I’ve been thinking a lot about Truth/truth lately, both the lower case kind and the capital T kind.  “We hold these truths to be self-evident….” 

How I wish we could reclaim the concept again—that there are some truths we all share, and that those truths are “self-evident.” 

When I was a grad student in the 1990s, relativism was orthodoxy—up to a point, rightly so.  Questioning the orthodoxy of a singular, objective Truth that applies to all people, in all cultures and subcultures, and at all times, became a necessary key facet of twentieth-century thought.  In The Postmodern Condition, philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard referred to the loss of “grand narratives”—singular stories that “explain everything.”  Religious narratives are a prime example, but so are other “grand narratives,” such as scientific methodology, American exceptionalism, the forward march of progress, the inevitable triumph and inherent good of market capitalism, and so forth.

Distrust of such “meta-narratives" was a hallmark of what it meant to be on the side of social progress.  We were taught, in grad school, to question truth claims based in an objective “reality,” since “reality” itself was seen as impossible to understand from anything other than a subjective viewpoint.  Truth with the capital T was understood as a weapon of conformity, a way of policing minority viewpoints.  Legitimizing world views with an appeal to an objective “reality” was seen as suspect.  The stories of the marginalized—“mini-narratives,” provisional and highly contextualized—need to be heard as a counterpoint to cultural dominance.

Somewhere along the line, something seems to have flipped. 

What happens when those with reactionary, hateful agendas begin to develop “mini-narratives” of their own, legitimizing their world views without reference to any concept of a “shared reality”?  What happens when we accept “truths” as so relative, so provisional, so contextual, and “reality” as so subjective, that any story is considered as potentially valid as the next?  What happens?

Here’s what.

When my first-year writing students were brainstorming potential research topics using inquiry-based learning, I was stunned when a full third of the class came up “Did we really land on the moon?” as a potential “line of intellectual inquiry.”  (I channeled my shock into writing a last-minute change in lesson plan for the next class session, on “identifying hoaxes.”  When I asked my students what gave them this idea, several of them told me they had “researched it in high school,” prodded by teachers who told them there was “credible evidence” that the moon landing had been staged.)

During a class discussion in Banned Books regarding censorship, about a third of the students agreed with someone who said that Holocaust deniers deserve “equal time” in academic settings because we need to “hear both sides of the story.”  (I channeled my shock into writing a last-minute change in lesson plan that I now call my “3E's” lecture: the importance of evidence and ethics in determining whether various stories are "equal.")  

Despite my best efforts to emulate a microbe under attack by an antibiotic by trying to evolve to the next, presumably unassailable level, the hits just kept on coming.

Was Barack Obama really born in Kenya?  Is Barack Obama secretly a Muslim?  Is Michelle Obama really a man?  Did Secret Security squads enter the homes of store clerks under cover over darkness and harass them for saying “Merry Christmas” to the shopping public? Was the Sandy Hook massacre an elaborate conspiracy staged by actors? 

Right now, there are so many things careening wildly astray in our society that it’s hard to know where to start, what to write about, whether anything I write can possibly do any good beyond helping me organize and articulate my own thoughts.  In the troubling days since November 8, this is the first piece of substantive writing I’ve even tried to do.  So much to say.  Too much to say.  (For me, writer’s block has never been about not having ideas; it’s always been about having too many ideas, more than can be wrestled into the linear pattern of words, sentences, paragraphs.) 

As I write, I’m already aware that whatever I choose to focus on, I’m glossing over things of importance—probably things of more importance than whatever I’m choosing to write about.  In the coming days, I’ll try to write about those things too—about hatred, prejudice, bigotry, dehumanization.  About fear, anger, ignorance, projection, deflection, avoidance, co-optation, complacency.

For today, just for now, I’m thinking about Truth.  I’m thinking about why, if we’re going to take a stance for social progress, for humanization, for inclusivity, for kindness and wisdom, we need to reclaim some sense of a shared reality.  And that truth must be built on the concept of a shared humanity. 

Because when I read comment streams (inadvisable if one values mental health), or dare to look at postings that turn my stomach when I try to grasp the depth of some people’s hatred for certain of their fellow human beings, one thing (among many) that occurs to me is: People came to this election cycle grounded in two completely separate “realities,” marked by completely different “provisional truths” or “mini-narratives.”  If we can’t legitimize what’s true or not true with reference to some kind of objective reality—however much we acknowledge the difficulty of achieving “objectivity”—then why not Holocaust denial? Why not neo-Nazism?  Why not racist conspiracy theories?  Why not racism?  Why not all the other ills unleashed by 2016 that have been enumerated in such painful detail elsewhere?

