Tag: Humanities

The Importance of Humanities in Nursing

When we talk about humanities, we think about it as a branch of science that deals with human nature, but does it have something to do with nursing? This subject is a part of the curriculum of a nursing course as a minor subject or as an elective. It aims to expose the students to a different part of human beings. It gives an idea how people think, react and take action in certain situations they are involved.

 

The geniuses of ancient Greece first used the liberal arts to educate their people. They used poetry, paintings, debates etc to make people enhance their understanding, gain new insights and do critical thinking. Through the study of the humanities, we are able to think creatively, think before acting and apprehend situations.

As a nurse, it is important to gain some knowledge about people. They must be able to have a concrete understanding on how the patients feel about themselves and their condition. The more a nurse understands his or her patient, the more he or she can improve the services, use the proper treatment and approach.

Using the human experience, it will provide us with the knowledge about human nature. The works of the humanities scholars in the past have given us understanding of different cultures, how people develop fear, happiness or loneliness, and the proper approaches. Nursing students must learn this to use humanities in their daily shift. The more a nurse understands the patient, the more efficient they become.

By studying popular literature, nurses are able to know and appreciate life experiences. It will help them in attaining awareness and sensitivity towards the many physical and psychological aspects of an individual’s responses to health, illness and hospitalization. Humanities advertise affection from the hurt and discomfort of the disease. It is recognized as a highly effective teaching tool in a comprehensive program for college students of nursing.

 

Humanities in CLEP

The humanities subject includes numerous subjects, including history, literature, music and art. For those who have a humanities background, you might want to go ahead and take the CLEP test. Passing the CLEP, also called the college-level examination program, provides you with the chance to earn as much as six college credits, which might apply toward your degree. Understanding how to pass this test may reduce the number of classes you have to take throughout your college career.

The initial step in planning for that test is to be aware what the exam entails. The humanities CLEP test covers music, art and literature. You will have to know and find out the works of specific authors and be aware of the qualities of their writing. In addition, you will have to know the specific types of poetry along with other writings. The exam will ask you questions made to test out your general understanding of certain artists, pieces of art and also the history surrounding these, along with other subjects within the humanities. You may even have to identify works of art, sculptures along with other artworks. The exam includes 140 questions that you’ll want to accomplish within 1 hour 30 minutes.

Knowing you’ll go ahead and take the CLEP humanities test later on, spend some time reading through a number of works. Concentrate on classics and popular modern works. You will have to read poetry, plays, short tales, books and nonfiction works to have a good start. When you don’t have time to read a number of works, you might want to study books that provide an introduction to subjects in the humanities. You might not have just as much success using the test just like you browse the works themselves; however, this may give a better approach in studying when time is a concern.

To organize, you need to listen and focus on a number of music styles that will help you get ready for the exam. Review music styles and ideas, and acquaint yourself with a number of artists. You might request buddies or relatives to listening to a bit of music so that you can practice determining the composer or song. Make flash cards with questions regarding artists and composers. Just like other parts of the humanities, you will need to study a number of visual arts. This can include works of art, sculptures and designs of architecture. You must also know the concepts behind film and dance, in addition to being capable of identifying specific good examples. Make yourself familiar with the method and your good to take the exam. The technique is to be familiar with the common, significant and noteworthy details related to humanities.

Humanities CLEP Examination FAQs

The Humanities evaluation assesses common knowledge of fictional works, art, and songs and the other performing arts. It is wide in its coverage, with concerns on all times from traditional to modern and in many different fields: poems, writing, philosophy, art, architecture, songs, dance, theater and film. The evaluation needs applicants to show their knowledge of the humanities through memory of particular details, understanding and application of ideas and research and presentation of various performing arts.

Because the examination is very wide in its coverage, it is unlikely that any one person will be well advised about all the areas it includes. The examination contains roughly 140 questions to be answered in 90 minutes. Some of these are pretest concerns that will not be obtained. Any time applicants spend on guides or providing personal details is in addition to the real examining time.

