Rogue Semiotics does a good job of capturing one of my constant themes: the value of a liberal arts education. “Thankfully, my woolly, useless liberal education taught me to read, analyse, rethink, speak and write in ways I continue to find professionally useful.” This is in response to the absurd comments by education secretary Charles Clarke about medieval history, which in turn was a follow up to his denegrating of classics.
A departmental spokesperson made things worse, to my mind, with a clarification: “The secretary of state was basically getting at the fact that universities exist to enable the British economy and society to deal with the challenges posed by the increasingly rapid process of global change.” I think that’s a plausible justification for universities (although not the only one), but medieval history and classics fit well into that aim. They teach students to think, which is what our society certainly requires.
Historian Tristram Hunt responds: “With Mr Clarke’s lamentable dirge added to the list, the government is in danger of looking like a philistine cabal for whom there is no life but wealth.” The mystery to me is that I know the government has a a good number of people who are genuinely interested in ideas and would certainly qualify as intellectuals. What I suspect is that some of them think anti-intellectualism plays well with some of the electorate. If that’s the case, it’s an even more depressing reflection on the current course.