No, Humanities Don’t Suck

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Some of you may be aware that there is a fairly active debate about the utility of humanities degrees in progress. Some governors are proposing students pursuing STEM majors pay a lower tuition than those pursuing humanities degrees.

There are studies that show while humanities majors make less than business and science majors right out of graduation, they end up making more 10-15 years down the road.

“Undergraduate professional degrees frequently lead to relatively high starting salaries and relatively flat pay scales thereafter. Humanities undergraduates may struggle more in the first few years after graduation, but in the long run they frequently find career paths with greater long-term growth potential; the skills in reading, writing, and critical thinking that we all talk about turn out to have real-world uses. Students and the general public legitimately worry about employability, but there’s no reason for us to surrender to the mistaken belief that humanities degrees are a poor investment.”

Studies like this and the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) are helping to collect data to refute the idea that humanities majors are useless.

The technical director for my performing arts center and I were talking last week when the conversation turned quickly to the value of the performing arts as a major that confers real world skills.

If you are reading this blog, you are likely already aware of most of them: You learn to plan a project invested with your own personal vision; research your portion of the project; present and execute your part of the project as part of a team.

Some arts disciplines require you to cross train in both technical and performance roles. All performing arts disciplines require the practitioner to possess some degree of empathy.

These are all skills that pretty much every business desires in an employee.

Then there is the big benefit–the unambiguous deadline.

One of the things I know drives college professors crazy is when a student says they can’t finish the paper and can they hand it in on Monday. If this option is denied, the student often enlists parents and administrators on their behalf. For all the good reasons the professor may have for not allowing this exception, a Friday versus Monday deadline appears to be somewhat arbitrary.

But when the performance time comes, that is the inescapable deadline. Well, I suppose it is escapable, but the time to “hand in” your assignment comes and passes with or without you. Whether it is submitted and what the quality of the work is apparent as are the consequences, if any.

One can always fake it and one’s parents will frequently speak praises regardless of whether they are earned. There is no guarantee a student will graduate with good organizational skills.

However, performance is an area where practical skills applicable to the real world are taught because the end product is meant to be consumed in the real world.

These are all skills that clearly do matter and have real world applications. The message that the humanities don’t matter undermines the teaching of these skills.

In the process of getting someone ready to give a public performance, there are many smaller scale performances conducted in more private environments. The stakes are much lower so it is easier to be irresponsible about handling your contribution.

But each one of these times instills the abilities needed for that big public performance. For many people that culminating event may not be on stage, but pitching an idea in the boardroom of Johnson & Johnson.

Info You Can Use: Is This A Bully I See Before Me?

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With the recent ruling about unpaid internships being illegal kicking up a conversation about the necessity of internships to secure a job, the topic of bullying in the workplace is apropos. Especially for the arts.

Situations like this can bring on a lot of pressure to those trying to cultivate a career. No place more so than in the arts. In fact, unpaid is more often the situation regardless of whether you are in an internship or not. Even if you are getting paid, you might be subject to all sorts of pressure and abuse in the highly competitive arts industry.

A researcher from Chapman University is conducting a survey of people’s experience of bullying in the performing arts.

Those who have an interest in the subject might want to check the survey out. It is being conducted with formal research protocols including informed consent statements.

The only really explicit incidence of bullying I can remember is someone using the cliched line that they would ruin my career before it even started.

There are probably opportunities for conversations about these and more subtle issues. For instance, when does cajoling to stay late, be a team player and help with strike go from group camaraderie to bullying?

Researcher Anne-Marie Quigg has studied this issue, focused primarily on the UK and wrote a book on the subject. There were a number of conversation sessions held in London last month on bullying that occurs in the arts. Some brief notes were posted online for each, including the question “Who looks after the ones who aren’t “artistic?”

I Will Fear No Photoshop

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Last December Seth Godin made an entry on his blog, True professionals don’t fear amateurs in which he says,

“A few years ago, typesetting, wedding photography, graphic design and other endeavors that were previously off limits to all but the most passionate amateurs started to become more common. The insecure careerists fought off the amateurs at the gate, insisting that it was both a degradation of their art as well as a waste of time for the amateurs. The professionals, though, those with real talent, used the technological shift to move up the food chain. It was easy to encourage amateurs to go ahead and explore and experiment… professionals bring more than just good tools to their work as professionals.”

I wrote briefly about creativity on Monday and how different cultures may have different definitions of creative work, some of which may encompass activities that don’t take a lot of thought and effort.

I think Godin’s comment wraps up a lot of the concerns shared by people in the arts. Among those concerns are not only that people are creating things of little value and degrading their work by association, but that people would eventually be unable to discern what real quality was and seek out professionals when the time came as Godin suggests.

I had a conversation recently that illustrates both this fear and Godin’s assertion that there is still a place for work by experienced professionals in this world.

I was in a cafe for lunch and stopped by the table of the muralist who has done all of the floodwall murals in town. I commented that I saw a story in the paper that there was a guy who was also from Louisiana doing a mural in town and wondered if it wasn’t some state industry I wasn’t aware of.

He told me the other guy was actually someone who grew up here locally, joined him in working on the murals and then eventually moved to Louisiana to work for him. It was only in the last few years the other guy had struck out on his own.

He went on to say that murals are getting to be a popular thing these days and there were a lot of people who were selling themselves as muralists. The problem is, not only is it a much bigger undertaking than you realize to work in such a large scale, you also have to know your materials, medium and siting as well as work with the community. As a result, there are a lot of angry communities out there with murals no one visits that are peeling off the walls after a few years.

I had actually been to a talk he had given about painting the murals a few weeks earlier and quickly realized that I had no idea about all the engineering and site and materials preparation that went into creating a mural.

It is also pretty interesting to hear how helpful iPads are in providing research and reference assistance without having to leave the scaffolding.

But as I said, his comments illustrated the value of experience and professionalism in artists. It also showed how difficult it is for people to discern the value of a skilled practitioner.

I guess that is true across all professions. The high visibility and reputation of skilled doctors has never really prevented people touting bottled miracle cures.

Still it may be worth exploring, as Godin suggests, where you can position yourself in the spectrum of practitioners in order to be available when someone of your skills is really needed.

America, The Derivative

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The release of the “Star Wars as Shakespeare would have written it” book, Star Wars, Verily A New Hope had me chuckle a bit at the concept, but also grumble about how derivative the book was.

Then I got to thinking not only about Kirby Ferguson’s Everything Is A Remix video series, but also that derivative works are pretty much what America’s identity is based on.

The upcoming festivities of the 4th of July as an example.

“The Star Spangled Banner” is set to the tune of a bawdy English club’s theme song.

“The Battle Hymn of the Republic” set to “John Brown’s Body,” which is at least appropriate given their mutual association with the Civil War.

But then there is “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee,” set to the tune of “God Save The Queen (King)” less than two decades after the War of 1812 ended. How soon we forget!

That one never fails to get me during the Olympics given all the Commonwealth nations that use it. I am always initially embarrassed for the athletes that the Olympics are playing the wrong anthem…until I remember it was their song first.

Even the music for America the Beautiful was re-purposed from a church hymn.

There may be a big to do about intellectual property rights these days, but the history of the country has frequently involved borrowing, stealing, mixing and mashing other people’s work.

When I was in high school, we got a kick out of singing the poems of Emily Dickinson to the tune of the “Yellow Rose of Texas.” “Because I could not stop for Death” being one of the more popular ones due to the disconnect between the tune and the subject matter.

C’mon, click the link. You know you want to try it.

In closing, I leave you with the trailer of William Shakespeare’s Star Wars.