For applicants with acceptable ratings on the Humanities evaluation, universities may allow up to six semester hours (or the equivalent) of credit toward fulfillment of a submission requirement. Some may allow credit for a particular course that suits the examination in content. This evaluation uses the date designations b.c.e (before the common era) and c.e. (common era). These brands match to b.c. (before Christ) and a.d. (anno Domini), which are used in some books.

Questions on the Humanities evaluation need applicants to show the capabilities detailed below, in the estimated rates indicated. Some concerns may need more than one of the capabilities.

  • Knowledge of real details (authors, works, etc.) (50 % of the examination)
  • Recognition of methods such as rhyme scheme, method, and matters of style, and the capability to recognize them as features of certain authors, performers, educational institutions, or periods (30 % of the examination)
  • Understanding and presentation of fictional paragraphs and art copies that is likely to be different to most applicants (20 % of the examination).

Humanities and Social Sciences

Scholar operators in the humanities and public sciences are essentially modifying their analysis methods to be more suitable with the behaviors which technological innovation is magnificent on us independently, culturally and expertly. There are great possibilities how this is impacting analysis and, probably, an upcoming profession as an education in humanities.

Digital Humanities can be described as the use of internet centered technological innovation in humanities and public science analysis. At the same time a relatively new area. Archives all over the globe have scanned their data resource, and sometimes even resource material. The primary example of this is the English Library’s on the internet Paper database, which features almost all released magazines in England since Jan 1, 1710. At the age of the internet it cannot argue the importance of making the things easier through digital. In making references digital, it allows the users to operate and improvised their resources.

The procedure of digitizing has not been without complications. Hand-written resources in particular have intended that some of the digitization is either imperfect or uncertain, and in situations even facetious. Here altmetrics get into the structure, at least at the material stage. By discovering which interest you the most, you can quickly make a record of material that are necessary to at least have a look at. Such material hardly ignites much press interest in comparison to, for example, those released in medication and astronomy.

Before a long time there will certainly be public scientists and other scientists who will look at the traditional and public effects of digitalization and, of course, the World Wide Web. Altmetrics will likely be a requirement important interest from scientists and other humanities and public technology students for years to come.

Humanities Will Endure

Pay attention to the serious talk around universities, read op-eds and publications and you might think the humanities were in greater risk than the earth’s environment. In fact, despite the overheated stated claims, the humanities are not at death’s door. Modern demands will more likely force them into a new shape, and eventually a healthier one. That claim might seem unusual. The percentage of scholars specializing in the humanities has sunk to an all-time low. Learners have turned their backs on art history and literary works in support of studies like bookkeeping and medical, that leads straight to jobs. Governors like Florida’s Rick Scott have proved helpful to undercut areas of study not tuned carefully to employment. President Obama wants education to stress technology, science, engineering and arithmetic. Resources for disciplines in professions like history and linguistics are drying up. The legislature has already reduced the budget of the National Endowment for the Humanities and now Rep. Paul Ryan wants to destroy it.

Analysts of higher education paint a more uncertain image. How many years ago you start counting either degrees or research dollars, determines how depressing the humanities figures look. And with more and more people in America going to college only to qualify themselves for work, most time-honored areas of study have taken a hit, not just the humanities. But even at a conventional, top level organization like Stanford, degrees in humanities professions have dropped so low as to alert teachers into unmatched missionary initiatives.

Whatever precise form changes takes, teachers and their learners are likely to find that the humanities amount to more than a set of separated professions, each stuck on its own island. Ordinary readers might find learned research in art, history and literary works regularly published in language available to them, even released in general-interest publications, as it usually was before 1850. Even political figures may look for the value of erudition efforts. Today’s many humanities jointly form the newest edition of a millennia-long European custom of query into language and its products: inquiry, that is, into worlds that humans have created for themselves and expressed in words. That endeavor will not vanish, even when the present humanities disciplines do.

Digital Humanities

The humanities are in a crisis again, or still. But there is one big exception: digital humanities, which are a development market. During 2009, the nascent field was the talk of the Modern Language Association (MLA) convention: “among all the challenging sub-fields,” a press reporter had written about that year’s gathering, “the digital humanities seem like the first ‘next big thing’ in a long time.” Even previously, the National Endowment for the Humanities designed its Office of Digital Humanities to help finance projects. And digital humanities is constantly on the go from strength to strength, thanks in part to the Mellon Foundation, which has seeded programs at a number of colleges with large grants, most recently, $1 million to the University of Rochester to make a graduate fellowship.

