Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ There Is No Case for the Humanities

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

This article and the dozens and dozens of comments that follow (I read them all) kept me interested, which is a sign to me that it's worth including in the newsletter. Ultimately we will read that there is no case for the humanities because there doesn't need to be one; " It is not the humanities that we have lost faith in, but the economic, political, and social order that they have been made to serve." But before we get to that point we get a thorough restatement of the argument against the humanities - that they're too obscure, that there's too much production, that teaching is ignored, and worst, that they serve a private elitist community. It's clever because it uses the language of the critics and not just the ideas, and it is this, I think, that resulted in such a productive discussion in the comments.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Dec 23, 2024 12:36 a.m.

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