Free Republic
Browse · Search
Bloggers & Personal
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

A Response to the Cynical Student. When are you ever gonna use this? Often.
James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | March 10, 2023 | Art Carden

Posted on 03/12/2023 8:44:13 AM PDT by karpov

You’ve heard the complaints: When am I ever gonna use this? How is this relevant to the real world? How is reading Shakespeare going to make me a better banker?

I don’t run into this kind of thinking as frequently in the economics classroom, but I hear my students’ complaints about their other courses pretty regularly (and maybe professors in those courses hear students’ complaints about mine). Why, they wonder, are they expected to study art history? Or biology? Or “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”? Or Mesoamerican mythology? When are they ever gonna use this stuff?

My answer? Literally every time they make an important decision.

The ideas you encounter, consider, and adopt shape the kind of person you become. Liberal education is not about helping you sound impressive at snooty parties. It’s about you becoming a particular kind of person: reflective, analytical, and capable of sound evaluation and sound judgment. To this end, college means a few years marinating in the best that has ever been thought and written by the greatest minds our species has produced.

That is the ideal, at any rate. A lot goes sideways between vision and implementation, and it’s the rare person who makes the most of a golden opportunity. Some of us find ourselves lamenting, with the bald man telling George Bailey to kiss Mary in It’s A Wonderful Life, that “youth is wasted on the wrong people.”

But we all have time to repent and turn from our wicked ways. College students have more of it. The book of Proverbs implores its readers to surround themselves with wise counselors offering wise guidance.

(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...


TOPICS: Education
KEYWORDS: college; godsgravesglyphs; liberalarts; shakespeare; woke
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-53 next last
To: whitney69
In addition to my professor's jocular comment, he went on to say that a university targets "the whole man". It is more than a trade school. A well rounded individual cultivates a better self and then makes a better society. Perhaps a fully educated person will even cast his vote thoughtfully...

It was a good lecture, much like the one in Second Hand Lions.

21 posted on 03/12/2023 9:27:01 AM PDT by GingisK
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: Renfrew

> But if you know only STEM you will never be more than a worker drone. <

I’m a STEM guy, and I agree. That’s why the old “distribution of studies” idea was so good. I majored in chemistry. But I was forced to take credits in the humanities. I’m better off for it.

The problem, of course, is with majoring in the humanities. I saw college is a trade school. Go there to learn a way to make a living. You can’t make much of a living as a History of Ancient Greece major.


22 posted on 03/12/2023 9:29:54 AM PDT by Leaning Right (The steal is real.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: Reily

Haven’t donated in decades.

After 1st-woke president Sullivan (IIRC) had the Christian cross removed from the W&M chapel so that “no one would be offended,” I wrote a blistering letter to the alumni association condemning the policy, informing them to NEVER contact me again.

My class Baccalaureate service was held in that chapel. It was active as a church once a month.

“They” hate us. Face it.


23 posted on 03/12/2023 9:31:11 AM PDT by Blueflag (Res ipsa loquitur: ad ferre non, velit esse sine defensione)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 20 | View Replies]

To: Leaning Right

You need a “Knowledge Portfolio”, be knowledgeable in several unrelated things so that as times change, you can adapt.


24 posted on 03/12/2023 9:32:48 AM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 22 | View Replies]

To: karpov

Colleges are pricing themselves out of the market. I don’t blame students for asking why they need to pay for stuff they don’t value. Plus, wokeness has ruined the liberal arts anyway.


25 posted on 03/12/2023 9:35:24 AM PDT by Ford4000
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: ConservativeInPA

Perfect tagline for the times.


26 posted on 03/12/2023 9:40:20 AM PDT by FamiliarFace (I got my own way of livin' But everything gets done With a southern accent Where I come from. TP)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: GingisK

Hubby is a Physicist. Our very first conversation was long — about the danger of China and their stealing of tech, etc. It wasn’t a party, though — church. That was in 1994.