A few years ago, I had major surgery requiring an overnight stay in the hospital.  My “roommate” was a bitter elderly woman who, I was told, had been there for weeks.  When I was rolled in, she asked her family members to blockade the door to our shared bathroom with hospital furniture so that I couldn’t access it.  (When I complained to the nurses, they responded by bringing me antibacterial hand wipes and a bedpan, telling me, “There’s not much we can do about her.”  I complained to my surgeon when he came by the next morning to discharge me.  He hit the roof, reported the nurses to their supervisor, and sent me a letter of apology and a $50 gift card to the hospital gift shop—probably in an attempt to avoid a lawsuit should I end up with sepsis.)

But I digress.  The other thing my “roommate” did was run Fox News on her television—24/7.  (When I asked the nurses if she could turn the volume down at 2:00 a.m. so I could sleep, they offered me earplugs, telling me, “There’s not much we can do about her.”) For 24 hours, I was bombarded with the world view being offered, round the clock, day in and day out, to those who inhabit that particular "reality." Even through the morphine haze, I remember thinking, “If this is all I heard, all the time—and I believed it, because I lived in a world where there were no grounds for not believing it—I would be terrified.  And, probably, angry.”  Maybe even angry enough to blockade my hospital bathroom from being invaded by the patient in the bed next to me.  Angry enough to deny the humanity of others.

Right now there is so much we need to do that it’s hard to know where to start.  I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to state that the world as we know it --or thought we did--has been ripped to shreds.  And, as individuals, I think many of us fluctuate between wanting to fight, and fearing that it’s hopeless.  Fearing that the little actions of one person aren’t going to amount to a “hill of beans” given the enormity of what we’re facing right now—the raw, unbridled power that now seems to be trained on any of us who care about concepts like justice, or compassion. 

Or Truth.

I don’t yet know if it’s hopeless or not.  Some days I feel like there’s hope.  Some days, I don’t.

But if we have any hope of having hope, it seems one thing we need to do is get back to the idea that there is such a thing as objective truth (even as we acknowledge that, due to the limits of human subjectivity, no single human being will ever have the sole “hold” on Truth).  That we have to embrace, rather than resist, the idea that there are such things as right and wrong--however much we acknowledge the necessary complexity of determining that.  That we have to redefine “morality”—not as the policing of consensual sex, as the term is too often understood now, but in broader ways, such as whether we are treating all people as fully human and acting in ways that promote the common good.

We need, once again, to find some truths that are self-evident.

I’ve been quiet lately. Today I break my silence.

The reason for my silence: the presidential election. Writing about it makes me feel queasy. Not writing about it makes me look apathetic.  

I've held back somewhat on politics this season—mindful of my position as an educator whose job it is to teach and treat fairly every student who comes my way, mindful and respectful of the diverse group of people on my Facebook page and in my life, mindful that I also represent an institution.  I remain, and always will remain, respectful of people whose opinions span the spectrum when it comes to politics, religion and more. Our shared humanity must always come first.  But for multiple reasons, I can hold back no longer—because of who I am.

I am the daughter of a man who immigrated to America—a man of mixed race, who suffered traumas we cannot even imagine, and who by and large remained silent about those traumas in his quest to move forward.  (If you’ve ever flown on a Boeing jet plane, you’ve witnessed my father's legacy.)  I was raised in an evangelical Christian community in which I was told to lie about my father’s birthplace (India), and to lie about his mixed ethnicity.  Yes, people calling themselves Christians taught me to lie—because in early 1960s America, the truth of being not-quite-white, of being an immigrant, was apparently a truth too horrible to tell. Because I suntanned easily, I was told to stay out of the sun so people wouldn’t think I was “from someplace else.”  My father’s origins were apparently a truth too horrible for the light of day.

I am the mother of a daughter who joined our family through adoption.  Our daughter was born in China.  The other day, our daughter asked us if Trump wants to send her back to China.  We assured her that will not happen; she is a naturalized U.S. citizen.  (Ridiculous, you might say; Trump only wants to deport the undocumented.  That misses the larger point—the psychic damage inflicted on anyone who does not fit into his imaginary homogenized world, or the systemic damage inflicted whenever entire groups of people are dehumanized for whatever reason.)

