Should Everyone Study The Liberal Arts?
American society today is very much conflicted about the proper role of the liberal arts in education. Almost nobody is really happy with the present system, probably owing to the odd mix of influences that have shaped it: on the one hand, Deweyesque influences on American education have led to a steady watering-down of the traditional liberal arts curriculum, and at the same time higher education has expanded enormously so that most people get at least a smattering of liberal arts instruction. This is offered, however, in a disorganized and haphazard fashion, in courses that students commonly regard of as their least important, because they are the least directly applicable to their chosen majors and careers.
Providing a mediocre but expensive product to everyone seems like a poor solution on all counts. But do we need less liberal arts, or more? It seems to me that there are two sides to this question. First, how much does the teaching of liberal arts contribute to the economy? And second, how much does it improve the lives of human beings more generally?
My suggested answer to the first question is: more than most people seem to suppose. Of course that contribution is mostly indirect, which is why some are inclined to underappreciate its importance. But written and analytic skills are highly valued in our economy, and liberal arts instruction is the primary and best way of developing these. Still, I must admit that insofar as our interest is in maintaining a capable and educated workforce, it makes little sense to impose extensive liberal arts instruction on everyone indiscriminately. It would be far more efficient to identify the most capable students at a younger age, and to focus our attention on educating them. Other, less capable students could be redirected into unskilled jobs, or into technical colleges or apprenticeships that would enable them to develop more practical skills. This is the obvious way to maintain a sufficient supply of educated workers, while avoiding the problem of ballooning student debt.
In this post, however, I want to look more at the second question. How much would we lose as human beings if we limited liberal arts instruction to a select few? As a humanities instructor, this is the sort of question that I come back to over and over again without reaching an entirely satisfactory conclusion. As a Christian philosopher, I firmly believe that the liberal arts are the common heritage of all humanity, and that the appreciation of this treasure trove will uplift any human soul. As a teacher, though, it’s hard not to conclude that some people have a very limited capacity to develop such an appreciation. I’m sure this is partly owing to defects in their primary and secondary education; after all, I don’t meet them until they’ve already been subjected to at least a dozen years of a very flawed school system. Still, I came through that same school system, as did my more eager and successful students. I have to think that a lot of it comes back to innate differences in character and temperament. Some thirst for wisdom more than others.
I will offer one more observation, and then give my best (current) attempt at a solution. Not everyone has an equal capacity for the study of the liberal arts. Likewise, not everyone has an equal interest. But desire and capacity do not always go hand in hand. Some go far in academia without ever (in my estimation) having a serious appetite for truth or beauty. Others yearn for it, but are hindered by a lack of talent. I suspect the correlation between intelligence and appreciation is positive, but it certainly isn’t perfect, and the tracking system I suggested above would deny the curious-but-slow-witted the opportunity to share in the great works of literature and philosophy that are legitimately theirs as much as anyone else’s.
Here, then, is my proposal. Extensive formal instruction in the liberal arts should be given only to those with a demonstrated facility for writing and analytic reasoning. Others should be directed into more practical courses of study at some point in their mid-teens. At the same time, universities should not purge themselves of humanities departments. (Some downsizing is inevitable at this point, but I’m hoping it won’t be too drastic.) Instead, humanities professors should justify their existence by offering products that the general public might actually want. They should write books suitable for public consumption, and offer free or low-cost lectures and courses that are open to the general public.
Right now, universities receive heavy public subsidy (largely through government-provided college loans and scholarships). How are their energies accordingly invested? Well, considerable energy is poured into internal affairs such as administration, hiring, tenure and promotion. That could be considerably reduced, and needs to be. Another major project is the teaching of students, the majority of whom see this merely as an obstacle to be cleared en route employment. Finally, there is research. In the humanities, that mostly means writing articles, hardly any of which will be read by more than half-a-dozen people. Wouldn’t it be refreshing if humanists actually worried about finding ways to open the beauties of their discipline to the general public? Most of them, in my experience, are fairly apathetic as to whether or not anyone outside their particular sub-field is at all interested in what they do.
