Reply to Concerns That New Department of Education Earnings Test Could Undermine Arts, Public Service Degree Programs

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am a scientist but I don't think that every student should major in science/technology.

Maybe the solution is not to discontinue these majors but rather to value and pay public servants, educators, and others more appropriately.

Even during the Great Depression, our federal government recognized the value of humanities and arts, and found ways to support them.[/quote]

The only reason we have recordings of formerly enslaved people talking about their experiences is because the government paid historians to do this work during the Great Depression. I’ve listened to some of these recordings at the Library of Congress while doing my own research. I’ve seen and appreciated the WPA-funded murals showing the history of indigenous people in the US at Griffith Park Observatory. Documenting history, creating art—a healthy culture understands that this is critical work and believes in paying people to do it.

A sclerotic, fascist-friendly culture seeks to stamp this work out by shutting off the paths for historians and artists and philosophers to exist in the first place. Those of you cheering this on, claiming that low pay for this work is evidence that the work isn’t valuable, are making clear how sick our culture is. You think you’re being virtuous, but you won’t like where we end up. [/quote]

The WPA is such a vision of an America that could have been.[/quote]

WPA workers [i]were paid[/i]. That was the whole point. Working for the WPA made them better off.

You’re arguing that people should [i]take out loans[/i] to do WPA-style work, so that they get poorer and poorer.

Can you not see the difference?[/quote]

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