The Value of Critical Thinking: Humanities in a Technological Era

The Value of Critical Thinking: Humanities in a Technological Era

Since the Ronald Reagan era, we have heard arguments that studying liberal arts or the humanities is a waste of time or, at the very least, hardly the most sagacious path for college students to pursue. I am a Gen Xer, a teenager during that era, and this dispiriting message was inculcated in my peers and me. A decade later, as a humanities graduate student, my wariness toward such demoralizing rhetoric increased. Now, decades later, as a tenure…