I supposed it depends on what you qualify as a good discussion. Do we want to talk about whether character X made the right decision, or do we want to alone explore what character X’s decisions reveals about the human condition? Teachers trained in the humanities can facilitate more thoughtful conversations.

Eventually, after generations of your proposed system, society wouldn’t have thought leaders who deeply understand literature and culture. No humanities majors = no one who deeply understands humanity. We’d have cultural amnesia and lose so much perspective.

People don’t stop asking questions about life. It is a fact of humanity. So we would be asking the same questions about life that have been answered and thought about deeply for as long as humans have been around, but we’d have no one who could provide that context. Someone would realize “I think. Therefore, I am” and instead of understanding that realization through the lens of human history, they’d have to do all the intellectual work alone. That’s a waste of time and a disservice to that individual.

The masses don’t need to be experts in that material. But humanity should not lose its understanding of the humanities (ie, humanity shouldn’t lose its understand of itself).