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This
Op-ed ran in the Sunday Republican on Sunday, November 28,
1999.
LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER
By Joanne V. Creighton
During the week of November
15, nearly 300 colleges and universities from around the country
carried out a special series of outreach activities aimed at middle
and high school students as part of the first-ever "National College
Week." Organized by the U.S. Department of Education and numerous
organizations, National College Week sought to drive home the
message that, with proper academic preparation and informed financial
planning, Americans can achieve their dreams of a college education.
It is an important message: American students and their parents
should know that college education is both attainable and affordable,
in part through the wide-ranging loan and grant programs made
available by national and state governments, private organizations,
and by colleges and universities themselves.
This might also be a good time to ask a more fundamental question:
is higher education good for America? In other words, are we educating
young people as effectively as possible to meet our challenging
future?
Certainly, study after study shows that those with college degrees
enjoy, on average, a higher degree of financial success than many
of their counterparts who have attained only a high school diploma.
But the economic benefits should be only one reason, and not the
most important, for a national effort to bring more students to
college.
If we are to navigate skillfully the turbulent changes of the
twenty-first century, we must educate students not only to process
information effectively, but to think wisely and well. To my mind,
nothing fosters that end better than a liberal arts education.
Now I know to some people liberal education -- the disinterested
pursuit of knowledge as its own end without immediate application
-- may seem like an outdated idea appropriate for an aristocratic
elite of an earlier age, but not now useful for those of us who
must work and deal with the day-to-day, ever-changing, modern
world. On the contrary, I'm convinced that now more than ever
a liberal arts education "works." Let me first defend its "nonutilitarian"
nature.
I believe some vestiges of the ivory tower should coexist with
the fast-track, high-tech world. We still need havens where the
serenity of a contemplative mind can be fostered: where the joys
of learning for learning's sake are appreciated; where students
can ponder great books without regard for their vocational application.
Liberal education at its best is, in fact, revolutionary. It transforms
students; it awakens them to a fuller life of the mind; it causes
them to question their goals and values; it makes them better
companions to themselves. "The soul selects her own society, then
shuts the door," says Emily Dickinson, and it is certainly true---as
Lily Tomlin has added---that "we're all in this alone." But, it
is also true that "we're all in this together," bounded each to
each, through culture and history and through our shared use of
this finite planet. Much can be learned about the continuities
as well as the changes in human history by studying the liberal
arts and sciences. It has been said, for example, that the forms
of art reflect the history of humanity ever more truthfully than
documents; and what pleasures they have to offer to the human
spirit as well.
To be sure, majoring in art or ancient history, philosophy, dance
or physics or any other number of liberal arts subjects might
seem downright impractical. "What are you doing to do with it?"
people will ask. But the good news -- and the "utilitarian" part
of my argument -- is that a liberal arts education, although it
often works in an indirect and ineffable way, turns out to be
highly useful. It helps to develop the skills, the knowledge,
the critical thinking, the quality of mind, the reflective habits,
the ethical perspectives that are needed to live a productive
and fulfilling life.
Moreover, liberal arts graduates often make better employees,
study after study has shown. For example, AT&T studied the career
spans of two generations of corporate managers and found that
liberal arts graduates excelled over business and engineering
majors in almost every category: in leadership, communication,
analytical skills and career success. Why? Because, in part, their
education prepared them for change. Liberal arts graduates are
potentially better citizens because their understanding of the
present is informed by a sense of the past, and it is true that
"those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it."
Liberal arts education fosters what John Cardinal Newman called
a philosophical habit of mind, a skepticism, a confidence in the
powers of one's own mind, a self-reliance, which are useful in
all sorts of practical and pragmatic ways, and these qualities
inform the best kind of democratic citizenry.
In sum, the best way to prepare our young people for the inevitable
and far-reaching changes that they will experience in their personal
and civic lives is to encourage them to take up and to extend
the incredibly rich legacy of human knowledge encapsulated in
the liberal arts and sciences. I put my hope for the future in
the paradoxically conservative and revolutionary nature of liberal
arts education.
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