I am the daughter of a mother who was born with cerebral palsy—mild, yet noticeable.  She was encouraged to hide it, minimize it, not name it—all because she grew up in a time when it was considered shameful to have a physical disability.  As a little girl, she took piano lessons as a form of physical therapy. She would grow up to become a church organist/pianist as well as a piano teacher, in the process teaching all of us how to transform adversity into triumph.  Yet still, she always felt ashamed.  Still, she encouraged us never to utter the words “cerebral palsy.”

I am the proud relative of both gay and transgendered family members, whose identities I will not disclose without their consent. 

I am the proud niece and cousin of people living in several different nations—England, France, Switzerland, Spain, Gibraltar, Brazil, Australia, Canada, and more.  My relatives’ ancestries hail from India, Africa, the Caribbean, Asia, and Latin America, as well as Europe. When it comes to skin tones, hair textures, eye shapes and facial features, we pretty much cover the spectrum.

Thus, if you are related to me, you are by connection related to all of the above.  If you are friends with me, you are connected through our friendship to all of the above.  It’s time to stop referring to the people you consider different from yourself as “they.”  If you’re connected with me in any way, there is no “they,” just an ever-expanding “we.”  My extended family includes people from multiple nationalities and multiple ethnic backgrounds, adoptees and adoptive parents, people with disabilities, people of various sexual orientations, gender identities, educational attainments, occupations, religious and political affiliations, and economic levels.  If you think you’re far distant from any of the above—you’re not.  If you know me, it’s no more than two degrees of separation.

Many, many people—I’d even say most people—have suffered far more egregious ills than I have, so "woe is me" is not my intent in writing this. What I can say, however, is that in my earlier years, I went through enough to know what enormous pain and psychic damage can be inflicted when a child grows up believing there is something “wrong” with her at the core, knowing she doesn’t fit in, knowing she is whispered about, criticized, ostracized—not for anything she’s done, but simply for something she is.  As a kid, I used to agonize about not fitting in.  While that happened everywhere, it happened most of all in our evangelical Christian church—the place where I was taught—in word, though rarely in example—“Love the Lord God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself.”

I used to agonize about not fitting in.  Now, as a woman in my mid-fifties, I’m grateful to have lived with the gift of knowing how “not fitting in” feels.  Never quite belonging can teach you a great deal.  Among other things, you learn that sometimes the cost of belonging is too high; that too often, belonging depends as much on whom you leave out as who you let in.  You learn that you haven’t really found a niche if the cost of belonging is your own silence.  You find friends who accept you fully, knowing everything about who you are, and you learn that it's important to try and live a truthful life, a life of purpose and integrity.  You learn how to recognize the humanity in everyone around you, not just those who happen to share some of your demographics. 

But the gift of not fitting in has a double edge: When exclusionary principles rear their ugly heads, they trigger all the pain you thought you’d once put to rest.  The memory of shame is always there.  You also feel the pain experienced by other targets, even when you’re not the direct target yourself.  So when a foul-mouthed public figure decides to run for president and build his candidacy on the bigotry you once thought you had outlived, it triggers a visceral, bodily reaction—a self-protective reaction—a reaction that weighs you down every day.  Though you want to emulate Michelle Obama and go high when others go low, you often feel too weighted down to fly.

And it’s not just a reaction to that candidate in isolation.  It’s a reaction to the many people who express enthusiasm for the same narrowness and bigotry that cut you off as a child, when you didn’t know any better than to internalize other people’s narrow opinions.  The sight and sound of thousands of people cheering this individual—it becomes too much to take in.  And it’s not just about you—it’s about your whole family, your whole network of friends.  It’s not just a cerebral reaction; it’s a physical sensation, a sensation almost like falling, a gut-punching fear.

(This was even before the most recent outrage over treatment of women and sex.  On the one hand, I’m relieved that more people are growing outraged; on the other hand, why wasn’t everything that happened before this revelation enough?)

I’ve always been cautious about speaking out.  Perhaps I’ve been too cautious.  These past few days, I’ve quietly de-friended a few people.  I now see that as the coward’s path.  Rather than go on de-friending without explanation, I decided to try and explain.  Why I feel this as strongly as I do.  Why I see the issues triggered by this election as having little to do with politics per se and everything to do with underlying values.  Why I understand the fear and isolation expressed by those who feel directly targeted.  Why it’s so hard for me to talk about any of this.  Why I have little patience for people who try to argue that the alternative candidate is “just as bad.”  (For the record, It’s. Not. Even. Close.  Rumors are not the same thing as evidence, and normal human failings—which we all have, including those in leadership positions—are not the same thing as gross sociopathy and demagoguery.)  Why I can’t stomach watching TV right now.  Why standard, reasoned political analysis currently fails to resonate.  Why, lately, I haven't been able to write.

