Pitfalls of marginalizing humanities in University curriculum studies

Recently on a Friday afternoon, I was having lunch with two African colleagues in the USA, one a professor of Education and the other a professor of Biology. (I teach English language and literature.) Casually, I mentioned that I was glad I did not have any quizzes or papers to grade that weekend. Then, perhaps unintentionally, the colleague who teaches Biology made a remark that I and my other colleague found quite offensive. She said that unlike her, we had it easy, for we taught what she called “the soft sciences” (as opposed to what she called “the hard sciences” – the natural and physical sciences and their application – biology, chemistry and physics, engineering, medicine, etc.). The remark made by the Biology professor that the humanities and the social sciences are “soft sciences” took me back to 1972 when I was an undergraduate at the National University of Zaire. That year, the Ministry of Higher Education carried out some reforms which were designed to place more importance on the natural and physical sciences and their application. The government gave students who majored in these disciplines a generous scholarship, double than what students in humanities and the social sciences were getting.
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Times Reporter