Why study arts?
Joseph Ware
When I tell people I’m studying Arts at uni, they look at me as though any day now I’m going to be transformed into a long haired layabout, who attends one of his three of four lectures a week (when he bothers to turn up at all), and otherwise spends his time writing essays on ‘Aspects of Childhood in Ancient Greece’. “A waste of time! A waste of money!” is what they’re thinking.
I can see where they’re coming from.
Doing an Arts degree (and spending time writing on ‘The Use of the Definite Article in the Poetry of George Herbert’) may well be considered indulgent. And part of me wishes I was heading for something obviously essential, like medical research. There’s a need for scientists in this country, a shortage of nurses, pathologists and radiologists. People talk of the brain drain.
But the truth of the matter is that Maths and Science don’t do much for me. I know they’re important, but I’m not excited by them the way I am by the humanities.
Words like ‘bodacious’ and ‘irrefragable’ excite me. I prefer a costume for the stage rather than a coat for the lab. I’m drawn to those who would be actors and artists, musicians and writers, directors and dreamers.
And, I want to be part of a passionate discussion about who we are and what we’re doing here and what we ought to do with our time on this planet. That excites me. One of my favourite movies is the old classic: Dead Poets Society. I love the scene where the teacher, played by Robin Williams, says, “Huddle up, huddle up”, and the students gather around him...
“Medicine, law, business, engineering - these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love - these are what we stay alive for!”
That scene resonates with me. Poetry, art, literature - that’s where life’s big questions are raised and where answers are explored. And in music, philosophy, history.
And so I argue that there’s nothing wrong with spending the next three years of my life studying Shakespeare and Chekov. And Dickens. And Tolstoy. Robert Frost and John Donne. Tim Winton and Judith Wright. Australian history. African history. Familiarising myself with the best that’s been thought and written and painted: the art of Rembrandt and Picasso, the music of Mozart and Beethoven. In fact there are so many plays to see, concerts to attend, films to watch, and books to read, that it might actually take ten or twenty or thirty years, or more! But, in order not to frighten my parents too much, I’m saying, just give me these three.
But maybe I do take ten years! Things have changed: there has been talk recently about the way in which the four common phases of life have become six. Childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age - have become - childhood, adolescence, odyssey, adulthood, active retirement and old age. And I’m saying that no-one goes straight from school or uni into the adult world of work and family any more. That’s so five minutes ago. We travel, we journey. So why not let my odyssean exploration take me deep into the world of the humanities?
Sure- I could flick through Hamlet in my spare time walking between engineering classes. But I don’t want to just ‘dabble’ in the humanities. The great writers and artists and composers deserve more than that that. They require time and concentration and study to do them justice. And I want to drench myself in all of that.