 

Despite all this passion, the question of what the digital humanities is has yet to be given an acceptable response. Indeed, no one asks it more often than the digital humanists themselves. The latest development of guides on the subject from source books and anthologies to crucial manifestos is an indication of a field undergoing an identity crisis, trying to find out which, if anything, combines the different actions taken on under its advertising. “Nowadays,” says Stephen Ramsay in Interpreting Digital Humanities, “the term can mean anything from press research to digital art, from information exploration to edutech, from scholarly editing to anarchic blogging, while inviting code junkies, digital artists, standards wonks, transhumanists, game theorists, free culture supporters, archivists, librarians, and edupunks under its capacious fabric.”

These are the types of concerns that humanists ought to be well prepared to answer. Indeed, they are just the latest types of concerns that they have been asking since the Industrial Trend started to make our tools our masters. The position of uncertainty is a wearisome one for the humanities, now perhaps more than ever, when technology is so assured and life is so self-suspicious. It is no wonder that some humanists are influenced to toss off the traditional burden and generate the humanities with the content sources and the militant assurance of the digital. The risk is that they will awaken one morning to find that they have marketed their birthright for a mess of applications.

The World Needs Humanities

It seems that colleges everywhere are getting together to speak up for the humanities. A couple of weeks ago, in London and Oxford, an activist humanities conference gathered Oxford, Soas, Delhi, Nanjing and Virginia. Just hours before, in the US, George Washington University huddled with Turkey’s Bogazici and Morocco’s Al Alkhawayn to begin a worldwide humanities initiative. Next month, at Going Global, the biggest yearly worldwide higher education gathering run by the British Council in Miami, ways to mobilize the humanities, will be one of the main subjects of discussion. And the conversation won’t stop at the higher education surfaces. It will need to pay attention to how to move on from the groundhog times of such workshops and to free this discussion from the academia cycle and into that challenging “real world” which the humanities claim to be able to impact and enhance.

So what’s up with our cloistered researchers and philosophers, our fictional experts, classicists and students of the fine, performing and otherwise liberal arts? Clearly there’s some gathering worldwide anxiety within the academia and it’s mainly around the problems of getting wider public identification for the two beliefs about humanities that are encouraging these discussions. The first conviction is that humanities graduates are very employable and are qualified with exclusive abilities which bring serious benefits to the world of work. Last week saw phone calls in the UK to decrease the expenses for learners of technological innovation and mathematics in order to generate a bigger pool of certified graduates, particularly to educate these crucial subjects in educational institutions.

At the same time in the US, we can see the obverse of that harmless purpose. Political figures in Texas are suggesting that liberal arts learners should anticipate paying full charges and more, with no suspicion of subsidy. Their conversation is that such research is self-indulgence and of no forward value to community, so there’s no reason why such niceties as art appreciation, the history of Russia or the theologies of Hinduism should be openly reinforced. Instead, resources should be completely devoted to STEM subjects (science, technological innovation, engineering and mathematics) and business studies.

Humanities Crisis

“Crisis” and “decline” are the terms of the day in conversations of the humanities. A primary stimulus for the issue is a stunning factoid: only 8% of undergraduates major in humanities. But this number is deceiving. It does not consist of degrees in carefully relevant areas such as history, literature and some of the social sciences. Nor does it take consideration of the many needed and optional humanities programs learners take outside their degrees. Most essential, the 8% contains only those with a serious educational interest in literary works, songs and art, not those dedicated to generating the creative works that humanists study.

Once we identify that deeply caring about the humanities (including the arts) does not need specializing in philosophy, English or foreign languages, it’s not at all apparent that there is a crisis of interest in the humanities, at least in our colleges. Is the crisis rather one of severe financial reality? Humanities degrees on average start making $31,000 per year and shift to a normal of $50,000 in their middle years. (The numbers for authors and executing performers are much reduced.) By comparison, company degrees begin with incomes 26% greater than humanities degrees and shift to incomes 51% greater.