If we redirect our energies appropriately, I think it should be possible to make our educational system more efficient, while simultaneously making the liberal arts more accessible to those who want to learn. Maybe we can have our cake and eat it too?
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Jun '10
Re: Should Everyone Study The Liberal Arts?
Rachel: As usual, this is a thoughtful post.
This is something I've thought about as well, though not as much as you have. I believe your proposal makes sense. It is a fact (whether it's a "sad fact" is debatable) that a relatively small portion of the public has an inclination to read Homer, Dostoevsky, Plato, Mill, Austen, Dickens, and the rest of the of the writers and thinkers whose works constitute a "liberal education." I think this has always been the case. Even the classic British education that included Latin and Greek was limited to a tiny sliver of the population. It seems to me to be a constant of human nature that a liberal education is valuable to only a small portion of people.
Some universities should provide such an education, but are there any besides small outposts like Hillsdale where the greats of Western Civilization are taught? Reading the turgid output of Foucault and Derrida is not the same as reading Aristotle or Locke or Cervantes. In other words, in the institutions that purport to provide a liberal education, the curriculum must actually teach, as Matthew Arnold, the "best that has been thought and said."
Jun '10
Re: Should Everyone Study The Liberal Arts?
Rachel: One more thought. I certainly believe that we must introduce high school students to some of the best literature (picking the right ones that a high schooler can like is tricky). But we must recognize that, especially in a world of TV, texting, the Internet, etc., a relatively small number of students will embrace this literature. That some will embrace the great works makes it a worthwhile activity.
Feb '12
Re: Should Everyone Study The Liberal Arts?
I suspect that this disscussion is of upmost importance for our culture to have. I , myself, am unqualified to add much being that I am not a product of university. I am more in the "curious-but-slow-witted" of type. One thing that I do believe that our American society suffers from is a general lack of understanding of who we are and where we come from. To this extent, I think that a stronger liberal arts curiculum with a focus on a Western Civilization heritage is of benefit. I think that diversity, in thought, has been cultivated over the last 40 years to society's detriment. When you say that "liberal arts are a common heritage of all humanity", I tend to be more comfortable with it being common to Western Civilization.
I am not against "outside the box" thinking, but it is only a benefit when everyone agrees on the location, shape and boundaries of the box to begin with. There has to be a box to be on the "outside".
Apr '12
Re: Should Everyone Study The Liberal Arts?
Thanks for that, Tabula. Here's something I thought to add: one of the most wonderful parts of my job (teaching general ed courses in philosophy) is getting the occasional older person or couple who is taking advantage of a university policy that allows seniors to sit in on courses for free with instructor permission. Giving permission is an absolute no-brainer! I love those folks. They have interesting life experience that is beneficial to the younger students to hear about, and, best of all, they want to be there! Also they're typically very kind and affirming to me as a young instructor. But some of them have told me straight out that they didn't care about this sort of thing when they were young. It was only insteadyears that they realized what they were missing. I think it's great to have the resources available whenever people are ready for them. It's a win-win, because teaching eager students (of any age) is deeply satisfying to instructors as well.
Apr '12
Re: Should Everyone Study The Liberal Arts?
That comment got a little garbled by phone typing, but I meant to say that some people come to yearn for the liberal arts "in later years"!
Feb '11
Re: Should Everyone Study The Liberal Arts?
Rachel....some thoughts from Michael Hammer, the management consultant, on the proper role of the liberal arts (and science) in the education of the future executive. My excerpt here.
Apr '11
Re: Should Everyone Study The Liberal Arts?
David, that link doesn't work for me.
Feb '11
Re: Should Everyone Study The Liberal Arts?
Hoosier...tried it and it worked...try the direct URL instead:
http://photoncourier.blogspot.com/2004_11_01_archive.html#109987771486855810
Jun '10
Re: Should Everyone Study The Liberal Arts?
