Margaret Clapp Library, Wellesley College

You may have heard that this week the American Academy of Arts and Sciences released The Heart of the Matter,  a report on the crucial role payed by arts, humanities and social sciences to our nation. This report was requested by members of the Senate in 2011, in response to a spate of reports, symposia, conferences, etc., on the importance of investing in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education.

I have not yet read the full Academy report (it's 92 pages long!), but did peruse the report brief. I especially enjoyed the Executive Summary which states that non-science curriculum is essential to our global competitiveness as well as national security: "A fully balanced curriculum—including the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences—provides opportunities for integrative thinking and imagination, for creativity and discovery, and for good citizenship. The humanities and social sciences are not merely elective, nor are they elite or elitist. They go beyond the immediate and instrumental to help us understand the past and the future. They are critical to a democratic society and they require our support." (If you don't have time to read the report, watch several Commissioners--including John Lithgow, Ken Burns, Sandra Day O'Connor--lay out its core argument on this video.)

I cheer this report with a resounding "hurrah!" Concentrating on courses within the vast subject area known as Humanities is most definitely not elitist! But those of use who spent most of our educational lives in those departments are frequently written off. How many times I have heard it? "Arts and literature are frills, not essentials!" I was thinking of several recent examples to cite here (e.g., using "cite" not "site"), but they all seemed rather trivial and--well, if you must know, stupid--when typed into a blog. That is part of the insidiousness of the problem.