Apparently it’s open season on the value of the liberal arts in contemporary higher education. From new studies that reveal the paucity of financial rewards for humanities majors to complaints about the ideological insurgency that some see underway in the traditional study of arts and sciences, a fusillade of complaints and proposals is raining down in the media. Clearly there are bared teeth aplenty surrounding the tribe of liberal arts proponents.
In a recent essay for salon.com, Kim Brooks asks, “Is it time to kill the liberal arts degree?” She holds an MFA in creative writing and has had the typical post-graduation experience of many liberal arts graduates:
I floundered. I worked as a restaurant hostess and tutored English-as-a-second-language . . . . I mooched off friends and boyfriends and slept on couches. One dreary night in San Francisco, I went on an interview to tend bar at a strip club, but left demoralized when I realized I’d have to walk around in stilettos. I went back to school to complete the pre-medical requirements I’d shunned the first time through, then a week into physics, I applied to nursing school, then withdrew from that program after a month . . . . I landed a $12-an-hour job as a paralegal at an asbestos-related litigation firm. I got an MFA in fiction.
Depending on how you look at it, I either spent a long time finding myself, or wasted seven years.
Her story is hardly an exception to the rule. I could recount numerous tales of friends, loved ones, and even my own experiences in affirmation of the rootlessness that sometimes seems to be spawned by liberal arts studies.
Part of the problem, of course, is that contemporary liberal arts education steers students toward a self-centered worldview that is founded on a belief that the world is meaningless. The seeds of this worldview were fertilized significantly by the rise of both modernism and postmodernism in the twentieth century. When T. S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland” becomes your guiding text, it’s hard to avoid such a perspective. And most folks who deal with surviving in the “real” world just don’t see this as a viable worldview. It’s too impractical, too detached from reality.
Contemporary liberal arts education tends to harvest the fruit of the classical liberal arts and ferment it into an intoxicating, and even deadly, elixir, even as it tries to dig out the roots of the tradition and burn them, making a future harvest impossible.
Or nearly so, for the roots have a habit of spreading out and popping up as fresh shoots in all sorts of locations.
Augustine’s famous declaration is instructive in this matter:
“Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee” (Confessions, Book One).
Prior to the Enlightenment, liberal learning in the West affirmed that entire statement. The Enlightenment pared the first half and the final clause from the declaration, presenting a peppy, optimistic little bon mot that we can find rest in the work of our own discoveries and inventions. The Modern era, however, destroyed that hope, leaving us with only a tepid declaration that rings all to true to liberal arts graduates who have been taught only equivocation and questions that turn their backs toward the existence of God and the possibilities of vocation:
“Our hearts are resless.”
2 Timothy 3:7 describes this intellectual ennui with precision: “Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
The problem now is that what we now call the liberal arts is not at all what the ancients would have called the liberal arts. Seneca’s Moral Epistle 88 declares that the liberal arts do not teach virtue but rather “they prepare the soul for the reception of virtue.” As liberal arts education merged with Christian thought, the progress of the trivium and the quadrivium established not only a moral framework but prepared the student for the really meaningful work of understanding reality (which we now call philosophy) and the God of reality (through theology, the “queen of the sciences.” The goal of all of this was the preparation of the individual for service, to the state for Romans and to the Kingdom of God for Christians.
Too often the liberal arts now are loci of insidious forms of solecism, the belief that the self is the only pure source of knowledge and virtue. Brown University’s website includes this description of their goals for liberal learning:
At Brown, rather than specifying [a defined body of knowledge], we challenge you to develop your own core. Our open curriculum ensures you great freedom in directing the course of your education, but it also expects you to remain open to people, ideas, and experiences that may be entirely new. By cultivating such openness, you will learn to make the most of the freedom you have, and to chart the broadest possible intellectual journey.
But this view of liberal learning is a relentless march toward irrelevance. The reality is that no one is the center of the universe. We may love to delude ourselves into thinking that we are little gods, establishing ourselves as the ultimate arbiters of reality, right and wrong, or even relevance, but this is delusional indeed in that it is not consistent with reality. The universe drips with meaning. To say otherwise is to turn one’s back on reality and grasp a mirror for self-gazing; no wonder so many students end up fleeing the liberal arts. It’s hard to sit at the feet of professors and peers who never look one in the eye because they are too busy examining themselves for signs of divinity.
The liberal arts lost their resonance with reality when they detached themselves from the authority of tradition and the reality of God. Once “liberal” meant to be liberated from the burdensome slavery of selfishness; now “liberal” means that we are freed from the hegemony of institutions and all authorities and are free to serve or even worship ourselves.
For Christians this is much more pointed as an issue. The liberal arts prepare us for our vocation, our calling. To detach the liberal arts from the concept of vocation is to make them worthless. And irrelevant. Read the biographies of such persons as William Carey, Francis Bacon, and George Washington Carver to see how this sort of learning truly found expression.
Is it time to kill the liberal arts degree? I daresay no. But it is time to tend to its roots and to reconnect it with the pursuit of the Truth, which yields ultimate meaning and understanding, all for His glory.
July 5th, 2011 | 4:25 pm | #1
“It’s hard to sit at the feet of professors and peers who never look one in the eye because they are too busy examining themselves for signs of divinity.”
Some of these self-worshipping professors have their own devout groupies and they will and do look you in the eye.
P.S. Good article.