Rachel: This is a great point. I've always loved reading and I read a fair amount of "great literature" in college and the years after (e.g., Locke, Mill, Dickens, and Austen), but the time in my life in which I developed the appreciation (and the time) for, say, Dostoevsky, was in my mid-40s. I always knew I was a conservative, but it's really been in the last ten years that I've read the foundational texts of conservative thought. It's been the last five years (between 55-60) that I've finally read books like Moby Dick, Middlemarch, and War and Peace.
In some ways, a liberal education is lost on the young. It was my experiences that made Austen, Dickens, and Dostoevsky resonate for me.
Jun '10
Re: Should Everyone Study The Liberal Arts?
Keep running out of space.
To complete my last point, some young people are naturally drawn to all elements of a liberal education, but the majority are not.
But many of those for whom those great books meant nothing at age twenty find great meaning in them at forty or fifty or sixty. Take Middlemarch as an example. It's a wise book, but there's not a lot in there for a twenty-year-old--there was great wisdom in it for a man of 55.
Letting the coots of the world audit a class just to soak it in makes all the sense in the world. Heck, charge them $50 or $100 if they can afford it.
Edited on September 22, 2012 at 10:33pmJun '10
Re: Should Everyone Study The Liberal Arts?
Here's a controversial suggestion: everyone should study the Bible. And the Koran.
How can you be an educated citizen and not have a basic understanding of the foundational texts of Judiasm, Christianity, and Islam? How can you understand the history of Western Civilization, or current events in the Middle East?
You don't of course need to teach them as inspired or infallible, just as basic works everyone should know something about.
May '12
Re: Should Everyone Study The Liberal Arts?
Well, this morning, on my way to meet a new agent in the office, I stopped off to buy pastry in my local Italian specialties store. There was a sign in the door advertising a concert by a singer called Al Bano.
I was able to spot right away that if you allow for the contraction of "a el" into "al" and add a "~" over the "n", you get "to the bathroom".
That's what my Liberal Arts education did for me today.
Edited on September 22, 2012 at 11:05pmMar '11
Re: Should Everyone Study The Liberal Arts?
Another great post Rachel.
This topic has been discussed a few times previously on Ricochet, and my impression has been that those who specialized in a liberal arts field (classicists, theologians, lit majors, etc) argue that civilization will implode without liberal arts teaching, while I have yet to meet a single person lacking in liberal arts education who felt it was a detriment to their lives.
While reading your more nuanced take, one question kept popping into my mind: isn't this what we have high school for? Perhaps I was the exception, but we read Homer, Plato, Dickens, Austen, Melville, etc at my high school and it seemed the perfect time of life to do so.
Obviously a 16-year-old will struggle with Dostoyevsky or Kant, but otherwise it seems like the perfect age to whet students' appetites, and also it allows those who don't go onto a 4-year institution to expand their horizons.
Edited on September 22, 2012 at 10:49pmMay '11
Re: Should Everyone Study The Liberal Arts?
"Here, then, is my proposal. Extensive formal instruction in the liberal arts should be given only to those with a demonstrated facility for writing and analytic reasoning. Others should be directed into more practical courses of study at some point in their mid-teens. At the same time, universities should not purge themselves of humanities departments. (Some downsizing is inevitable at this point, but I’m hoping it won’t be too drastic.) Instead, humanities professors should justify their existence by offering products that the general public might actually want. They should write books suitable for public consumption, and offer free or low-cost lectures and courses that are open to the general public."
That was a joke wasn't it? Tell me that that was a joke.
Jun '10
Re: Should Everyone Study The Liberal Arts?
Mendel: .
While reading your more nuanced take, one question kept popping into my mind: isn't this what we have high school for? Perhaps I was the exception, but we read Homer, Plato, Dickens, Austen, Melville, etc at my high school and it seemed the perfect time of life to do so.
Yep, I read all those in high school as well.