And most of all: Why I’m grateful to have so many people in my life who do understand, who are going through life each day trying to be kind, trying to do the right thing.  And why those of us trying to live that way need to keep on doing what we do, in the hopes that one day, the demonization, dehumanization, and commodification of human beings will stop—and kindness and inclusivity will prevail.
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For a while now, I've been arguing that if we wish to understand why the arts and humanities serve an important purpose, we can pick up just about any piece of dystopian literature to imagine what a society might be like if we excise such things as history, literature, art, music, theatre, philosophy, and so forth.  I still believe that.

But I'm now beginning to think that if we want to know what living in a dystopia feels like, we don't need to turn to dystopian literature. If we want to see the effects of a world deprived of both the humanities and humanity, all we have to do is take a clear-eyed, honest look around us.  The dystopia has already happened.  We are living it.  It's not the imagined future of a sci-fi writer.  We are already there.  

I'm not going to make a harebrained argument that we can stop this out-of-control gun violence by teaching literature or history.  That would be incredibly stupid to say.  Or that the frightening appeal of a rising political demagogue is caused by a decline in school music programs.  Equally stupid.  In fact, I think it's tacky as hell when people respond to tragedies and social injustices in a purely politicized, opportunistic way.  So I'm seriously trying not to do that here.

Yet at the same time, I think what's happening right now is a crisis of values--and in that respect, the question of what we foster in our educational system becomes clearly relevant. What kind of people are we?  Who do we want to be, both individually and collectively?  What kind of society do we want to have?  The kind of society that says "every man for himself," and that nothing matters more than profit margins, making money, getting ahead, looking out for number one--in the process commodifying human beings, reducing us to our roles as producers and consumers?  

Because if that's what we've decided is important, we'll design an educational system that is geared toward preparing us to function in those roles alone--with questions of meaning, value, ethics, purpose and compassion relegated to the private sphere.  We won't develop a shared cultural conversation about those matters. We'll function in an atomistic way.  

Which will make it all too easy to head down a path in which those who profit from weaponry will have more say than those who prioritize  nonviolence.  And too easy for people to remain in various "bubbles" of supposedly like-minded people, buying into the notion that people who are different from themselves are less valuable than they are, less than human, less worthy of life.  And too easy to avoid the big questions by distracting ourselves with noise and trivia.  Too easy to avoid the work of building community by fostering dissent and disagreement.  Too easy to perpetuate a culture grounded in fear--a primal emotion which triggers the fight-or-flight responses of anger and avoidance.  Too much rage, too much apathy.  The poet Yeats said it well:  "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

Fear translates easily into anger.  Anger (especially when combined with too-easy access to war-grade weaponry) culminates in days like this ... creating more heartbreak, more fear.  More anger.  More spiraling downward.  More scapegoating.  More ugliness.  

I don't want that fear and anger to be the foundation on which we build our society.  I'm trying to imagine (and it's hard today, but I'm trying), a society built on a strong sense of community, one that is engaged in conversations about ethics, meaning, values, and compassion.  And that's a risk. One that requires us to move beyond fear.

And if that's what we want, we will build an educational system that prioritizes those things. Training people in the skills they need to make their livings is crucial and will always need to happen.  But we also need to start talking about how we live our lives, and what we value as a people. We need to realize--and I mean "realize" in a really deep, powerful, turn-your-life-around way--that the lives of other human beings are as valuable as our own.  And we need to start creating a world grounded in that awareness.  

No, we can't get to utopia.  The world is never going to be perfect.  Not all violence can be prevented.  Not all prejudice can be uprooted.  I sometimes sound like an idealist, but I'm actually a pragmatically grounded idealist.  I know we can't solve all our problems. We're human beings, and human beings are instrinsically flawed.  We act out of self-interest--all of us.  So we'll always have stuff to work on, both as individuals and as societies. It's never going to be perfect. 

And you know what?  The fact that we can't create a perfect world is a pretty lame argument for not trying to create a better one.  

We might not be able to prevent all traffic accidents, but we don't throw up our hands, tear out all the streetlights, eradicate all the speed limits and remove safety features from vehicles and roadways, throwing up our hands at the futility of preventing "all" accidents. We do what we can and recognize that even when we can't reach "perfect," there's something to be said for at least doing "better."

