I picked up a copy of a recent edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education because one of the articles caught my eye, “The Day the Purpose of College Changed.” From the Republican Reagan to the Democrat Obama, in many ways poster children for their parties, they both tout the philosophy that goal of education is to get a job and secure wealth. Reagan said, that the government should not be “subsidizing intellectual curiosity.” Obama said, “from the time you are in ninth grade until you get a job, how do we make sure you get the best skills possible at the cheapest cost. If there are faster pathways or opportunities to use technology, let’s do that.”
The assumption behind these statements, which a growing number of citizens seem to share, is that a liberal education is an unnecessary luxury whose presence or absence in the lives of citizens in no way affects the greater community. And if you think a “liberal” education has to do with “liberal” politics, then your ignorance of the very education that you claim is unnecessary has already made you a victim – a victim of ignorance. A liberal education, or a liberal arts education, is an education that assumes that the best education is one that contextualizes your specific field of study within a broader spectrum of disciplines – history, literature, mathematics, science, etc. This contextualization enables students to think in widening fields of perception by training them to continually consider new ways of thinking and perceiving.
The irony here is this education that was once considered “worthy of a free person” is now often considered frivolous and unworthy of political concern. Here in a nation where we pride our selves on individual freedom, it would seem we are selling our birthright for a mess of pottage. To be absolutely clear, I am not arguing against the necessity of acquiring training for a job where one is able to procure enough money to subsist. Yes, everyone has a responsibility to consider “how they are going to eat”, as many a parent has inquired of their college-attending children. And educational institutions have a responsibility to make students aware of the realities of debt and the financial burdens of everyday life.
My beef, however, is with the imprudent assumption that society’s stake in the educational system is primarily a matter of learning skills in order to get a job. Not to put too sharp of a point on it, but this is the exact same kind of education that slave laborers receive. In fact, it has been noted elsewhere that one of the strategies that slave owners employ in order to keep slaves submissive, subservient, and incapable of rising up against oppression is to keep them ignorant and to keep their knowledge limited to a particular function or skill: sowing one particular seam on a shoe, picking and processing cotton, planting and harvesting cabbage. In short, illiteracy – a lacking of a particular kind of knowledge. (See Paulo Friere’s work, particularly Pedagogy of the Oppressed). Again, a liberal education is not only “worthy of a free person”, indeed it enables a person to live a free life. So when we strip education down to learning a particular skill in order to procure a particular job, we are also creating citizens who are going to be primed and ready to be taken advantage of.
As noted in this article,
“Thomas Jefferson believed that people ‘with genius and virtue should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens,” he wrote in 1779. Such men wouldn’t be easily swayed by tyrants.”
If we do not have a problem allocating massive amounts of money to national defense, then it would seem that a liberal arts education would be one of the most crucial strongholds in maintaining freedom.
HOWEVER, if we are going to be satisfied with a society that does not place a priority on this type of education, then we do not have the luxury of being either surprised or indignant at the recent flareups of racial tension in this country (from the protests to the public debates regarding the killings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice). It is irrelevant where you stand on this issue if you do not first believe in the value of considering another person or culture’s viewpoint. People on all sides of this issue have a particular voice and viewpoint they want the “other side” to consider or understand. But I’m sorry, this is only possible if you hold the core convictions of a liberal education. This is exactly what a liberal education fosters within a person, that is, an ability to appreciate a culture, story, viewpoint, value, that is not one’s own. Getting rid of a liberal education is part and parcel to getting rid of this ability to understand another point of view. If you want the “other side” to consider the way you understand a particular situation, then you must be willing to play that same game. But learning the game of entertaining another’s point of view is not one that comes natural but must be learned — it is a type of education.
