Rescue Humanities Outside Schools

Humanities decline is driven less by curriculum tweaks than by a cognitive and institutional mismatch: schools no longer reliably cultivate the voluntary, sustained reading habits that sustain the humanities. The practical remedy is to decouple serious humanistic formation from degree programs and rebuild it through voluntary 'intellectual bootcamps,' reading communities, and extracurricular institutions that attract intrinsically motivated learners. — If adopted, this reframes education policy away from salvaging majors and toward building cultural institutions that preserve civic literacy, artistic formation, and longform thought outside formal credentialing.