And we have to do better.  My God, we just have to do better.  How much more of this? How much more?  

Why, right now, does compassion seem to be so hard?  Why does it seem so difficult for some people to not kill their fellow human beings?  Why do some people resort so easily to cheap and easy scapegoating that just perpetuates the cycle of fear and dehumanization, while resolving nothing?  

I know we can't be perfect.  But why can't we be better?

There's so much we have to do right now as a society, and none of us can do everything. We each need to play our part.  I'm an educator, so I have to go with what I know, and what I feel able to do.  Obviously, education isn't the whole answer here.  We have a lot of problems, and we need to find a lot of solutions.  

I do strongly believe that developing an educational system grounded in the humanities--the deep consideration of what it means to be human, not just for ourselves individually but for all these people with whom we share this planet--has to be one angle (among many) that we address. Conversations about our collective values, about how we conceptualize "self" and "other," about how we manage differences, about how we get to "better"--they can't be relegated just to the religious sphere or to the private sphere. Those conversations need to be part of every classroom, K through PhD, and we need to recognize that a purely utilitarian approach to education is probably going to create ... well, a world eerily similar to the one we're seeing around us now, in which we're growing increasingly numb to violence and dehumanization.  

Yeah, we all need to worry about how we make our livings, and that is part of what education is for.  But what use will those "livings" be, if we lose our very lives?  How much will it matter whether or not we have trained for "livelihoods" if we don't collectively learn how to value this thing called life?

My deepest condolences to all the loved ones affected by the massacre in Orlando...and every other massacre (too many to name here), and to all who are bereaved and frightened and frustrated and saddened and angry.  Enough.  This is enough.  We need to start doing better.  And there's so, so much that we need to do.

We each must start by doing whatever we can--however small that may seem.

​Peace.
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 The other day a friend of mine posted an article by Nicholas Wyman in Forbes (here): "Why we desperately need to bring back vocational training in schools."  

You might assume this is a strange article for me to be plugging, given that my blog is ostensibly about saving the arts and humanities in higher education—not a cause usually associated either with reading Forbes or with promoting vocational training.  But if you assume that, you assume wrong.   

I completely agree with Wyman that we should return shop classes to the school curriculum—and let’s extend that to include home economics as well (while untethering both endeavors from antiquated, gendered assumptions). That isn’t to say that we should minimize the humanities, or foreign languages, or the performing arts (nor does Wyman ever say that).   I say we need more of everything.

When you think about it, why wouldn’t a pro-arts and humanities person be in favor of vocational training?  After all, how are we going to enjoy concerts or literary readings or theatrical performances if nobody knows how to build the facilities that house them?  (For that matter, how are we going to go to the bathroom at such events if we don’t have janitors and plumbers?)  How are we going to store materials in archives and libraries if nobody is trained in the climate-control technology we need to keep materials from deteriorating? How are we going to live in houses if nobody knows how to build them? How will we even survive if nobody knows how to grow food?

On a practical level, it sounds like a no-brainer—of course we need all kinds of occupations and all kinds of people.  That seems obvious, right?  But I’ve met enough snobs in my lifetime to make me wonder if it really is all that obvious, and I’ve known more than a few panicky parents who would faint away at the thought of their own child growing up to be, say, an auto mechanic.  
We need everybody.  Snobbery is ugly.

Collectively, as a society we make a number of false and potentially harmful assumptions.  We assume that those who engage in physical, tangible work are incapable of and/or uninterested in the life of the mind.  We assume that the “voc-tech” track leads to a “lesser” life.  We assume it is both acceptable and necessary to label, classify, and qualitatively “rank” human beings based on how they earn their livings.  We assume that some means of making an honest living are more honorable than others (doctors, lawyers, professors or entertainers are considered more “valuable” than plumbers, carpenters, secretaries or hairdressers, for example). 

As if that weren’t enough, we extend our assumptions to include avocations—as if people’s interests outside the workplace should somehow “track” with their occupations. We assume that some hobbies are more worthy than others (classical music is “classier” than rock music, the ballet is morally superior to NASCAR, etc.); and we assume that one’s livelihood should dictate one’s leisure pursuits (retail clerks read Nora Robbins, not Virginia Woolf).  

Simply reversing the values assigned to these assumptions does not do much to change the status quo.  I’ve known many so-called “blue collar” folks who, understandably weary of feeling put down by those who wear whiter collars, reverse the values assigned to various pursuits: NASCAR may be considered “lower” than ballet, but hey, “at least it’s manly”; classical music and theatre are for “wusses,” and so forth.  (This kind of “reverse elitism” is often accompanied by the gendering of certain leisure preferences—what better way to diss something than by feminizing it?  But I digress.)  

