During the recent Australian election campaign the "Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee" promised that
A Coalition Government, if elected, will crack down on Labor’s addiction to waste by auditing increasingly ridiculous research grants and reprioritising funding through the Australian Research Council (ARC) to deliver funds to where they’re really needed. [...] There will be no reduction in research funding. In fact, the Coalition has announced new research into dementia and diabetes. (Briggs)
One of the academics whose research was singled out as an example of the "ridiculous" responded by arguing that "Philosophising is, like all intellectual work, work" (Redding). The Coalition, however, evidently doesn't think of all intellectual work as equal: only some is "really needed." Perhaps the only "intellectual work" which is deemed "work" by such politicians either produces tangible products or trains others to work outside academia. That would seem to have been the position of Governor Rick Scott of Florida, who in 2011 declared that:
We don’t need a lot more anthropologists in the state. It’s a great degree if people want to get it, but we don’t need them here. I want to spend our dollars giving people science, technology, engineering, and math degrees. That’s what our kids need to focus all their time and attention on, those types of degrees, so when they get out of school, they can get a job. (qtd. in Lende)
I can't help but see parallels between this sort of politician and the Protestant Reformers who
stripped down the list of admissible callings, lopping off not only the beggars and rascals whose idleness cumbered the land but the courtiers and monks who were no better. The medieval summum bonum, a life of contemplation and prayer, suddenly was no vocation at all. "True Godliness don't turn men out of the world" into "a lazy, rusty, unprofitable self-denial," William Penn insisted, joining the attack on the monasteries; faith set men to work in the occupations of the secular, commonplace world. (Rodgers 8)
The constant stream of attacks on the humanities makes me wonder if we're coming up for another dissolution of the monasteries, only this time
it is the humanities and several of the social sciences that many public leaders have come to see as irrelevant (or worse) [...]. Notwithstanding the dizzying pace of change in the economy, policy leaders seem to imagine that a tighter focus on patently job-related fields of study now in short supply — STEM and selected "career fields" -- can somehow build the full range of skills and knowledge [...] society will need. (Schneider)
-------
Briggs, Jamie. "Ending More of Labor's Waste." 5 Sept. 2013.
Lende, Daniel. "Florida Governor: Anthropology Not Needed Here." PLOS blogs. 11 Oct. 2011.
Redding, Paul. "Philosophy is not a 'ridiculous' pursuit. It is worth funding." The Guardian. 17 Sept. 2013.
Rodgers, Daniel T. The Work Ethic in Industrial America 1850-1920. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1978.
Schneider, Carol Geary. "A Dangerous Assault." Inside Higher Ed. 8 February 2013.
The image of a monk at work in a scriptorium came from Wikimedia Commons.
