We don’t always get to choose our gigs, so jazz scholar Ted Gioia recently accepted an unlikely invitation to talk to med school students about the humanities. (More news: the Jazz Journalists Association had chosen Ted’s lively and informed The Honest Broker as blog of the year, and also awarded him the Robert Palmer-Helen Oakley Dance Award for Excellence in Writing.)
Back to the med school visit:
So I agreed to give this talk, but with trepidation. When you’re involved in arts or culture and stand up in front of an audience of science or tech people, they expect you to justify the humanities.
Why should we waste time with you? They don’t actually say that, but it’s hanging thick in the air like a bad odor.
A “casual talk” about the humanities turns into a plea to the jury for acquittal. There’s simply more skepticism about the humanities now than ever before, and you can’t avoid that cynical attitude, especially when talking to a whole room of future doctors.
Frankly, I don’t like defending the humanities. Don’t get me wrong—studying the humanities was life-changing for me. I grew up in a neighborhood where nobody’s parents, including my own, had gone to college. So when I got the chance, I found it liberating to study Dante, Plato, Shakespeare, Mozart, Sappho, Goethe, and all those other dead people from across the big pond.
But these individuals, so important to my development, aren’t as beloved nowadays. I don’t know how anyone can grapple with ideas or the world at a deep level without paying close attention to the leading lights of the past, but I don’t believe anyone should be forced to read Shakespeare, for example. Let those who are curious and willing, go down that path. If that’s just a tiny number of people, so be it. And if others think they have found a better way to wisdom that doesn’t involve learning from the past, I wish them well and send them off to their favorite TikTok influencers.
So how did it go? Read here, on Ted’s award-winning blog.
Tags: Ted Gioia