We shouldn’t let far-right politicians strip our education system down to what corporate employers demand.
Specifically, they’re going after state university
programs that teach creative arts and social studies, including history,
languages, music, civics, literature, economics, theology, and other courses in
the humanities that explore ideas, foster free-thinking, and expand
enlightenment.
We can’t have that, can we?
Thus, GOP lawmakers in North Carolina, for example, are eliminating funding for top humanities professors in their universities, shifting those funds to programs in high-tech and engineering that are favored by the corporate hierarchy.
Likewise, public universities in Alaska, Florida,
Iowa, Kansas, Ohio, and elsewhere are being made to cancel their humanities
programs and puff up their departments of business, finance, and marketing
The right wing’s shriveled view is that a university education isn’t about expanding one’s horizon and enriching America’s democratic society — but solely about training students to fit into a corporate workforce, sacrificing the possibility of a fuller life for the possibility of a fatter paycheck.
As a Mississippi Republican official explained, under this
minimalized and monetized concept of higher education, state spending on
college degree programs will require that they match the needs of the economy.
What? Is America nothing but its economy? Is the value of
students measured only by the size of their future paychecks? Is public
spending only worthy if it serves corporate interests?
Ironically, the politicians trying to cancel teaching of
the humanities are proving that such courses are essential. After all, the
humanities strive to humanize today’s
social order of corporate domination, exploitation, and inequality. The value
of that vastly exceeds its price.
In fact, the humanities are priceless.
OtherWords columnist Jim
Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker.
This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.