TOW Post #11- Article: "The Real Humanities Crisis"

            Humanities is a term that not many people discuss or think about. The general definition that most people would refer to would be simple the human race. But in most cases humanities is discussed in the terms of  learning or literature concerned with human culture, esp. literature, history, art, music, and philosophy. Today the most top secure jobs are in the realm of business and medicine/science and the humanities realm in jobs are decreasing. In the article "The Real Humanities Crisis" author Gary Gutting, and opinion writing for the New York Times newspaper wrote about how humanities jobs are losing importance and losing peoples interests. Gutting makes a this statement a claim of fact and supports this up with statistics and a claim of policies in the end. These two rhetorical strategies together help the Gutting achieve his overall purpose which was to call attention to this "humanities crisis"
            Gutting first supports his claim in the beginning by state some basic statistics about humanities jobs vs business jobs. He make a clear point that more people are reaching for jobs in the business and medical area because that is where the better pay is. Although people who work in the humanities real of occupations get more satisfaction out of what the are doing, they are not getting good satisfactory economically because of the lower pay compared to business jobs, Gutting states that "Humanities majors on average start earning $31,000 per year and move to an average of $50,000 in their middle years. (The figures for writers and performing artists are much lower.) By contrast, business majors start with salaries 26 percent higher than humanities majors and move to salaries 51 percent higher" Stating this fact supports his claim of fact helping him achieve his overall purpose.
            Relating to his use of facts, he ends his article with claims of policies to announce solutions to these down grading facts. For example he states that humanities jobs should get paid more so more people can feel economically safe and doing what they love. By ending with claims of policy, Gutting wraps up his claim of fact, supporting his overall purpose.


Source:http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/30/the-real-humanities-crisis/?ref=opinion&_r=0