27 posted on 03/12/2023 9:42:45 AM PDT by MayflowerMadam (Stupid is supposed to hurt.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]


28 posted on 03/12/2023 9:45:59 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: FamiliarFace

There’s going to be a lot of suddenly this week and this year.


29 posted on 03/12/2023 9:51:21 AM PDT by ConservativeInPA ("How did you go bankrupt?" Bill asked. "Two ways," Mike said. "Gradually and then suddenly." )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 26 | View Replies]

To: karpov

Yeah... I recall those days in high school and university where it was the same discussion... “how on earth is ____ relevant to my future life?” or “how will this help me to get a job in the field I want?”

I have a friend who went to high school in the 1960s.... a really bright dude who had great self-learning skills and he was always ahead of the teachers. In grade 9 high school, a ‘typing course’ was mandatory for anyone in the arts and science programs. As things unfolded, my friend became an independent computer specialist and as he often says, his grade 9 typing course became the most valuable thing he learned in high school.


30 posted on 03/12/2023 10:04:45 AM PDT by hecticskeptic
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: ConservativeInPA

Probably the most memorable line Hemingway ever published.


31 posted on 03/12/2023 10:06:26 AM PDT by Steely Tom ([Voter Fraud] == [Civil War])
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 29 | View Replies]

To: karpov

Student: “I’m never going to need to use this math and physics stuff”

Teacher: “True, but the smart kids will”.


32 posted on 03/12/2023 10:34:06 AM PDT by Aeneas2112 (YOU are your own first responder)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: karpov
"Liberal education is not about helping you sound impressive at snooty parties. It’s about you becoming a particular kind of person: reflective, analytical, and capable of sound evaluation and sound judgment."

Nothing could be FARTHER from reality or reason

33 posted on 03/12/2023 10:37:11 AM PDT by Gaffer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: KarlInOhio

I the book on the Trivium, by Sister Mary Joseph.

It is something that every serious student should read, and every interested adult.

Check it out and see if you’d like it.


34 posted on 03/12/2023 10:39:41 AM PDT by Loud Mime ("The Real Constitution and its Real Enemies" now available on Amazon. Check it out!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]

To: TalBlack

Was a chemistry prof for 42 years. It is possible to get a good education at most colleges, but it is not necessary in order to get the diploma. A savvy student can learn and enjoy a lot. For most paying customers, the best rationale I have heard recently came from Sylvester Stallone as Dwight Manfredi in Tulsa King:

The whole point of a college degree is to show a potential employer that you showed up someplace four years in a row, completed a series of tasks reasonably well, and on time. So if he hires you, there’s a semi-decent chance that you’ll show up there every day and not **** his business up.


35 posted on 03/12/2023 10:55:02 AM PDT by organicchemist (Without the second amendment, the first amendment is just talk)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]

To: karpov

Movies are terrible these days because all the current writers know about are comic books and video games. They are literary imbeciles.


36 posted on 03/12/2023 10:57:48 AM PDT by Spok
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

I’m a stem and I am like the totally bestliest talker


37 posted on 03/12/2023 11:12:40 AM PDT by dsrtsage ( Complexity is just simple lacking imagination)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 20 | View Replies]

To: karpov

Today we have virtuous students graduating who are not educated to know their virtue is a sham.


38 posted on 03/12/2023 11:21:56 AM PDT by BEJ
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Aeneas2112

Classic academic rigor, when exercised through traditional rote memory and critical thinking curriculum, builds a solid foundation of disciplines to develop
High level vocational skills. A well rounded and alert citizen is also the product of such discipline.


39 posted on 03/12/2023 11:34:26 AM PDT by Theophilus 7
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 32 | View Replies]

To: hecticskeptic

I successfully resisted typing class, and still became a software engineer. I am incredibly fast and hunting-and-pecking.


40 posted on 03/12/2023 12:41:51 PM PDT by GingisK
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 30 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-53 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Bloggers & Personal
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson