Most Liberal Arts programs have turned into socialist and PC indoctrinaation programs.
a liberal arts education is fine for students who do not plan to use their college educations to try to earn a living
young scions of the wealth elite (who will never work anyway)
or
older people who have already made successful careers (and likely are retired or nearly so)
I think art, music, literature, etc are wonderful for the insights and appreciation they can bring to a person’s life. They just normally should not be confused with career-path majors is all. It is the parents’ responsibility (and the school counselors’) to advise students of the realities.
The alternative to a liberal arts education is vocational training to be a highly skilled slave. College degrees that don’t require you to be trained in grammar, logic, languages, and clear thinking are worse than worthless. I realize most people harbor no higher ambition than to be a well fed slave, but honestly it’s nothing to boast about.
For a young person coming out of college today a liberal arts degree may seem a waste in light of student debt. I would offer a competing view.
Many of us who majored in STEM programs failed to take classes in liberal arts due to the load our majors required. That failure in many cases lead us to become technologists with too little understanding of humanity.
In fact IBM and other early technology companies came to understand this in the late 1950’s. They set up programs with Harvard and the Aspen Institute to provide a liberal education to their up and coming managers. The programs consisted of readings in literature and philosophy, and seminars to discuss what the participants learned.
These programs were not indoctrinations but rather learning opportunities that gave managers insight into the human condition. Generally what they learned was that humans generally desire the same things in life regardless of the culture, nationality or language. This commonality bypasses what we think of in terms of our differences.
Let me give you some example from several movies that have been produced over the years. The first one I’d recommend viewing is Akira Kurasowa’s Seven Samurai. Then watch the Magnificent Seven. Same plot different culture, language and time period. Both films were considered masterpieces because of what they showed relative to the human condition.
The second series of movies begins with the Kurasowa film Yojimbo. Follow that with A Fist Full Of Dollars. Follow that with Last Man Standing. Again same plot, three different cultures, languages and time periods.
We often put down others because they think differently from us. What I would suggest is that you look at the areas we have common beliefs in and start the conversation there.
Liberal arts majors are the most well-rounded people.
I think professional programs at Universities have improved over the years, particularly business programs. When I first started hiring people in the late 80’s.. I generally looked for liberal arts majors as they were great writers and communicators. Sadly, other than knowing how to prepare spread sheets, a lot of the business interns we had working for a marketing firm... could not write a coherent paragraph.They were usually not offered permanent positions.
People are confused what a university is for. Most seem to think it is a job mill turning out individuals with the appropriate pieces of paper to enter the work force. Others think of it as a farm system for professional football. Some think of it as a research facility of corporations and medicine.
The original intent of a university was to create a well rounded individual who possessed an appreciation for learning. It was meant as a continuum for the trivium and the quadrivium.
What it has become is a place where people mark time without serious study awaiting endowment of a degree supposedly to gain employment. No wonder they are disappointed after graduation. What they really need is trade school.
For anyone who cares, I suggest reading Simon Ley’s “The Idea of the University,” from his book “The Halls of Uselessness.”
In the past these degrees still taught how to think, work and write.
People could get a degree in them and be prepared for a job.
Not now. Now they are indoctrination and learning skills and discipline are not necessary.
This has me really mad. What the author is lashing out at is not a liberal education.. It is the deconstruction of the humanities. Liberal education teaches you how to think and process information and choose wisely. Topics of liberal education include logic, rhetoric, philosophy, theology, math, natural science, art - and not anti art Dadaism -, music, literature and history. And by history, I mean the foundations of civilization, not a deconstruction of institutions through Marxist pseudo analysis. Women’s Studies, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and so forth are not liberal education. They are liberal arts and sciences.
If you want to be a cog in a statist machine, go ahead and neglect liberal education. If you want to be able to reform and improve society and bring our culture back do its judeo-christian and constitutionalist foundations, find the college that makes room for true liberal education amidst the science, business, math, Engineering and pre professional programs. Better yet, if you’re going to grad school anyway, make sure you make the most of your undergraduate education and get a liberal education, make the most of your undergraduate education and get a liberal education, not just topics you’re going to have to retake at the graduate level anyway
Let’s be clear, a “liberal arts” degree today does not include much math or science. It was not always so (the Quadrivium and Trivium formed the basis for the original 7 liberal arts), and I suspect the lack of math and science requirement has more than a little to do with getting the female half of the population to matriculate.
I’ve always thought that you can determine someone’s intellectual capacity to function in a civilized culture by how much math they can do. No math skills? Neolithic. Arithmetic? Sumerian. Geometry? Greek. Algebra? Medieval Arab. Calculus? Early Enlightenment. And so on.
The great thing about the math is that it acts as a tool for accountability on the narrative dispensed by govts, churches, business, schools, media, etc. Where you have a culture that can’t do math, you have a bunch of people who are going to be bullcrapped their entire lives.
And unfortunately the Liberal Arts curriculum has degenerated into a gaggle of unaccountable narratives based on emotion, spoonfed to innumerate losers who don’t understand that sitting around thinking deep thoughts doesn’t put food on the table.