First thing first, I was saying some humanities (e.g. philosophy) are useful, but some (e.g. comparative literature) are not. The prescriptive grammar I studied in comp 101 from what Steven Pinker called "language mavens" only turned out to be the target of criticism in my linguistics class. The problem here is that people in humanities (again, with the exception of philosophy) won't even entertain the possibility that the subject they study may not worth studying after all. I know it may be disturbing, or possibly making you feel sad to reason and then realize that XXX subject is not worth studying after all. But the mere fact that you want some subject to be useful does not mean it is actually useful. If some subjects (e.g. say, Tibetan studies) were so useful, why are so many people in administrative posts (for example, the dean of my college who is working on downsizing some of the programs by not refilling the tenured posts after the incumbent are retired) reluctant to allocate funding to support these subjects and their programs? The deans are not freshmen who just got into college. They know what they are doing. If it were only the students who choose not to major in and therefore support humanities subjects, then maybe it is because of ignorance. But when both the administrators (i.e. dean, provost, etc) and the students frown upon the value of certain fields of studies, I guess it is the problem of the field and people working in the field should reflect on the problems of the field and try to find solutions to solve the problems, not blaming those outside the field who point out the problems.
