Humanities as a guide to our uncertain future: cutting funding now will leave us disoriented. From the editorial: 

In this most uncertain time, why would we want to stop creating better skilled people in the humanities for the nation’s workforce, or decrease the number of students who strive to accomplish the highly developed human literacy skills and emotional intelligence, empathy and cultural agility, to work for change in the world for the good of all?…

We do not all come from privileged backgrounds, but it has been both through our ability to be able to study and have our cultural, social and historic works examined in the humanities, that Australia is now recognised for its world class creativity and originality across the arts.

We are among the leaders in the humanities. Our art and literature are celebrated in this country and across the world. Many learn from what we do to create and spread our knowledge of diversity, history and culture. This knowledge improves how a nation thinks about itself, and tries to make more room for those who are less fortunate.

I wonder how we will be able to survive in an uncertain future if we deliberately set out, in the worst of times, to make studying in the humanities unaffordable for those less able to afford it….

Governments must have the capacity to explore the widest possible ways of sharing and improving knowledge to address our major problems.

Of course we will require a greater workforce in health and technology, but we will also need an even greater workforce with the imagination and passion to improve the health of our combined humanity, and our connectedness with the only planet we can survive on.

For a related post, see here.