Should Progress Be Only About STEM?

Roughly two years ago, a teacher shared a story about an aspiring university

freshman student who was asked what he would be taking as a degree major. The

student gave an innocent yet confident smile before uttering the following words: "I

really want to study literature." The one who asked was the registrar guy who was

receiving the student's credentials and pertinent papers upon application for entrance

examination and tagging. After he heard the student's answer, he made face signifying

his disapproval. He further implied that 21st century in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

students should focus more on degree majors that are more prevalent, useful,

important, and significant to economic development, finance and trade such as

business management, science and mathematics, engineering, and technology. At that

moment, the teacher overhearing the conversation felt insufficient to respond for the

part of the aspiring freshman. She didn't utter nor react against the registrar guy, instead

she walked away. While she was telling this story, she expressed her disappointment to

herself, and as a way to compensate that, she stated what she could have said on

behalf of the student. Literature, humanities, social science, philosophy, linguistics, and

other fields, excluded from so-called "sustainable-to-economic-growth-and-development

majors," should also be taken as fields of national development and progress not only in

aspects such as economy, business or trade but more importantly on human

improvements, social relationship enhancement, group dynamics, and personality

growth because these can also tell the partial well-being of a particular state – even in

the fourth industrial revolution.

 A report by the Campaign for Social Science shows that "84% of social science

graduates were in employment (3.5 years after they finished their degree), compared

with 78% of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics)" graduates.

According to Bogart (1963), there is a vital and relevant link between teaching

literatures –or in this case all subjects that humanistic studies encompass– and in

preserving and communicating the humanistic tradition in the technological society. It

serves both civilizing and utilitarian functions. Cognizant that specifies in aim, method

and content will vary, to achieve the humanistic ends a literature program will provide

students on all grade levels, elementary and secondary, with materials that: stimulate

their growth, self-development, and understanding of others through literary

experiences that sensitize them to the extent and variety of human affairs because a

primary task of literature is "to lay bare the foundations of human emotion" (Lemer,

1939).

Bogart (1963) further added that school systems must focus on materials that

connect with the lives of young people, books that reveal, clarify and illuminate reality,

that reach different readers [students] in different places, giving them a "lens on life"

from many angles of vision. This greater purpose makes them broaden their aesthetic

perception, sensibility and understanding of the miracle and beauty of the creative

process; raise their levels of aspiration through contact with literature that involves

readers in the moral life, thus combating moral illiteracy by exposure to what is noble,

compassionate and faith-provoking; explore not only the contributions of their own

culture but the ideas and values from varied cultures by studying foreign works in

translation, thereby discovering the sense of human connection; expose them to

literature that will cultivate the lifetime reading (and thinking) habit, for such an approach

will "probe our prejudices and pre-suppositions, challenge premises, and test the basic

assumptions of varied business, moral and political codes" (Douglas, 1954).

A country doesn't only need technical skills and knowledge from sciences,

mathematics, and among others. A healthy nation provides vital employment

opportunities to the citizens by having access to main sectors such as services,

production, and manufacturing. In fact, from an excerpt of June 2017 Philippine Star

Issue stated that, "the services sector continues to be the biggest employer in the

country according to the preliminary data of the April 2017 Labor Force Survey (LFS) of

the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA)." Data from the agency showed that of the more

than 40 million employed here in the country, as of April 2017, 55.4 percent are in the

services sector, this is a drop from the 56.2 percent in the same period last year. The

services sector is followed by agriculture (26.1 percent) and industry (18.5 percent). Of

those working in the services sector, 35.3 percent are working in wholesale and retail

trade and repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles. This was followed by transportation

and storage (13.9 percent) and other services (11.7 percent). According to PSA, other

services "include household activities as employers and undifferentiated goods and

services-producing activities of households for own use." Service sector secures a big

chunk of share in the pie graph of employment. However, service sector employees

may have technical skills in computer, technology, arithmetic, and science, but yet

according to Gittins (2014), general operations manager and co-owner of RAM Training

Services – a multinational hospitality training school – the most important characteristics

and attitude traits an employee must possess in this sector are being committed, having
interpersonal skills, a critical thinker, a problem solver, a team worker, organized, and

flexible. These skills are much needed to suffice the growing demand of multi-faceted

and talented employees in services. These skills aren't offered in technological courses,

scientific major, mathematics, and arithmetic to strengthen this claim. These skills are

given more focus and relevance to tracks like social studies, humanities, and literature.

