In Joe Moran’s book, Interdisciplinarity, there’s an argument that’s brought up concerning what discipline is superior to others in different academic settings. For example, when someone says that they’re an English major, the general public might respond to them saying, “you must like to read a lot” or, ” what’s the point of earning a degree in a language you already know how to speak?” When it comes to STEM majors, people assume that these students don’t know how to comprehend anything other than equations and calculations. Those holding onto these false perceptions need to be educated on how these disciplines have a common origin and how throughout the years, society applied more prestige to some more than others.
Prior to reading this book, I’ve noticed how some academics are prioritized at a higher level than others. Recently, STEM degrees have been on the rise, while humanities programs have been declining. An argument for this is the fact that STEM programs lead to more high-demanding occupations, such as nursing and computer programming. Some believe that it’s more practical to do science-based research that can be economically beneficial, as opposed to unpaid humanitarian research that’s financially draining. It’s not to say that the humanities aren’t of importance anymore, it’s just that more people would rather be in accessible research labs than they would selective law firms.
On the other hand, there are people who still hold negative assumptions about the sciences and doubt any success that can come from their fields. I will say it’s interesting that this is the case because the general public portrays the idea of a good education as being either a Philosophy, history or English major, rather than a Math, Geology, or Psychology major. For example, Ellsworth Fersch’s book Thinking About the Insanity Defense further supports this, saying how “approximately 87% of the general public doesn’t support the use of psychology [in court] because it’s an inexact, new science… that doesn’t have a concrete, established system yet for other scientists to agree on.” Even though this level of skepticism isn’t exactly what occurs in colleges and universities across the campus, it’s significant in showcasing how some of these disciplines in the real world might be applied.
My personal take on this is that I can see both sides of the argument. Moran mentioned how the only reason why the humanities were believed to be superior was that of aristocratic academic institutions, such as Cambridge and Oxford, declared this literary canon to be intellectually elite (p. 23-29). As time went on, more and more people realized that they didn’t need to appease to such elitist behavior and decided to improve credibility within the science world. Now, students and workplaces alike are focusing on including more opportunities for STEM majors, which leads to the humanities to be viewed as outdated, in terms of absolute importance. This transition to make one realm of education to be just as valuable as the other didn’t mean that the original discipline needed to diminish in its place. Luckily, Geneseo noticed the importance of ‘keeping the arts alive’ by requiring each student to take at least one humanities course and valuing such literary courses at a higher credit. Hopefully, in the near future, schools can realize that one discipline isn’t better than another because the scale of success used is subjective. Individuals should aim to achieve something they’re passionate about, not what society tells them to care about.