We (Apparently) Don't Need No Education.

In a piece written by Stanley Fish, esteemed literary critic and professor, he explains that the Humanities (ie all Arts, everything pleasurable to me) will disappear because of a lack of financial viability of jobs You're going to study Art History? In this Economy? That's it. No more college fund until you're ready to be responsible and go to Med School and general lack of interest because of these ingrained attitudes.

Well goddamnit. The last of my pleasures, gone. Once again at the hands of Capitalism. Not only my pleasure, though; what about all of professorship? What will happen when the only three viable jobs are Doctor, Lawyer, or Businessperson--and consequently the dying off of non-trade academia as we know it? Fish cites "Industrialist Richard Teller Crane [who] was...pointed in his 1911 dismissal of what humanists call the “life of the mind.” No one who has “a taste for literature has the right to be happy” because “the only men entitled to happiness . . . are those who are useful” to explain the overarching utilitarian ideals. While I would argue that, no, not only am I not useless, but my peers who have interests in Painting, Sculpture, Music, Acting, and Dance are also not useless but they mostly fuel the economy.

Think about it. No artists, no museums. No Musicians, no music business. No actors, no Hollywood. No dancers, no ballet on one hand, but on the other, no Beyonce in "All the Single Ladies."

Though Crane cited Literature, specifically, didn't he? Well. This might actually hold some weight. Not only is it impossible to distinguish between literature with a capital "L" and "books" these days because a flooded market, but, in America at least, who reads anyway (you, obviously, faithful reader)? There is such a puritanical, vehement hatred for intellectualism in America that most public officials must appeal to the "common man"--the nice way to say "lowest common denominator." Apparently book-learnin is out of the question for most of America, and consequently so is the vast area of Academia which devotes itself to the very study of it. So again, with its unfathomable oversights and greedy attitudes towards money (I'm looking at you, private Universities), Capitalism kills; because learning is a commodity, it has to be downsized just like all others.

But then again, I hugely doubt that Stanley Fish is talking about any system outside America (ie, where the cost of education is still manageable, or actually affordable--sometimes free; in France, taxpayers fund your college experience almost entirely). And since America is on its way out as super-power-world-police, maybe we're due for a Glorious Cultural Revolution (It probably helps a lot that we finally have an intellectual president, rather than a jump-the-gun, trigger-happy one). This wouldn't be the first time an immensely powerful historical event would have sparked both an artistic boom, but also a renewed interest in the country's history (a humanity).

While the Humanities as they exist now are certainly due for a change, I hardly expect that change to be a death--and if it is, the phoenix will certainly rise from the ashes anew, reinvented with a different academia, an affordable, self-directed one.

Oh, how this Hope is contagious!