2008 Woodie Awards
From the Brighter Side: A Faculty Contribution
Promise and Pitfalls of a Liberal Education
Ted Taranovski
Issue date: 3/30/07 Section: Opinion
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A headline in the U.S. News and World Report recently asked: "Is College Worth It? Besides a Degree Are You Really Getting What You Paid for?" Critics increasingly inquire whether higher education in humanities and social sciences, consisting of a smorgasbord of distribution requirements, an often inchoate major, and a smattering of electives means much of anything (science education seems more sequentially and systematically structured). When an ad for a warehouse manager asks for a B.A. and the ability to lift 50 pounds, one wonders which is the weightier requirement.
The usual response is that American colleges, as our catalog puts it, provide "a liberal education of enduring value." We promise students that they will acquire analytical skills, communicate effectively and be equipped with knowledge for a lifetime of citizenship, work and learning. Such education was originally intended to provide an individual with "cultural literacy," with an exposure to human achievements called "classic" not because they are old, but because they have stood the test of time and found resonance across centuries and generations. If properly structured, liberal education is emancipatory and mind-opening.
While the virtues of liberal education have been extolled ad nauseam, there are also pitfalls that confront its seeker. The first is moral and intellectual arrogance. There have always been pendants, bohemians, and aesthetes, who felt superior to the common herd, and philosophes and prophets, who wanted to transform the world, but many modern intellectuals represent a special category of elitists: the radical intelligentsia. The phenomenon originated in mid-19th century Russia from whence it spread to Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and is now found in Western Europe and the United States. The Russian intelligentsia, as its counterparts elsewhere, was initially inspired by Western progressive and democratic ideas, by philosophical materialism, utilitarianism, and scientific positivism, by Darwinian anthropology, and by the egalitarianism of Marx and his socialist predecessors and anarchist rivals.
The usual response is that American colleges, as our catalog puts it, provide "a liberal education of enduring value." We promise students that they will acquire analytical skills, communicate effectively and be equipped with knowledge for a lifetime of citizenship, work and learning. Such education was originally intended to provide an individual with "cultural literacy," with an exposure to human achievements called "classic" not because they are old, but because they have stood the test of time and found resonance across centuries and generations. If properly structured, liberal education is emancipatory and mind-opening.
While the virtues of liberal education have been extolled ad nauseam, there are also pitfalls that confront its seeker. The first is moral and intellectual arrogance. There have always been pendants, bohemians, and aesthetes, who felt superior to the common herd, and philosophes and prophets, who wanted to transform the world, but many modern intellectuals represent a special category of elitists: the radical intelligentsia. The phenomenon originated in mid-19th century Russia from whence it spread to Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and is now found in Western Europe and the United States. The Russian intelligentsia, as its counterparts elsewhere, was initially inspired by Western progressive and democratic ideas, by philosophical materialism, utilitarianism, and scientific positivism, by Darwinian anthropology, and by the egalitarianism of Marx and his socialist predecessors and anarchist rivals.
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