4.Vocational Training Vs. Humanities 职业训练与人文学科(人文学科近来为何受冷落)
A new trend in higher education is the retreat from humanities to science and technology and other career–oriented specialized studies. Throughout the country, schools are under pressure to become more vocationalized.
One reason is that it’s difficult to get grants for the liberal arts studies, for, unlike the specialized studies whose results can be immediately converted into profits, what the liberal arts studies produce is only helpful to the nurturing of ethics and human values. The second is that parents and students tend to scorn the courses that do not teach people how to become attractive to employers in a rapidly tightening job market. As a result, literature and philosophy are only regarded as intellectual adornments, contributing nothing directly to a job.
However, the goal of education is to produce not only specialists, but also the educated and developed minds because being productive requires not only professional capabilities, but also the ability to deal with people and the world around with grace and the ability to create the joy of living .So instead of trying to shrink the liberal arts, it’s time for us to find ways to infuse it into other specialized studies. Only by so doing can we produce the well–developed talents for the future.