On the one hand, many people may like to claim that degree graduates in STEM

may earn a greater paycheck even after tenure; as the Associated Press reports, a

survey conducted in the USA found a strong correlation between making money and

highly specialized degrees. More than 95 percent of graduates who studied computer

and information sciences, for example, were employed full-time at the time of the survey

and earned $72,600 on average. Engineering students reported similar job and salary

prospects. That's compared with a humanities graduate who was more likely to register

working multiple jobs and earn a full-time salary averaging only $43,100. On the other

and greater perspective, humanities, social science, literature, liberal arts degree

prepare students for a life of learning. It is a resource students can draw upon across a

lifespan to address human problems and enhance human potential. It is never obsolete.

It creates habits of mind that facilitate a life of learning and growth, professional and

personal. It exercises the mind's muscle, preparing it not just for specialized tasks and

abilities but also for learning itself, making learning faster, more thorough, and more

permanent. It facilitates thinking for oneself, evaluating an argument, and evidence-

based not on the external authority of peers, parents, professors, or professionals, but

on one's apprehension and creative use of information and ideas. It is an education that

builds on itself throughout life, not just the four years students spend in college. Indeed,
the skills these degrees develop help students confront their own and others' humanity,

not just earn a more generous paycheck, because, in the long run, it is not the most

important thing after all.

Broadly, education in humanities prepares students to think critically and actively

about the sorts of problems and possibilities they will encounter in their lives as

employees and employers, as participants in friendships, partnerships, families, and

communities, and as citizens of a nation and the world. The broader knowledge and

understanding of the world a humanities degree cultivates and helps students engage in

some of the most critical issues of today: the environment, foreign policy, social justice,

national and international security, ethics, indeed, all of the problems we face as

humans in relationship to others. The best education asks students to reach beyond

their own experiences to see and imagine worlds different from time, space and

thought. Education and experience in multiple disciplines create depth and versatility for

success in a highly competitive and changing job market and the essence of the human

experience — relationships. Through this education, students develop multiple lenses

for looking at the human experience. The kind of interdisciplinary thinking a liberal arts

education provides makes students better observers of phenomena and the very lenses

through which they observe. All knowledge and the way we know it becomes subject to

analysis, criticism, and evaluation. Students become critical readers of human

experience and the lenses through which they interpret or "read" the world. Examining

what other people look at and at how they look at it creates the capacity for empathy

and for more effective and fulfilling communication between people who might be very

different from each other.

 The teacher could have posed and highlighted that humanities enable students

to become better friends, partners, parents, citizens, and human beings. Isn't that what

education goals and aims in this current era, milieu, and century, at its best, is for?

REFERENCES
William O. Douglas. An Almanac of Liberty. New York: Dolphin Books, 1954. p. 41
Max Lemer. Ideas and Weapons. York: The Viking Press, 1939. p. 409.
Desjardins, Molly and Talbot, Christine. (2017, October 24). Importance of the Liberal Arts. Why Should You
Get a Degree in the Humanities and Social Sciences? http://www.unco.edu/humanities-social-
sciences/academics/why-study-humanities-social-sciences.aspx
Gittins, Shenoa. (2014, July 16). 6 Skills and Characteristics You Need to Work in the Hospitality Industry.
https://www.ramtrainingservices.com.au/blog/6-skills-and-characteristics-you-need-to-work-in-
the-hospitality-industry/
Jacobs, Peter. (2014, July 9). Science and Math Majors Earn The Most After Graduation.
http://www.businessinsider.com/stem-majors-earn-a-lot-more-money-after-graduation-2014-7
Bogart, Max. (1963). Literature and Humanities Ideal.
http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/journals/ed_lead/el_196301_bogart.pdf
Lumawag, Reuel John F. (2017, June 13). Philippine Employer Still Tops Philippine Employer.
http://www.sunstar.com.ph/davao/business/2017/06/14/services-sector-still-top-philippine-
employer-547323