July 11th, 2011 | 10:25 am | #2
[...] “Restoring the Relevance of the Liberal Arts”: The liberal arts lost their resonance with reality when they detached themselves from the authority of tradition and the reality of God. Once “liberal” meant to be liberated from the burdensome slavery of selfishness; now “liberal” means that we are freed from the hegemony of institutions and all authorities and are free to serve or even worship ourselves. [...]
July 12th, 2011 | 8:10 am | #3
Are there any schools left which teach the liberal arts in the old way?
July 14th, 2011 | 7:25 am | #4
Jan: yes. Thomas Aquinas College, in California, is a really good one. St. John’s College, two areas, New Mexico, and Maryland. Brigham Young University, here where I’m at, in Utah.
July 14th, 2011 | 12:17 pm | #5
We don’t need to “kill the liberal arts degree.” It already basically committed suicide, back when colleges agreed to become vocational training centers in order to reap the extra tuition and governmental money.
Nothing at all wrong with vocational training centers; they perform a necessary function. But when people can get actual college diplomas in vocational subjects, the college diploma tends to mean less and less even as (paradoxically) it becomes more and more the entry ticket into a well-paid job. So then we end up with absurdities like a class of auto mechanics taking a required poetry class in order to help qualify for a “college diploma” in auto mechanics instead of a “training certificate.”
All sorts of other problems come along with this; for instance, colleges begin adopting the “customer service” model of education. Colleges now have to please the expectations of entering students–and the students expect high grades, minimal work, and ultra-cooperative professors, or else they pack up their federal money and move to a more accommodating college.
Sorry to sound so bleak, but this is the way it is right now. Getting students excited over the traditional liberal arts now depends more than ever on individual professors and their ability to connect with students. Otherwise, students now see liberal arts subjects as the hurdles they are forced to jump in order to get to their “more important” vocational training.
July 14th, 2011 | 9:53 pm | #6
While I’m not a professor, and I’m not a teacher, I totally agree with Craig’s comments.
the Liberal Arts are immensely precious, and anyone not just introduced to them, but also comprehensively immersed in them, possesses a state not unlike poverty, in the economic realm.
To not have any understanding of our great monotheistic traditions, how they influenced the emergence of empirical science, to have never read any of Plato, Aristotle, the golden age of greece, one could go on, and on, is overwelmingly sad.
I live in Utah. We have some great universities, here, University of Utah, and Brigham Young University, Utah State University. I think that they do take the Liberal Arts seriously.
Thomas Aquinas College, in California, is unique, as far as I know, in not having textbooks, but requiring students to read the great works, of the thinkers of our great past, and present. I must confess to envying anyone fortunate enough to have graduated from this amazing, wonderful school.
July 14th, 2011 | 10:10 pm | #7
While I’m not Catholic, I have great respect for the Catholic Church, and one can purchase some wonderfully educational, and, dare I say, entertaining, DVD’s and CD’s, from the INTERNATIONAL CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY, originated by the late thomistic Scholar, Ralph McInerny. He has a great course on Aquinas, as well as many other courses, by other professors, he has assembled for this university. Although one can matriculate for a degree, one doesn’t have to do so. One can purchase these course, for the pure joy of learning. Here’s a link, to the site: http://home.comcast.net/~icuweb/icu.htm
Also, if one wishes to purchase, and read on one’s own, Aquinas’s great SUMMA THEOLOGIAE,one can buy it from IGNATIUS PRESS: http://www.ignatius.com/
Also, if one wants all of Aristotle’s extant works, translated by the Aristotilean scholar Jonathon Barnes, among other great works, consider EIGHTH DAY BOOKShttp://eighthdaybooks.com/
And, while I’m at it, THE GREAT COURSES, provides excellent courses, on a plethora of subjects: http://www.thegreatcourses.com/greatcourses.aspx
July 15th, 2011 | 6:18 am | #8
Kim Brooks, clearly gave a good portion of her life, to the study of the Liberal Arts, and, based on her description of her less than economically advantageous circumstances, that followed her Masters’ Degree, one might reasonably come to the conclusion that, the only pragmatic benefit to be derived from obtaining a Liberal Arts degree, would be a job that, anyone who didn’t have a degree would easily get (perhaps just some vocational training, such as a Paralegal).
The simple fact is, no one, unless they belong to that rather peculiar, rare group of people, who like to learn for learning’s sake, will spend considerable amounts of money, only to get a job, that will barely pay the rent, let alone pay off their student loans.
Of course, I’m kidding about people being “peculiar” for wanting to learn for learning’s sake, after all, I consider myself part of this group, but I do think that, for purely pragmatic, need to pay the rent, utilities, car payment, and all the other, um, incidentals of life, this group, if it’s not rare already, will soon be.
What to do? Certainly, Craig Payne’s point about professors getting students excited, is a good one, but it presupposes that they’re in the classroom, already. If they don’t see the point of even enrolling in a Liberal Arts class, getting them excited, over it, is a moot point.
One possible alternative, is to require ALL students, to learn Greek, and Latin, art history, the history of the world from prehistoric times, to the present, to take philosophy from the presocratics, to our contemporary times, to understand religion, to understand Drama, from the ancient Greeks, such as Aeschylus, the Romans, such as Plautus and Terence, to read and understand Shakespeare, Henri Ibsen, Anton Chekhov, George Bernard Shaw, the rich literature from Gilgamesh, Dante, to the present, regardless of their majors.
Of course, this quixotic suggestion will never materialize.
July 15th, 2011 | 6:35 am | #9
For those interested, here’s a US NEWS & WORLD REPORT, ranking of Liberal Arts Colleges: http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-liberal-arts-colleges
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