In tough times, the Humanities Must Justify their worth

Even though it has been a while since we talked about this, but, recently the New York Times wrote an article similar to the importance of liberal education. Here is a link to the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/books/25human.html?_r=1&ref=education

"Derek Bok, a former president of Harvard and the author of several books on higher education, argues, “The humanities has a lot to contribute to the preparation of students for their vocational lives.” He said he was referring not only to writing and analytical skills but also to the type of ethical issues raised by new technology like stem-cell research", writes the author of this article speaking in favor of how important the humanities are to the overall education of all. Another example talks about training engineers for various types of projects needed by different fields of work.

As much as I agree with what the article says about why a liberal arts based education is still important in an economic mess where the unemployment lines are growing daily and things do not seem to get any better at all, one reason why this article was chosen can be summarized by what John Dewey wrote in "Education for Labor and Leisure" (p. 94): "An education which should unify the disposition of the members of society would do much to unify society itself".