Amid an erosion of the perceived value of humanities education, teachers and professors of the social sciences work diligently to promote the values of empathy, critical thinking and cultural understanding. While encouraging students to explore the humanities, these educators also recognize the importance of balancing the study of human culture with scientific and mathematical fields to develop a complete and well-rounded education.
Within humanities-based courses, students learn essential skills and values that can be marketed to help them in future careers. As educational and professional spheres undergo digitalization, the field of humanities can often become overlooked. However, this field teaches students skills that are crucial to their success. Joseph Williams, an AP U.S. Government and Politics teacher at Wakefield, reflects on the importance of the humanities in the education of high school students.
“Even in an increasingly technological world, the humanities teach [students] to communicate with others and view the world through other viewpoints,” Williams said. “No matter how digital we get, being able to connect with others is a skill everyone needs.”
One challenge that students and teachers alike face is finding a balance between the humanities and STEM. Finding an equilibrium between the two can seem increasingly challenging as the fields are often seen as competing, rather than complementary. Charles Hensey, an Economics and Personal Finance and AP Psychology teacher at Wakefield, remarks on how STEM and the humanities rely on one another.
“STEM is the creation of technology, but social studies is how we use it in society and how we plan what should be designed and what it should be used for,” Hensey said. “So while STEM gives us the skills to design [technology], social studies is where we talk about the needs of society, the needs of people, and how we use it in the way that has the most utility.”
As the number of people obtaining humanities degrees in higher education continues to decrease, society could very well begin to see detrimental effects in how people connect and relate to one another. Michael Behrent, a professor of European History at Appalachian State University, remarks on how the current decline in humanities degrees will impact people’s understanding of the world around them.
“I think we’re going to become increasingly separate from the past and increasingly unable to understand it,” Behrent said. “We will see the past as data, and at worst as historical movies. It breaks the real sense of the past–of lost worlds, of that strange sense that there were actual people who lived in the world hundreds and thousands of years ago who intrigue us but that we can never know fully.”
Among the leading causes of the decrease in humanities degrees obtained by undergraduate students are the cuts made to funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities. These cuts resulted in the loss of several humanities-based programs throughout the UNC System. Consequently, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill announced plans to close six of its area studies research centers. As a former participant in a study abroad program supported by these research centers, David Phillips, an AP Modern World History and AP European History teacher at Wakefield, remarks on how these closures impact the global appreciation of the connections between people of different cultures.
“If you remove funding for [humanities-based] programs, we begin to become more insular,” Phillips said. “We start to see our allies as rivals, competing for resources and it leads to alienation.”
To combat the continuous devaluation and defunding of humanities programs in higher education, North Carolina State University established the Benjamin Franklin Scholars Program under the Department of Integrative Humanities and Social Sciences. This program aids undergraduate students interested in pursuing degrees in both engineering and the humanities. Ross Bassett, professor and director of the Benjamin Franklin Scholars at North Carolina State University, reflects on how students can build sustainable careers in the modern world by incorporating different areas of study into their education.
“I don’t think students are ‘future-proofing’ their careers by being only technical,” Bassett said. “The way to future-proof your career is to have a broad set of both technical and humanistic skills that allow one to understand humans in all their complexity and be able to adapt to a variety of situations.”
With a declining interest in humanities-based fields, educators are working vigorously to complement technical learning with historical context and critical thinking. As society becomes increasingly technological, these educators continue to emphasize the importance of the social sciences to ensure that students continue to learn from history, not repeat it.
“When we read the great works of the past, it helps us better understand what it is to be human,” Phillips said. “Those works that spoke to us in the past can still speak to us today, if we know how to listen.”
