Please sign and share D. Costache’s petition Bring Back Education to the USA’s President-elect and Vice President-elect in favour of education in the area of the humanities.
Petition’s text:
Dear Mr President-elect Biden,
Dear Mrs Vice President-elect Harris,
Warm congratulations on your momentous and well-earned victory! May you lead your nation with the wisdom and the compassion you showed throughout the campaign.
I am an Australian citizen with an interest in the wellbeing of the entire human family. Like many other concerned people from around the world, I watched with great anxiety and expectation the unfolding of the presidential campaign and its fortunate denouement. It would be remiss of me not to confess the worry I experienced — and I assume that this is also the case of many people around the globe — at seeing what ignorance and lack of education can do to a nation. Indeed, it is not bad taste and the absence of political awareness that brought your nation to the brink of disaster. I have to be blunt, it is lack of education. More precisely, it is the absence of basic notions of general knowledge in many corners of the country, and more so the absence of education in the area of the humanities at many levels. Lack of education breeds narrow-mindedness, selfishness, and hatred. This situation is the outcome of the dramatic cutting of funds for the humanities and the lack of support for education in the area of the humanities in your country. It goes the same for many other places, including Australia. When there is no historical awareness, when there is no sense of belonging to humankind and its richness of intellectual, spiritual, and ethical values, people get scared and become easily manipulable. We all know these things, and your country had a bitter taste of this problem in the last almost four years, and especially in the last few weeks.
For the sake of your nation, and for the sake of the world who looks at the US with hope, I and the other signatories of this petition urge you to include among the priorities of your administration to bring back education in the area of the humanities at all levels — from primary school to the university. Only well-educated people, awake, and aware of the realities of the world will be able to counteract and overcome the age of darkness brought with it by the previous regime.
Once again, congratulations!
With every good wish,
Doru
(Protopresbyter Dr) Doru Costache
Sydney College of Divinity, Australia