MAD HATTER PAGE 25

 

"The Care and Feeding of the Humanities in a Cold Climate’

I received a copy of the address which follows from Don Couch, Executive
Director of the Academic Council. As I felt it would be of interest generally,
I sought, and have received, permission to reprint an excerpt of the address
in the Mad Hatter.

. Bill Day =
7 Inaugural address of the Rev. Dr. John Sandys-Wunsch
at his Installation as Vice-Chancellor, President & Provost
of the University of Thorneloe College, Sudbury, Ontario
Wednesday, November 17, 1982

Having just been formally installed as the head of a small liberal arts college,
it seems appropriate this evening that I should say something about the place of the
humanities in today's university and in particular the contribution Thorneloe might
make as part of the Laurentian federation or its successor. This is particularly
appropriate at a time when the icy winds of government cutbacks make frost-bitten
administrators wonder what parts of the furnishings might be chopped up for fucl to
keep the enterprise going. Tonight I would ltke to argue that the humantt tes are
indeed part of the family, not part of the furniture, and like the lady they are not
for burning. :

Now several months ago I read it in the newspapers so I presume it must be true
that a member of the Ontario Legislature suggested that the production of humanities
graduates was too high for the number of jobs available to people with this type of
training and therefore this production line should be cut back. Perhaps one is per-
mitted to object to the grotesquesness of the imagery involved - humanities graduates
are not produced in the way Windsor and Detroit produce cars; they are not even pro-
duced in the way Japan produces cars, although this would at least imply a reliable
and well-finished product.

But what is most surprising about this no doubt well-intentioned statement is
that the honorable member believes that there are any Jobs at all specifically for
humanities graduates, for apart from teaching humanities, there is surely no direct
industrial application for English literature or any commercial use for Latin grammar.
Perhaps the situation is even worse than the honorable member expected, so given the
taxpayer's current plight, how dare we spend his money for fripperies and frills?

There are two answers which can and ought to be given. If I go over what for
some is familiar ground, I apologize, but the urgency of the situation makes a re-
minder of important truths a necessity.

First, because humanities are in no way a training for any profession but rather
a training in how to think, learn, and express oneself clearly, they are curiously
enough the most practical training of all. It is interesting how few people ever
finish their careers doing what they originally trained to do. In fact there are no
training programs for some of the most interesting and important jobs; one gets them
because of a wide number of qualifications few of which can be represented in diploma
form. Indeed, the more specific one's training, the more closely it is aimed at jobs
currently available, the more vulnerable it is to changes in technology. For example,

 

 

 

Cont'd...