These several answers to the challenge, Of what use is the humanistic discipline? must be inculcated in the students from the outset. They must be made to see--or take on trust provisionally--that their studies are intensely practical. The humanities properly acquired will effect in them a transformation of mind and character which cannot be described, but which they will find useful all life long.
Just as important as making this prediction is to refrain from making false promises. Studying the humanities will not make one more ethical, more tolerant, more cheerful, more loyal, more warmhearted, more successful with the other sex or popular at large. It may well contribute to these happy results, but only indirectly, through a better-organized mind, capable of inquiring and distinguishing false from true and fact from opinion; a mind enhanced in its ability to write, read, and compute; a mind attentive to the world and open to good influences, if only because of a trained curiosity and quiet self-confidence.
All these things are likely results; they are not guaranteed. Life, like medicine, offers no certainties, but we go on living and going to the doctor's. So it must be said again: no exaggerated claims for the humanities, but a conviction in the teacher, in the department, in the faculty, in the administration, in the indispensable group of advisers, that this body of studies has a use--a practical use in daily life, even though no one can say, "I've made a more effective presentation to the board because I've studied Aeschylus."
--Jacques Barzun, "Exeunt the Humanities"
http://goblues.org/faculty/gregoryj/files/2011/06/Barzun-Exeunt-the-Humanities.pdf
