Don’t Tell Me Humanities Teach Critical Thinking
“Are you in engineering?” a high school friend asked me as I was going into university.
“No, I’m studying literature.”
“Oh! But you’re really smart…”
As an English major, these comments have been an everyday part of my university career. They have ranged from “what are you going to do with that degree?” (my chiropractor’s receptionist), to “oh, so you want to be a barista!” (a stranger I started talking to on the street).
For the first few months of first year, these comments would shock me into silence. Undergraduate degrees have minimal impact on the majority of people’s future, but this mindset of devaluing the arts is nonetheless disturbing and far too prevalent. As several people have reminded me, many universities have looked into eliminating their humanities departments altogether.
Thankfully, professors and students alike have stood up to defend the necessity of these programs. However, from what I’ve noticed, what usually comes up in many arguments is an attempt to quantify our education: humanities students gain such good writing skills, as well as close-reading, communicating, researching, and analyzing — practical and marketable soft skills that all employers seek. These are certainly valuable, but they strike me more like side effects. These skills are not at all why I study literature and the arts. The most valuable part of my degree has not been critical thinking, and to reduce it to that takes away everything I love about it.
First off, one of my favourite things about studying English is learning to appreciate the beauty and concision of language itself. One of my favourite passages from a class reading, Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story, is the following:
A month ago, mid-October, a gust of autumnal wind kicked its way down Grand Street. A co-op woman, old, tired, Jewish, fake drops of jade spread across the little sacks of her bosom, looked up at the pending wind and said one word: “Blustery.” Just one word, a word meaning no more than “a period of time characterized by strong winds,” but it caught me unaware, it reminded me of how language was once used, its precision and simplicity, its capacity for recall. Not cold, not chilly, blustery.
Falling in love with beautiful sentences has been one of the greatest pleasures of my life. Additionally, I have found that being in tune to the intricacies of language makes me more aware of the intricacies of my own thoughts, emotions, and surroundings. It makes my world more vivid and my memories more precise.
The primary reason why I love my program is that it teaches me about life and about humanity. I study literature to feel loss — Priam, King of Troy, on his knees begging for the body of his dead son. I read to learn courage — Hester Prynne exiting prison with a scarlet A and her head held high. I read to experience beauty and hope — Dante and Virgil emerging from the darkest pit of hell to be met with the sight of the stars. I read to understand love — Lily Potter, face to face with death, but still refusing to stop shielding her son.
From the simple fairytales of goodness and magic to the messy slivers of reality in Chekhov or Carver, each story has made me a richer person. Every book I read broadens the way I think about the world, and as such, I feel like I’ve multiplied my years by knowing hundreds more people and places beyond the confines of physical reality. All these stories — both fictional and historical — are slices of life that show me how to experience the world fully.
As John Keating says in one of the most quoted line of Dead Poets Society:
We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.