Even Wyman falls into this same assumptions-and-classifications trap when he states:  “Not everyone is good at math, biology, history and other traditional subjects that characterize college-level work.  Not everyone is fascinated by Greek mythology, or enamored with Victorian literature, or enraptured by classical music.  Some students are mechanical; others are artistic.  Some focus best in a lecture hall or classroom; still others learn best by doing, and would thrive in the studio, workshop or shop floor.”  

On the one hand, I don’t disagree.   Who would argue that different people have different preferences, skill levels, interests and capabilities?   And who would claim that we shouldn’t try to meet the educational needs of the widest possible range of people?  (Don't answer that--I've met people who do seem to believe that.)  

On the other hand, I find this particular statement too reductive—too “either/or.”  Why is it not possible for a human being to be both mechanical and artistic?  

My father was an engineer who dabbled in oil painting.   My mother trained and worked for years as a bookkeeper; she quit that job to teach piano.  My husband worked as a union carpenter in commercial high-rise construction before becoming a history professor (who can still fix almost anything and knows how to remodel our house).  I myself worked for many years as a stenographer before I returned to the university and developed my current professorial career.  We are fortunate to have developed both “vocational” skills and academic capabilities, and I’m fortunate to have known (and been raised by) people who refused to accept the kind of “either/or” trap that Wyman both points out and, paradoxically, falls into. 

I know many such examples of people who engage in creative and/or intellectual pursuits and know how to do so-called “practical” things.  Arguing that we must choose between two options is as short-sighted as arguing against learning new languages when studies show clearly that bilingualism confers many cognitive benefits.  Considering how the human brain operates, wouldn’t knowing how to do a multitude of things, some labeled “mechanical” and others labeled “artistic,” work in a similar way?  

Wyman points out, I believe correctly, that high school voc-tech classes were originally challenged because of concern over “tracking” students at an early age, which often straitjacketed those labeled “vocational.”  Yet, rather than getting at the roots of the issue—our society’s obsession with “status,” disrespect for physical labor, and limiting assumptions about where certain kinds of people “belong”—the powers-that-be decided to remove the voc-tech option from the curriculum altogether.  (This move, I would argue, actually had the ironic effect of reducing the status of technical workers even further.)
   
What should have happened is for voc-tech training to stay in place, but without the negative stigma and without a “tracking” approach that trapped people for life in a whole network of limiting assumptions.  Wood shop lovers could have been welcomed into the orchestra or drama programs, aspiring scholars could have learned how to craft objects in metal, and students of both genders, regardless of career aspiration, could have learned to cook and sew.  (Granted, nobody can do everything—there are so many hours in a day—but why can’t we envision an educational system that offers people a smorgasbord of options?)

In the future we may well experience a return of vocational training to secondary schools as the need for “practical” job training becomes more acute.  After all, if our climate keeps heading toward catastrophe, the day will come when those who know how to do hands-on things have a distinct advantage over those who do not. (For instance, lots of affluent people may discover the hard way that it takes far less skill to brandish an environmentally correct re-usable shopping bag than it does to grow organic vegetables yourself.)

But that doesn’t mean the arts and humanities are useless, either.  Nor does it mean they should be preserved only for an elite few.  After all, the humanities address and express what it means to be human—and that includes everybody.  All human beings must make a living somehow (unless we are born into wealth, which most of us are not), and like it or not, we might not all be able to make our livings in arts-and-humanities-related fields.  But that hardly means the arts and humanities should be done away with.  All people benefit in multiple ways when a society offers a robust arts and humanities infrastructure.

Why does it seem so hard for us to envision an ironworker who loves to attend—or even act in—the theatre?  Or an electrician who writes poetry?  Or an art history professor who knows how to fix a leaking sink?  Or a lawyer who tinkers with racecars?  Actually, many of us probably know a good many such people (because real people are always more interesting and multifaceted than stereotypes, thank goodness).  We just need to stop thinking those combinations are weird, open our minds, move past labels, and embrace all kinds of work and leisure pursuits as valid, valuable, and potentially enriching.

We lack collective imagination if we can’t envision an educational system that accounts for complexity in both human capabilities and human needs.  Why can’t we contemplate, and bring into being, an approach to education that teaches people the practical skills that will help them to make a living, and imparts the creative and intellectual attributes that will help them to make a life? 
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