“This is what happens when you all get STEM majors,” read a tweet reply I remember seeing a few years ago, under a post that claimed the primary reason fascism is evil is because it co-opts toxic masculinity. The funny reply echoes a broader cultural failure that seems to – in some very reductive way – stem from STEM.
Obviously, people switching from their humanities majors to more math-based, engineering and science programs is not the only reason why some Americans have trouble with a meaningful understanding and appreciation of history. In fact, these professions are undoubtedly important and far more materially-useful than any humanities major. But there’s more to the world than building bridges, programming computers and making $400,000 a year doing whatever biochemical engineers do.
According to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, humanities majors fell over 14 percent nationwide between 2012 and 2018, following an even larger fall since the ‘90s, while STEM majors dramatically rose. The shift comes after nationwide pushes to get “real” degrees, ones that graduates can “actually use” along with a concurrent trend that has steadily defined the world’s goals and its progress as purely material. This seems to be the chief culprit, possibly motivating the former’s existence and orienting everyone around tangible and obvious development, not only in an industrial progress sense – big buildings, strong military, high GDP – but also in a personal sense, seen in the pursuit of money and its family of unfulfilling but attractive commodities.
This increasingly familiar world, where history, English, philosophy, art and politics are less valued and sought-after disciplines, seems to reflect an internal problem, one where the things have tricked us into believing in their ultimate importance, and placed themselves on pedestals of worship.
People know fascism is bad, but can’t really explain – outside loose and incoherent connections to other bad things that miss a very large point – why. The prioritizing of material and tangible progress seems to be the offender, found in the shifting popularity of humanities-focused college majors, and felt in the increasing ignorance of an America one hopes is not doomed to repeat history.
