Here's a great question: What are the humanities, and why are they of any use to us in the blazing light of technological wizardry in the twenty-first century?
It's a mistake to think of the humanities as luxuries or as appearances that must be kept up. I think the humanities are more relevant to the challenges of our circumstances than any other field of study.
Technologists charting a course to a brave new world can be compared to Disney's sorcerer’s apprentice, producing continuously improved means toward increasingly poorly-defined ends.
Unless we look to the humanities to clean up the mess, we stand a chance of enabling forms of technology that can't be controlled.
Truth is a concept that has been severely tested in recent years. Social media channels enable deceitful people & practices and empower the uncontrolled proliferation of dangerous falsehoods.
The humanities are about the courage to trust our own thoughts and observations, to possess our own history, and speak in our own voice.
The humanities teach that the future turns out to be something that you make rather than find.
The future isn’t waiting for your arrival, nor is it any further away than the next sentence, the next best guess, the next draft story outline that could become the novel that earns plaudits as a literary masterpiece.
The future is an empty canvas or a blank sheet of paper, and if you have the courage of your own thoughts and your own observations you can make of it what you will.
That's why humanities are more than just important and why they are the focus of the The Skills Studio Framework being introduced to our students on the northern beaches of Sydney.
About the Author:
Greg Twemlow is a Sydney-based Social Enterprise Founder | Startup Mentor | CEO | Writer | Speaker | Designer at the Skills Studio