The humanities  help us to conceptualize  the world from many larger and diverse perspectives beyond our own immediate and often very parochial experiences.  The arts and humanities are about understanding ourselves as imaginative, creative, artistic beings. Such creativity and imagination is found in all disciplines.

When we understand this, we see that the binary between professional faculties and other faculties is a false one. Professional schools are built on a foundation of a broader understanding of what a liberal arts and humanities education is about. People heading in the direction of a professional degree don’t see themselves necessarily as engaging in the humanities, until they come to university. Of 120 credits of a typical 4 year professional degree, 60 credits (50% ) are in other faculties that offer courses in the arts, fine arts, sciences,and social sciences.  In addition, many professions assume that a four year undergraduate liberal arts degree is a necessary preparation for professional studies.  Such fields have included Law, but this is now becoming the new norm in fields such as Education and Police and Justice Studies.

Education, broadly,  is about exploring what it means to be human  and then applying that understanding to a particular endeavour. The humanities are  the unseen underpinnings that professionals bring to their field of expertise. The humanities help us to understand who we think we are. That understanding, of course,  is always in flux.

I am often asked, “What is the utility of the arts and humanities?” It’s hard to turn that question away from the value or a value-added argument implicit in that question. Study  of the humanities  help  make for better human beings, better societies,and hopefully a better world. We need to help others recognize and re-imagine the humanities. The history of the Humanities from the Greeks onward is about the study of  logic and rhetoric for the  preparation for men to assume positions of power and privilege. Today, however, the creative and imaginative aspects of the Humanities need to be emphasized.  Elementary schools  and high schools are  full of the study of the  humanities, for instance, but  it’s rarely labelled as such.  Everyone sees the importance of being informed by an understanding of the world in which we live, and our relationships with self and others;  we need to call this what it is:  the arts and humanities.