Skills Are the New Canon

Abstract

This chapter examines recent defenses of the humanities, demonstrating that most of them present a portrait of the humanities strikingly bereft of content. Instead of stressing the need for students to encounter and contemplate particular works associated with the modern humanities, these defenses typically vouch for the humanities’ value on the basis of their purported ability to inculcate various skills in students. Such arguments, it is shown, possess intrinsic disadvantages and vulnerabilities. Many apologists, for example, highlight the notion that the humanities supply students with the skill of “critical thinking.” But they cannot claim that the humanities alone are conduits for this nebulous aptitude.