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In reply to the discussion: Pat McCrory Lashes Out Against 'Educational Elite' And Liberal Arts College Courses [View all]cer7711
(502 posts)Last edited Sun Feb 3, 2013, 03:56 PM - Edit history (1)
I'm mocking the attitude Pat McCrory is exhibiting here: that higher education should consist of nothing but those mandatory courses and electives pre-determined by the business and Chamber of Commerce elite to be immediately useful. It's the old tired, brain-dead objection made by heartless pragmatists and cultural philistines everywhere: that higher education should consist of nothing but that which allows one to immediately earn a bigger paycheck.
I'd like to introduce Mr. McCrory to Michael Roth (not that McCrory would listen):
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-roth/whats-a-liberal-arts-educ_b_147584.html
What's A Liberal Arts Education Good For? by Michael Roth
A successful liberal arts education develops the capacity for innovation and for judgment. Those who can image how best to reconfigure existing resources and project future results will be the shapers of our economy and culture. We seldom get to have all the information we would like, but still we must act. The habits of mind developed in a liberal arts context often result in combinations of focus and flexibility that make for intelligent, and sometimes courageous risk taking for critical assessment of those risks.
The possibilities for free study, experimentation and risk taking need protection and cultivation. Looking around the world, we find no shortage of thugs who desecrate or murder those who seek to produce a more meaningful culture. And here at home we can easily see how mindless indifference to the contemporary arts and sciences facilitates the destruction of cultural memory and creative potential.
America's great universities and colleges must continue to offer a rigorous and innovative liberal arts education. A liberal education remains a resource years after graduation because it helps us to address problems and potential in our lives with passion, commitment and a sense of possibility. A liberal education teaches freedom by example, through the experience of free research, thinking and expression; and ideally, it inspires us to carry this example, this experience of meaningful freedom, from campus to community.
The American model of liberal arts education emphasizes freedom and experimentation as tools for students to develop meaningful ways of working after graduation. Many liberal arts students become innovators and productive risk takers, translating liberal arts ideals into effective, productive work in the world. That is what a liberal education is good for.