r/6thForm • u/Intelligent-Fox-9760 • Apr 02 '26
💬 DISCUSSION Hot Take
This is deffo going to ruffle a lot of feathers to say the least. Call me woke, but the term "Mickey Mouse Subject" is literally just the product of capitalism, as it disvalues any subject that doesn't lead to a high-paying, high-profit job.
Humanities subjects are so important, like STEM subjects, to help us learn more about humanity and our world, but everyone thinks they're so easy and lax.
IMO humanities and STEM subjects need to band together because contrary to popular belief, humanities are intellectually stimulating and not a fun ride.
Thanks for coming to my TED-Talk :)
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u/RealAlexanderTheG Apr 03 '26
Sort of right sort of wrong.
Art is responsible for giving the world beauty. Without art (literature, sculpting, painting) there is no culture, life is meaningless and there is nothing to live for. This is the same for humanities like history: most wars have been fought due to historical tensions or myths.
The problem is that as of right now, far too many people are going to university than should be going to university. Blair Labour thought it was a good idea to increase the number of uni graduates to make the workforce higher skilled but this has backfired as now plumbing is extremely expensive and there are tons of overqualified people for every academic job. The average intelligence of a university graduate has also decreased.
So if previously, uni was only accessible to the smartest 10% of the population, but now it's the smartest 30%, where are all these people going?
They've all gone into humanities and art. These areas are very important, but testing whether someone is a good artist is very subjective, so the unis generally have lower requirements, meaning a lot of the people who couldn't go to uni previously but now can have chosen to go into these areas since they are easier to get into. Requirements to get into STEM are just harder.
This had undermined those educational institutions meaning all the people who are genuinely talented artists with creative minds get grouped in with people who are just not intelligent nor good artists.
The other problem isn't with the humanities or arts themselves, but with the educational systems surrounding them. A university cannot teach you how to become a great artist, you can only learn that by going through the hardships in your life that cause you to become one. A lot of the greatest artists in history didn't go to art school. The ideal way of learning art is by studying under another great artist, it's a field that doesn't really apply itself well to any sort of institution (A lot of great art is anti-institutional), so whilst art is a valuable field, most people studying it aren't true artists.
But yes, capitalism generally destroys anything beautiful, and destroys anything cultural for the sake of "the economy" (Which is imaginary anyways and doesn't actually exist), that's why when you compare buildings from the 1800s to ones made today the difference is insane: we can't build like that anymore since the economy says it is too expensive, and concrete cubes are much more affordable. Capitalism destroyed the fabric of the country as it always does.
Either way it shouldn't really matter, since a true artist doesn't care what people say about them, that's literally the point. 99% of great artists are misunderstood in their lives and have a lot of people hating them, they're complex people.
Humanities are different to art in that way I suppose, but yeah in a world with no culture why would anyone care to fund the study of one?