Humanities. This word encompasses a broad field of disciplines and can be hard to define, but if we break it down, one word becomes clear: “human.”

It is the role of education to make us into well-rounded human beings, and humanities are an integral part of that. Without them, the “human” aspect is lost.

That is where modern society has gone awry. The current emphasis on STEM is great, but in order to create well-read, understanding, and open-minded global citizens, humanities education must be a large part of the education in America.  

According to Stanford University, humanities can be described as “the study of how people process and document the human experience [using] philosophy, literature, religion, art, music, history, and language to understand and record our world.” The humanties extend beyond the laboratories and classrooms and into the interactions between people and the real-life application of these scientific discoveries.

In the diverse society we live in today, we are bound to encounter and work with people from all walks of life. While science and math may be considered a “universal” language that would allow us to communicate with others around the world, it doesn’t allow us to connect with them. Science and math lack the “human” aspect that creates strong bonds and foster creativity.

Accord to Tyler Cowen, Holbert C. Harris chair of economics at George Mason University, in today’s high-tech economy, expertise in humanities-related subjects is increasingly vital in order to “synthesize and humanize” new technologies to ensure they are successful and helpful.

The humanities, according to Cowen, is perhaps why Facebook did better than Myspace. “It may have had slightly better technology, but it was more because its [co-founder] Mark Zuckerberg, who majored in psychology, understood the importance of the feed of information, rather than just having a profile,” he said.

To completely disregard the humanities would be a big mistake and would devastate the immense body of knowledge passed down through the generations. Colleges and universities realize this as well, and as a result have implemented “core” classes, or similar systems under other names, that require students to take humanities courses, no matter what their majors are. At the University of Chicago, for example, students must complete six quarters of humanities: civilization studies, the arts, social sciences, and a foreign language.

Aside from places like University of Chicago emphasizing the importance of humanities, the world of science itself has acknowledged its importance. According to Science Magazine, “studying the humanities allows you to become familiar with and use the creative ideas from great minds outside of science.” A prime example of this is Charles Darwin, who admits that his ideas in “On the Origin of Species” came from reading and understanding Thomas Malthus’s theory on population, a theory not strictly bounded within the STEM category.

Obviously, higher institutions see the importance in a humanities education. It not only helps us interact with others around the world and be more well-rounded in our academic pursuits, but it also provides us with the necessary foundation for exploration and decisions in the future. A humanities education enables students to think beyond formulas and equations and into what makes us human to begin with.

Claire Grunewald is the Print Editor in Chief for The Patriot and jcpatriot.com.