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Wednesday, March 2, 2016
Arts and Humanities education deserves a second look
Dedicated to Late Prof. Senake Bandaranayake, Professor of Archaeology
and a champion of Arts and Humanities education, on his first death
anniversary
The Arts and Humanities stream of study has come to be seen as the problem child in university education in Sri Lanka. The employability of an Arts and Humanities graduate is lower than those in other disciplines. Even in the US, the salaries for faculty in Arts is lowest paid in academic hierarchy.
This phenomenon has largely to do with massification of higher education, where large numbers of students, lacking numeracy skills would join the Arts stream thinking it is an easy sail. It is not so. A good Arts and Humanities degree imparts good analytical thinking, creativity and other attributes of a good education.
In early days of higher education, the study of Arts and Humanities was the centre of the academic universe, but with advances in science, medicine and engineering, Arts and Humanities has taken a backseat. In 1956, C.P. Snow, in his famous essay titled ‘The two cultures’ lamented the separation of Arts and Sciences. Professor E. O. Wilson, American biologist and author of ‘Consilience’, published in 1998, predicted that Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences shall be rejuvenated through a marriage with the sciences. He envisioned social sciences to be enriched and changed with our knowledge of how the brain works, for example. That has not happened quite yet, but, interestingly, what is emerging is a marriage between technology producers and scholars of Arts and Humanities.
When Google announced in 2011 that it was hiring 4,000 Arts and Humanities graduates, it made headlines. In fact, now it is not uncommon for a CEO of a tech company to have an advanced degree in philosophy and a lead member of his team a degree in theatre. In fact, the future demand for soft engineers may not be as spectacular as now, but people without a tech degree are expected to benefit most from if tech sector boom continues.
In developing countries, Arts and Humanities education is still not ready for the real world. Rote learning which Asians seem have embraced as a second nature is at its worst in Arts education. A typical Faculty of Arts and Humanities in Sri Lanka will have an impressive array of departments dedicated to Philosophy, Social Sciences and Aesthetic studies such Dance, Music and Drama for a total of 937 faculty members in the university system according to our last count in 2005.
The Arts and Humanities stream of study has come to be seen as the problem child in university education in Sri Lanka. The employability of an Arts and Humanities graduate is lower than those in other disciplines. Even in the US, the salaries for faculty in Arts is lowest paid in academic hierarchy.
This phenomenon has largely to do with massification of higher education, where large numbers of students, lacking numeracy skills would join the Arts stream thinking it is an easy sail. It is not so. A good Arts and Humanities degree imparts good analytical thinking, creativity and other attributes of a good education.
In early days of higher education, the study of Arts and Humanities was the centre of the academic universe, but with advances in science, medicine and engineering, Arts and Humanities has taken a backseat. In 1956, C.P. Snow, in his famous essay titled ‘The two cultures’ lamented the separation of Arts and Sciences. Professor E. O. Wilson, American biologist and author of ‘Consilience’, published in 1998, predicted that Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences shall be rejuvenated through a marriage with the sciences. He envisioned social sciences to be enriched and changed with our knowledge of how the brain works, for example. That has not happened quite yet, but, interestingly, what is emerging is a marriage between technology producers and scholars of Arts and Humanities.
When Google announced in 2011 that it was hiring 4,000 Arts and Humanities graduates, it made headlines. In fact, now it is not uncommon for a CEO of a tech company to have an advanced degree in philosophy and a lead member of his team a degree in theatre. In fact, the future demand for soft engineers may not be as spectacular as now, but people without a tech degree are expected to benefit most from if tech sector boom continues.
In developing countries, Arts and Humanities education is still not ready for the real world. Rote learning which Asians seem have embraced as a second nature is at its worst in Arts education. A typical Faculty of Arts and Humanities in Sri Lanka will have an impressive array of departments dedicated to Philosophy, Social Sciences and Aesthetic studies such Dance, Music and Drama for a total of 937 faculty members in the university system according to our last count in 2005.
