A much-needed discussion about the humanistic education of the people is in progress. Johan Croneman, Inger Enkvist, Magnus Bremmer and Isak Hammar disagree in details, but agree that humanioraforskare have difficult to reach out in the broader culture – and samhällsdiskussioner.
Croneman put great responsibility on journalists and media, while Enkvist (SvD) seem to think that the Swedish ethos gives rise to a general pessimism. Hammar and Bremmer says both in different ways to the requirements of humanistic education looks different today than yesterday.
Read more: Magnus Bremmer: The need for humanistic innovation at all stages
I wish myself to stress something that has not been touched, namely, the importance of informing the potentially interested public that a deeper knowledge in the humanities areas of the head. The main problem is hardly that the public is ignorant about art, culture, history, and philosophy, but to many people are not aware even that something may there was to be known in these areas. You can not ask for it of whose existence one is not aware, so it humanistiske the researcher avoid never escape from the responsibility to initiate the call. And the public has a right to the knowledge researchers acquire for public funds, with the aim that some in our society should know much on the areas where the other only have time to scratch the surface.
Can the swede folkbildas? When Enkvist idealizes Melvyn bragg’s excellent BBC Radio 4 series ”In our time” and its scope (approximately 2 million listeners) as an example of the British as a formed people, aside from that the figure in a licensbetalande population of just over 67 million represents 2.9 per cent. Räckviddstatistik in SR P2:s tablålyssning (pod – and efterhandslyssning excluded) pointing thus to our own modest program (”The Swedish music history” and ”Issue musikprofessorn”) reaches about the same number of percentage. This despite the fact that not the whole world, as in the BBC’s case, understand our little Swedish languages.
probably right in that a key success factor of the ”In our time” is the focus on an object of knowledge, and not on the drama between the participants. Here the media has a lot to learn.
broadcasting licenses for public service should include to mediate such as anyway is created, where it was created. One of the strengths of ”the Ask grove” in the original version was that the mediating party (SVT) are not themselves attempted to create, or even shape, the content. I dare say that in the long run teaches seem as embarrassing when medieprofiler trying to act philosophical faculty of associate professors and professors would try to make broad Saturday night entertainment.
Finally, I would like to problematize the widely cherished belief that the humanities have a special ethical and societal responsibility. The risk is that the research appears to be less, not more, relevant if it is mainly communicated with instrumental purposes. Our responsibility is not primarily to train the public in critical thinking or to earth on the basis of history, but to communicate what we consider worth to know about it, which is precisely our area of expertise.
that just such an education is almost totally independent of the various threats and challenges that Croneman, Enkvist, Bremmer and Hammar commented on in their posts.
Read more: Isak Hammar: The classic educator may belong to the story
Read more: Magnus Bremmer: The absent humanist can revitalize our unimaginative idéklimat
Read more: Johan Croneman: unleash the researchers in the debate – and preferably in opposition to the journalists who go on idle
