It is not uncommon to hear someone condemn liberal education as being a financial bust, an exercise in futility toward the goal of gainful employment. After all, skills pay the bills—literature and poetry don’t.
Cartoonist, Steve Breen, epitomizes this modern cynicism toward the liberal arts and humanities in a 2012 frame for San Diego’s Union Tribune.
The single frame pictures two young men apparently discussing their educational pursuits. The first, with a look of surprise on his face, says, “This fall I’m going to trade school to be a welder.” The other, wearing sunglasses, a university hoodie, and a smug, cool smirk, responds, “Loser.” (Thus the look of surprise on the face of the first young man.) The caption goes on to point out that the starting salary of the future welder is $50,000 per year, and the starting salary for a graduate with a liberal arts degree from a pricey four-year school is $25,000 per year (if he’s lucky).
For the modern working class, a liberal arts education is typically seen as a waste of money, an institutional scam aimed at the arrogant elite, or a path forward for those who have been duped into believing they need a bachelor’s degree to get a job in the real world.
Notwithstanding, when the courses which satisfy the requirements for the “Gen Eds” portion of a degree from the typical American college or university be investigated, criticism certainly is warranted.
Offerings such as “Gender and Sexuality Studies,” “Women’s Studies,” and “Queer Studies” make regular appearances in the core humanities requirements of college catalogs. In his book, Real Education, Charles Murray, the W.H. Bradley Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., offers
samples of actual courses that, as of 2004, fulfilled humanities and literature requirements at major schools…“History of Comic Book Art” (Indiana University), “History and Philosophy of Dress” (Texas Tech University), “Love and Money” (Bryn Mawr), “Survey of the World Cinema” (University of Illinois), “Ghosts, Demons, and Monsters” (Dartmouth), “Rock Music from 1970 to the Present” (University of Illinois), “American Pop Culture and Folklife” (Penn State University). At Duke, you could fulfill a social science requirement with “Campus Culture and Drinking.”
These sample course offerings, gleaned from fifty colleges across the country—including several prestigious schools—hardly resemble anything that could be called demanding or rigorous education in any sense of the word. And in only a decade since Murray’s research was published, it doesn’t come as a surprise the situation has become exponentially worse.
Unfortunately, these modern courses are not the only ignominy from which the reputation of the humanities suffer. Modern advocates for the humanities have unwittingly brought the discipline into further disrepute by arguing for their existence and value on the basis of developing mental discipline or “critical thinking” skills. They argue that students of the humanities learn to think better, because by reading and discussing great ideas, they are able to develop their faculty of reason.
The obvious problem with this argument is so can subjects like modern languages and algebra. As a matter of fact, many subjects cultivate the faculties of the mind. These well-intentioned advocates fail to see that mental acuity is not the best reason for students to read humane literature. There are better, more essential reasons for doing so.
Instead of making that essential argument here in this post, I want to point you to Eric Adler’s important book investigating the raison d’être of the humanities. The Battle of the Classics: How a Nineteenth-Century Debate Can Save the Humanities Today offers a clear, outstanding apology for the humanities properly understood.
Adler’s historical analysis further provides a legitimate perspective of the distinctions between the humanities, the historical liberal arts, and the modern imposter courses passing for studia humanitatis. The book will be a great asset for any parent, educator, or student interested in gaining a deeper understanding of the nature and importance of humane learning.
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