Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Humanities Washington: your education continues

Dan Webster

When it comes to choosing a major in college, the choices are myriad. But if you're like me, your parents typically offered this bit of advice: Choose something that will help you to get a job.

That's one reason why I chose to study literature. I figured if nothing else I could get a job teaching English.

It would be many years before I stepped in front of a classroom. And I shudder to think of what a mess I would have made of it in my 20s. Lucky me, I was able to find my way to journalism.

The other reason I chose to study literature, of course, was because I loved it. I'd always been a reader, and I couldn't think of a better way to spend my time than to study the works of Sophocles, Shakespeare, Dickens and Hemingway — which, eventually, evolved into my discovering the likes of Edith Wharton, Carson McCullers and James Baldwin amid a host of international writers such as Jorge Luis Borges.

And that was the key to my completing my college education: finding something to study that interested me instead of focusing on something that would propel me toward a career.

In a 2018 article for The Atlantic, a college professor named Benjamin Schmidt pointed out that, since the financial crisis of 2008, fewer and fewer students were majoring in the humanities – to be specific, languages and literature, philosophy, religion, history and English.

“(I)n the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, students seem to have shifted their view of what they should be studying,” Schmidt wrote, the result of what he described as “a largely misguided effort to enhance their chances on the job market.” And, he argued, “something essential is being lost in the process.”

That something: the fact that studying the humanities helps students “develop a meaningful philosophy of life.” That once commonly held belief has faded in recent years – and it’s hard to imagine what effect the recent COVID-19 pandemic will have.

Yet studies in the humanities aren’t limited just to those attending college. They can be, and are, life-long pursuits, which is something Humanities Washington understands all too well. As the organization proclaims on its website, courses in the humanities “help us see the wider view of our lives and our society – a view that is easy to lose amid the mountains of data and unprecedented distractions of modern life.”

That’s why Humanities Washington promotes events around the state that, even in this time of quarantine, can be accessed by anyone with Internet access. Interested in history? At 2 p.m. on Sunday, the Friends of the Bellevue Library is hosting a history lecture titled “Let It Not Happen Again: Lessons of the Japanese-American Exclusion.”

At 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, the Asotin County Library will present a history/religion lecture titled “Higher Power: The History of Evangelicals in American Politics.”

And the list goes on, throughout August. You can see the offerings by clicking hereNote: Registration is required, and some events fill up fast.

We’re living in trying times. And, of course, what with illness, job loss, worry about students returning to school, people have a lot more to worry about than their ongoing educations.

But if you have the time, and the access, the world of the humanities is out there for your taking.