Under Attack (cont)

DOUGLAS Goi rene.
LAS COLLEGE

   
 

ARCHIve

mi VES

    
   

Mad Hatter Page

 

in and enjoyment of cultural experience.

Statistics are often marshalled in this
kind of argument to show that people with
a humanities education outperform those
with narrower scientific, technical, or
business training (as in the study of em-
ployees titled The Liberal Arts Major in
the Bell System of Management, by Robert
E. Beck, published by the Association of
of American Colleges).

Part of the same response has been to es-
tablish institutes that apply humanistic
perspectives to social, moral, and politi-
cal problems. Those institutes tackle
such issues as medical, environmental, and
business ethics, the goals of treatment
and punishment, nuclear energy and war,
and other knotty problems.

But clearly there are dangers with this
more applied and pragmatic approach to the
humanities as there are with the tradition-
al one that values the products of high
culture for their own sake.

A humanistic education or humanistic ap-
roaches to social problems cannot guaran-
tee humane behavior or solutions. As
George Steiner has warned, the humanities
can in fact prosper next to concentration
camps and “the obvious qualities of liter-
ate response, or esthetic feeling, (can)
coexist with barbaric, politically sadis-
tic behavior in the same individual."

Nevertheless, a focus on the ethical char-
acter of acts and institutions, on reason-
ing and feeling, on the historical lesson
that people can change given situations to
create new ones, holds great promise for
freeing the humanities from the narrow con-
fines of the disciplines and for renewing
their effect on individuals and societies.

The challenges of high technology, whether
the promise of freedom from drudgery and
want or the threat of nuclear war, are af-
ter all human challenges. To meet them we
need a vigorous humanistic tradition in our
schools, in the media, in society as a

T oat

whole.

We need to be critical thinkers, applying
humanistic perspectives as a community, not
only as individuals or as part of an isol-
ated or elite group. Destroying or even
eroding the position of the humanities in
our education system and other institutions,
such as the media, is not "creative" de-
struction...it is only destruction.

 

Rather, the humanities must be allied and
integrated with the natural and social
sciences and especially with the new tech-
nological disciplines, such as computing
science and biomedical engineering. Stud-
ents...and, indeed, the population at
large...need the specialized information
and highly particular skills these fields
provide. But above all, having acquired
them, they need to know how to use them
thoughtfully, and with feeling, and to
humane ends.

(The first in a series of national meetings
on the importance and usefulness of the
humanities in modern life, sponsored by
Simon Fraser University, the University of
Western Ontario, and The Canadian Federa-
tion for the Humanities, will be held Feb.
10 - 12 in Vancouver. Information: 291-
477] or 291-4565.

 

Posters and Notices

As soon as some of the more pressing prob-
lems have been looked after, ie. chalkboards
projector screens, etc. we will attempt to
supply and insta!] cork surfaced tack or
notice boards throughout the new facility.

Notices, bulletins, posters and the like
have sprung up in countless areas and the
general locations are being accurately pin
pointed by the various installers.

Until such time that these boards are in

jplace, there is clearly no objection to the

affixing of signs to walls and other sur-
faces. Please, however, use masking tape

 

 

 

Be ge) oe en ee a eS