I agree, I don't think everyone should major in the liberal arts at a 4-year university. I think we have far too many liberal arts majors as it stands. And I also agree liberal arts ought to be a core part of the high school curiculum.
But then if I ruled the world, students would once again learn Latin grammer in "grammer school," as the name originally suggested.
Mar '11
Re: Should Everyone Study The Liberal Arts?
Recently, we've had several threads that addressed this issue in some depth. To avoid repeating myself entirely, I'll simply link to them (here, here, and here).
To address a narrower subject than broached, I think we do a poor job of teaching the humanities at the Junior High and High School levels.
Exposure to the liberal arts, in a proper way, improves human beings (a conceit, but an edifying one, reflected in the term 'humanities') and makes better citizens in various ways, so I'd reform the curriculum to include a healthier dollop of history and economics, and especially, I'd return a rigorous Civics requirement to those grades.
Literature as taught should also be reformed to meet students where they are. It should be dominated less by the world-weary books written for professional Literature Scholars--fewer SAT-approved Very Important Books--and should instead look to books which speak to students' positive, open-minded youthfulness and their passions; which seeks to tame and direct them without dulling them. To be blunt, boys and girls should read more Plutarch and more Jane Austen, and less cynical 20th century literature. Taste is as important as content here.
Mar '11
Re: Should Everyone Study The Liberal Arts?
I should add one further point.
While I agree with much that Tabula has said on this thread, I want to disagree slightly on his point that a liberal education is something wasted on the young, or, at least, that they fail to appreciate it.
I'd cultivate the opposite prejudice: it is precisely because this education wasn't wasted, precisely because it was transmitted in part successfully, that enabled him to return to some of these books later in life. Although, if he was a high school student that got assigned Dostoyevsky (as I was, also, I should add)....well, see my point above in #16 about carelessness and world-weariness being inflicted on the young.
I think it was Jonah Goldberg, a largely unimpeachable source for things conservative, who said on a recent podcast that people don't start picking up books after age 45, for the most part, if they've never had the habit of reading before that.
Jun '10
Re: Should Everyone Study The Liberal Arts?
You realize that you can take those "identif[ied] the most capable students at a younger age," cultivate them magnificently, pump a quarter-million dollars in at the most elite of your Liberal Arts universities, and have them come out at the end of it saying things like "There are no differences between men and women; all gender is social consruct." And they will all have taken English and History and Philosophy...
So, with all that Liberal Arts effort, you have created an agent of far greater moral (and academic and bureaucratic and NGO) danger to the culture than the "less capable students" you banished to the trades so many years before.
So, given the hard-left state of the academy today:
"Should Anyone Study The Liberal Arts?"
Edited on September 23, 2012 at 12:50amJun '10
Re: Should Everyone Study The Liberal Arts?
Great conversation. Thanks, y'all. I don't know exactly what I think.
I have a natural liberal arts bent. All the Czech history books have arrived because I didn't know how Madeline Albright could be so molded after her childhood in Prague. Now I am looking for more maps. My iPod is set to a Rhetoric lecture series for my time on the elliptical. I would have loved more liberal arts at every level.
AUDad is an engineer's engineer. Would he have been better off with Tolstoy, Aristotle, and Wordsworth? I don't think he would have understood them as intelligent and analytic as he is.
Aug '12
Re: Should Everyone Study The Liberal Arts?
Even at a rural second-tier state university in the South, one of younger son's friends has liberal brainwashing in his Bachelor of Arts required curriculum.
Since the hard sciences, business, engineering, etc. all have humanities electives requirements, they all can have some exposure to "liberal arts." However, the humanities departments have expanded their catalogs to the point that they offer a bewildering array of classes. It is easy for a student with two or three humanities electives to take the path of least resistance, seek out the easy junk, and learn nothing. (Engineering students have an active interest in avoiding any demanding humanities class, but they suffer a lack of awareness because of it.)
What we are actually doing is not working, except if what is wanted is second-rate educations and indoctrination to moral relativism.