Sometimes rather annoyingly, studying an arts subject sometimes requires an awful lot of justification. This is primarily because in a time when there are fewer jobs available, everyone apparently needs to make a direct line for them. So whilst telling your friends and relatives that you study law, medicine, or golf course management allows them to see you quickly replacing your mortarboard with a pay cheque after a short post-graduation jaunt in South-East Asia, talking about your arts subject leaves them fearing you living at home, at 30, jobless.
To a small extent they have a point; arts graduates do have slightly lower rates of employment, and most (ir)reputable banking firms, for example, would much rather hear ideas on Keynesian economics rather than my ideas on Goethe's Faust, even if the banking firm in question is the Deutsche one. Because of this, I have been guilty of bemoaning my own situation several times, exasperatedly demanding the people around me to tell me “what on earth” I’m going to do with MY degree. However, as part of my compulsory year abroad trip of self-discovery (often undertaken in the warmth and comfort of Viennese coffee houses, if you’re interested) I think this is wrong. Instead I should be lauding the benefits the arts bring, and hopefully changing the hearts and minds of a few relatives and employers who think arts students en général lack employability.
To a small extent they have a point; arts graduates do have slightly lower rates of employment, and most (ir)reputable banking firms, for example, would much rather hear ideas on Keynesian economics rather than my ideas on Goethe's Faust, even if the banking firm in question is the Deutsche one. Because of this, I have been guilty of bemoaning my own situation several times, exasperatedly demanding the people around me to tell me “what on earth” I’m going to do with MY degree. However, as part of my compulsory year abroad trip of self-discovery (often undertaken in the warmth and comfort of Viennese coffee houses, if you’re interested) I think this is wrong. Instead I should be lauding the benefits the arts bring, and hopefully changing the hearts and minds of a few relatives and employers who think arts students en général lack employability.
Now, one thing every arts subject teaches you to do is to construct an argument, so I realize here I’ll need some academic backup. Luckily, I have Herr Professor Doktor Doktor Manfred Spitzer (the phrase ‘if you’ve got it, flaunt it’ in Germany applies primarily to academic titles), professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Ulm. I was lucky enough to meet Prof. Dr. Dr. Spitzer when he came to a meeting of the heads of apprenticeships’ schemes of some of Austria’s largest companies to explain to them why it was worth their while to send their apprentices on theatre courses. Austria, like Germany, has a very successful apprenticeship culture that is often commended by the British press and politicians alike. So to put this meeting in a clearer light: here was a many-titled man, explaining to people with highly successful apprenticeship programmes that exist entirely to prepare young people for work, that they could do nothing better than make their apprentices engage with the arts.
I’m sure that a few very obvious reasons spring to mind why theatre might be useful to apprentices: confidence, public speaking, etc. But Prof. Spitzer was not suggesting anything quite so obvious as this. Instead, arguing with the kind of dogmatic assuredness that only a middle-aged man with an excessive endowment of academic titles can, he offered both theatre and the arts in general as the best way to combat digital dementia (see here for something a little alarming) and turn young people into well-rounded individuals capable of doing any job well. To summarise his argument embarrassingly quickly, performing Shakespeare will improve the motor skills and coordination of the apprentices, and reading and understanding a complicated text will create far stronger and lasting connections between synapses in the brain, whilst requiring them to improve their concentration on certain tasks. Repeat the process by having the apprentices read multiple books, perform multiple plays and thereby encounter many different views and arguments, and they’ll be able to concentrate for longer, find solutions to problems faster, be more adaptable, and even google better! They’ll also most likely suffer from mental degeneration much later on in life. In Internet speak, that’s much win.
I’m sure that a few very obvious reasons spring to mind why theatre might be useful to apprentices: confidence, public speaking, etc. But Prof. Spitzer was not suggesting anything quite so obvious as this. Instead, arguing with the kind of dogmatic assuredness that only a middle-aged man with an excessive endowment of academic titles can, he offered both theatre and the arts in general as the best way to combat digital dementia (see here for something a little alarming) and turn young people into well-rounded individuals capable of doing any job well. To summarise his argument embarrassingly quickly, performing Shakespeare will improve the motor skills and coordination of the apprentices, and reading and understanding a complicated text will create far stronger and lasting connections between synapses in the brain, whilst requiring them to improve their concentration on certain tasks. Repeat the process by having the apprentices read multiple books, perform multiple plays and thereby encounter many different views and arguments, and they’ll be able to concentrate for longer, find solutions to problems faster, be more adaptable, and even google better! They’ll also most likely suffer from mental degeneration much later on in life. In Internet speak, that’s much win.
I also have some anecdotal evidence to back up what the Herr Professor Doktor was saying. In November last year I travelled to a small Romanian town on the border of Romania, where the Wiener Kindertheater has started a project to help the local children. Sighetu is a beautiful little place, but it lies in a rural region of one of the poorest countries in Europe, and as such the children there have few opportunities. Crashing through the language barrier with a cunning mixture of loud English, wild hand gestures and hotly debated English-Romanian translations, I managed to find out what the children there did: nothing. They went to school, they went home, and they watched television. It struck me as being terribly sad. And then I saw the effect that the theatre was having. The kids were always extremely excited to come, play warm-up games, perform and try to speak English. As they were performing L’invalid imaginaire by Moliere (in Romanian of course), plenty of them also asked questions about their characters motivations and reactions to others, which was particularly impressive given that at the start of the project some of them were incapable of reading! It didn’t matter that some of the questions were somewhat simplistic, but rather that they were engaged in and excited by classic literature, and finding inspiration in the arts.
Clearly, a person who has had the benefits of studying an arts subject should not immediately be thought of as having fewer job prospects and therefore less of a chance. And if you’ve managed to spend your university years arguing that, for example, a Marxist reading is the only suitable way to interpret everything from Orwell’s 1984 to How I Met Your Mother, then you’re probably a very adaptable person who will learn quickly on the job. So the next time somebody asks me what I’m going to do with my degree, I’ll look up from my PGCE application, smile and tell them I can do anything.
Alex Matthews
Clearly, a person who has had the benefits of studying an arts subject should not immediately be thought of as having fewer job prospects and therefore less of a chance. And if you’ve managed to spend your university years arguing that, for example, a Marxist reading is the only suitable way to interpret everything from Orwell’s 1984 to How I Met Your Mother, then you’re probably a very adaptable person who will learn quickly on the job. So the next time somebody asks me what I’m going to do with my degree, I’ll look up from my PGCE application, smile and tell them I can do anything.
Alex Matthews