Why Liberal Arts Education Prepares You for an Unknown Future
What Liberal Arts Education Is for (2024)
I discovered that a Religious Studies class taught me to analyze ambiguity, a skill that saved my software career. Liberal arts education is not just about humanities; it is a philosophy of preparing for an unknowable future. Unlike vocational training, it builds adaptable thinking patterns that help us navigate new realities and solve problems we cannot yet foresee.
Liberal arts is an educational philosophy, an attitude, not a set of disciplines.
- mlsu
The liberal arts education was originally conceived to educate the leaders of society. That is where the free-minded pedagogical angle comes from, it's explicitly privileged. The idea was that if the leaders of society learned what it means to have values, integrity, what it is to be virtuous, etc, then they would diffuse those values into society and create a just world. Society would transcend in the image of the great works. Books from 500 years ago can teach us what being ethical means because human values are transcendental and totally outside of technological or vocational fads.
Unfortunately, at some point in the last 30-40 years, we've totally abandoned this idea. The most powerful people in society are not just indifferent to the liberal arts but are actively hostile towards it. They see it as a frivolous waste of resources. Why waste time studying a great work of literature when you could be "building" instead?
Of course, it's predictable where this leads. We did all this building, but forgot what justice means, what it means to have values, what it means to do right. So now our society is ugly, corrupt, and rotten. Hey, at least we (the leaders) are rich!
- CobaltFire
I had an extremely focused career, but am by nature a curious individual who craved the type of discussions the article talks about. They were closed to me because I came from poverty and had to focus to move myself up the ladder.
Much like the author however, I found that my natural curiosity, and specifically that desire to ask what the words being used MEANT, to serve me extremely well. When I was a PM for a billion dollar plus project (military can hit that easily) that attitude is what got me the job.
The constant push back from those who seem to value only their, and your, positions as cogs in a machine was exhausting. I really agree with this entire article. Thanks for posting it.
- WalterBright
I took and engineering and science program in college. The education was in learning how to learn, learning how to solve problems, and how to distinguish fact from fiction. It's served me well.
To make a living, it is necessary to learn a skill that people are willing to pay for.
- Animats
> The class turned out to be more or less “A Letter (singular) of Paul:” we spent the semester reading Paul’s letter to the Romans, at a rate of about 3 sentences per week. Per week!
That's not a liberal education. That's religious brainwashing. It's the kind of thing madrassas and yeshivas do - obsessively school students on a very few texts said to be sacred.
Liberal education was traditionally broad. There are curricula based on the Great Books. [1] They can be criticized for being retro, but they are not narrow.
[1] https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/undergraduate/great-bo...
- ajkjk
Related: https://acoup.blog/2020/07/03/collections-the-practical-case...