To the editor: At 87 and nonetheless working, I’m dwelling proof of how a superb training within the humanities will be the gateway to just about any profession. (“Demise of the liberal arts? College students lose out when faculties swap humanities for STEM,” editorial, Nov. 26.)
I graduated from Reed School with a level in German Literature, and in my lengthy life I’ve been an beginner {and professional} group organizer, doc librarian, piano trainer, arts organizer, braille and tactile signage specialist, and guide in accessible communications within the constructed atmosphere.
For 30 years, I’ve helped write constructing requirements for accessible signage for the American Nationwide Requirements Institute. I’m a broadcast author in my area of accessible signage and wayfinding. I’ve additionally managed, for greater than 40 years, an indication firm.
I cite this lengthy listing to indicate the significance of an training like that at Reed, which definitely consists of necessary work within the pure sciences, but in addition exposes each scholar to the humanities. Due to my coaching there, I’ve by no means hesitated to tackle a problem.
Lengthy dwell the humanities!
Sharon Toji, Irvine
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To the editor: Sure, there may be an absolute want for liberal arts and humanities fields that emphasize crucial considering and different abilities past these taught within the onerous sciences.
The issue arises after we think about the prevalence of majors inside the liberal arts curriculum which might be so narrowly targeted that they put together the coed for little past what their highschool training taught them.
Fairly than providing the broad-based areas of examine that ought to represent a real liberal arts training, these majors restrict their college students’ choices after commencement.
Let’s get again to providing the majors that traditionally outline the liberal arts — historical past, literature, music, philosophy, psychology, and so forth — and make the boutique majors what they’re, that are minor fields of examine or graduate packages.
John Goodman, Oak Park
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To the editor: As a member of the Nationwide Humanities Heart’s Instructor Advisory Council, I congratulate you in your editorial that praises the liberal arts and acknowledges the position that the humanities play in society.
Look no additional than the pandemic: Many people benefited from digital participation in concert events, dance performances, artwork exhibitions and lectures whereas cultural venues had been closed and we had been sheltering. They gave us examples of magnificence and creativity.
Finding out the liberal arts teaches us to be readers and thinkers, abilities that apply to just about any area. It does not must be an either-or selection of sensible job abilities or liberal arts.
Rachelle Friedman, New York
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To the editor: I applaud your editorial condemning faculties’ new emphasis on STEM programs over the humanities.
Certainly, the crucial considering abilities supplied by the examine of the humanities have served to beat the adverse merchandise of far-right groupthink, together with poisonous cults, spiritual extremism, and in the end fascism.
We will be grateful that our nation’s founders had been crucial thinkers. That a lot is evident within the Structure’s ultimate substantive provision, an specific prohibition towards imposing on anybody a “spiritual check” to qualify for public workplace.
It exhibits that such a ban has lengthy been flouted by conservatives meddling in school curricula.
Roberta Helms, Santa Barbara
