What good are the humanities? Why are they at the centre of our education

Alexis de Tocqueville, an early and enduring interpreter of American civilization, published his greatDemocracy in America, in two volumes, in 1835 and 1840
'Literature was an arsenal open to all, where the weak and the poor could always find arms'.  

And it is interesting to note that for Tocqueville there is no simple notion of utility. This awakening of minds and spirits is a sunlight that falls across the whole landscape of civilization

But is it, aesthethics, such a grandiose and wonderful thing,  Could this effusion from 

Tocqueville be the achilles heel of all art, idealism 

What is being invoked here is the notion of a precious and unnameable essencee, second nature to some, in the marrow of their bones, in effect by this view  whether the general public will or not understand or value it,  i.e if you are not for the the 'higher' moral precepts set by those armies you are therefore a threat and the so called educated are not slow to show their disdain. 

The Humanities trans formative emergence has historically specifiable origins in the English and European Renaissance, greatly expedited by the emergence of the printing press. At the time and for centuries afterward it amounted to very much more than the spread of knowledge, because it was understood as a powerful testimony to human capacities, human grandeur, the divine in the human. And it had the effect of awakening human capacities that would not otherwise have been imagined. (Yet if human kind had not gone on this Humanities trail they may have pursued some more rewarding path, were the instigators of the humanities power player in pursuit of their own interests)

However we move on and Cometh the hour, cometh the man/woman

So how relevant is the Humanities in today's uber competitive globalised world?

There is no denying that the Humanities can offer a deep aesthetic (but what are aesthethics?) satisfaction on a personal level yet does it provide the means in the job market to get students out of debt that hands over their first decade of  THEIR  WORKING lives?  

Indeed one might ask Is Studying a Shakespearean sonnet relevant or is discovering the leak in the plumbing system more relevant in today's competitive job's market,

Currently there is a rather inchoate cluster of anxieties that animates  the body of learning and thought we call the humanities and this come with the realisation that  the world is changng in these globalized times, TRUMP BREXIT, AUSTRIA, CZECH REPULBIC Catalonia

GERMANY , their is a new Renaissance called sovereity, the nation state, borders, walls
all anathea to those schooled in the Humanities 

yes, Oh the times! Oh the customs!   O tempora, o mores!

This saying from Classical times relate to the theory of world history developed by Oswald Spengler which holds that all major cultures undergo similar cyclical developments from birth to maturity to decay

Meanwhile digitally lobotomise as we are, it is a convention of modern literature, and of the going-on of talking heads and public intellectuals, to project what are said to be emerging trends into a future in which cultural, intellectual, moral, and economic decline will have hit bottom, more or less.

So has the germ of decay, not an Enlightenment but a darkening of the intellectual being engender by the 85 per cent of the Professorial and what emerges from this pedagogy
is the media talking heads, the usual suspects, of  a kind of talk always seems brave and deep. depending on which country happens to be the focus of Spenglerian gloom.The specifics concerning this abysmal future are vague— meanwhile  the indigenous populations are viewed as deplorables by the soi disant educated classes

How the elite weep for the Paradise of no borders diversity, of us all  being one
surely this kind of idealism went out with Keats imbuing of  a vase with human qualities
but the 'experts' drone on about whoever is the focus of Spenglerian gloom and whatever make them deeper or better than us
poor benighted souls

But back to the REAL world - since the new cost of university is weighed against potential earnings, students and families being so burdened, the humanities are under great pressure to justify their existence' There is a great deal of questioning now of the value of the Humanities, those aptly named disciplines that make us consider what human beings have been, and are, and will be

THE DEMAND NOW IS FOR THE omnicompetent in service to the ever-changing needs and demands of the new economy—

HERE IS A Fundamental slovenliness in much public discourse that can graft heterogeneous things together around a single word, HAVE A DEBATE WITH A LIBERALISM SCHOOLED NO DOUBT IN THE HUMANITIES  AND SHIELD YOUR EAR AGAINST THE NAME CALLING

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I am speaking of the mainstream media, therefore of the institutions that educate most people of influence in America, including journalists. Our great universities, with their vast resources, their exhaustive libraries, look like a humanist’s dream BUT THESE ARE THE VERY

INSTITUTIONS WHO HAVE PRODUCED A CABAL OF LEFT MEDIA JOURNALISTS

WHO RULE THE INFORMATION ROOST

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