Higher Education, Liberal Arts and Shakespeare – NYTimes.com.
My comment:
First, liberal arts is not a luxury. Try this for starters. When you try to move up the corporate ladder, you are not going to get many chances to ask higher ups what they “meant by that”; and you better hope you can write good essays when your boss says, “Great idea. Write a letter explaining it and I will sign it and send it to the Exec. VP.”
Second, who’s teaching liberal arts, anyway? Offering courses in the liberal arts, yes, teaching it? No.
On the whole, our system of higher education is corrupt. We teach what student-customers “think” they need, not what they “need”.
For an excellent essay on what professors really do when they claim to teach liberal arts and the implications for society, see “The Odd Couple: Reflections on Liberal Education” by Prof. Jonathan Jacobs (Presidential Scholar, and Chair of Philosophy, John Jay College, CUNY). There is a link to it – along with other examples of what “teaching” means now – on my blog inside-higher-ed .
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