But this information does not show that business degrees generate more because they majored in business. Business degrees may well be more enthusiastic about making profits and so agree to jobs that pay well even if they are not otherwise satisfying, whereas individuals enthusiastic about the humanities and the arts may be willing to take more satisfying but lower-paying jobs. Higher education teachers, for example, often know that they could have made far more if they had gone to law school or gotten an M.B.A., but are willing to agree to considerably reduced pay to teach a topic they enjoy.

Combining Medicine and Humanities

You do not have to be a biology major to be a physician. Specializing in the humanities and being pre-med can be both possible and achievable. To help learners in those areas, Wake Forest has lately released the Interdisciplinary Humanities Pathway to Medicine program or IHPM that allows learners who major in the humanities guaranteed admittance to Wake Forest University of Medicine upon completing this program. Applications must involve two faculty recommendation letters and an article. A maximum of five learners will be approved by IHPM for this program at the end of their sophomore year.

The guiding committee for this program includes director of the Wake Forest students and put in interdisciplinary humanities Tom Phillips, director of the Wake Forest humanities institute Mary Foskett, director of the health professions program Pat Lord from the Reynolda Campus and Sean Ervin, Gail Cohen and David Grier (associate dean of admission) of Wake Forest University of Medicine. “The program appeared from a year-long interdisciplinary discussion that started among WFU staff and directors in the college and at the School of Medicine,” said Foskett. Medical school admissions are certainly aggressive. Wake Forest Medical School generally gets over 8,000 programs per cycle for 120 available seats. However, there is an increasing interest in expanding the higher education student body.

“When I look at somebody, I think, ‘are they going to bring something into the class that is different?’” said Grier. “With this program, you definitely bring something different into the class. This program will promote a different type of variety in instructors we do not usually get.” While humanities learners add an exclusive viewpoint to medicine, staff stress that IHPM is not the only road to an effective medical profession. “It should be highlighted that our program is one road to medicine. We’re not saying that it’s the best road,” said Foskett. The current field of medicine, however, identifies the significance of the holistic approach. “We want to move away from the mechanistic way of considering medicine,” said Ervin. “We’ve kind of lost touch with this other way of considering the person.” Faculty also highlight that this program is a mutual connection between the college student and the medical school. Thus, while the medical school will guarantee approval, there is a firm dedication expected from the student.

Humanities and Education

“What’s the objective of learning the humanities: literary works, ‘languages’, philosophy, history and the arts?” You see, hordes of directors orchestrating the financing and therefore developing the framework of college have insisted that it’s essential to develop our universities around the study of “useful” topics, mainly math, chemistry and the managing of international currency, to the near exemption of the humanities. I do not think it’s such a hot idea.

humanitiesAdministrators who market education as a ticket to success instead of interpreting it as process to learning are, basically, suggesting for the training of employees rather than for the training and learning of people. Of course we want our children to discover useful and successful work when they graduate from college, if indeed they are lucky enough to have been able to be present at one. But, we also need to remember that a real education is not simply the acquisition of a set of skills. Each of us, regardless of birth or class, should get to be part of the bigger discussion that life provides. Ever pay attention to what the people who really run things discuss? CEOs, CFOs, political figures from all parties, designers of both ball gowns and software, lyricists, technicians, physicians, art gallery curators and manufacturers of non-reality-based TV programming? They do not talk about work: They find mutual understanding in life. They talk about books, movies, art, music and poems. Maybe they talk about the roller derby; it depends on the audience. You will find physicians studying Alice Munro and technicians grieving the loss of Lou Reed while comparing him to Leonard Cohen.

And there is another reason to study poetry: As one sincere buddy announced, the study of literary works can be validated by the fact that nobody ever thrilled a lady by reciting a formula. Public universities and colleges are in particular risk of contorting and, at their most severe moments, crippling their student body if they define themselves as merely a way for learners to get better jobs. In such a caged perspective, universities are in risk of becoming service institutions: We will train the Workers of the World, sure, only we will not give them anything in the humanities to merge them, motivate them, sensitize them or enlighten them.