Some parents in Oakland picked up on Stanley Fish's diatribe in the NYT about gutting the humanities in the state schools.
This is what I wrote in reply.
j. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The destruction of the humanities will further divide the elite from the rest of us. You can bet they will continue to teach the classics at Harvard.
Otherwise, the end of humanistic education will have the following effects:
-- it will provide non-elite students with a vocational education at best
-- it will further justify the elite's sense of entitlement, now based on their superior and "civilizing" education.
-- it will render the general population more ignorant of other cultures and languages and thereby make them more vulnerable to hatred of the "other", thus preparing a great foundation for right-wing and fascist movements.
-- it will erase the humanistic discourse about truth and justice and replace it with the apparent common sense of "might makes right."
-- it will degrade political consciousness and the value of democracy.
This is the result of allowing professional bureaucrats to define what education is and who has a right to it; it is also the result of allowing the financial elite to destroy the economy of this country and then to enforce austerity on the backs of the most helpless and needy members of society.
A shameful and dangerous development,
Joanna