrating poetry, towering and elucidating philosophies, timeless ethics, and spiritual wisdom.
