Sanford J. Ungar's The New Liberal Arts

Importance of Liberal Arts Education Liberal arts education gives the opportunity to learn from different sectors not restricting the students within one discipline. By engaging students in different activities which deal with culture and humanities, liberal arts education inspires them to think critically, to solve the problems of the society they live in. Liberal arts education creates quality graduates who can think and write. Sigurdson explains the importance of liberal arts in his article, “Why Study the Liberal Arts?” saying that liberal arts education does not provide the students with a specific major but prepares them for the work world with ‘an invaluable set of employability skills, including the ability to think for themselves,

Nevertheless, liberal arts education seems to be better when compared to professional education in terms of allowing students to learn broadly, to acquire critical thinking skills, and to establish verbal skills. First of all, in the liberal arts education, students are capable of acquiring comprehensive knowledge. For example, students can major in philosophy

In today’s education system, there is an ongoing debate concerning conformity and individuality. The majority of schools conform to similar curriculum as a means of ‘leveling the academic playing field’ and giving all students a fair and equal chance of success. But does this sense of conformity actually benefit students? While it is necessary to have some conformity in the curriculum taught to students nationwide, there should be an aspect of individuality as well. Schools should adopt a more individualistic approach towards the classes students must take, and less of one concerned solely on test performance, because it would benefit students upon graduation by allowing them to pursue studies that interest them, and also benefit the school

In David Foster Wallace’s “ Kenyon Commencement Speech,” he discusses the importance of liberal arts education in “teaching you how to think” (Wallace, 199). He mentions how education is beyond the knowledge we learn, but about simple awareness will impact the choices we make for better or worse. The real value of education cannot be found in a career (you may or may not be fired from), but it can be found in the way you view things through a different perspective and by considering how other factors can contribute to everyday life. This new approach in thinking will allow us to appreciate our lives and overcome our inner “default setting” towards the world (Wallace, 199). I agree with Wallace’s argument because the purpose of higher education should not be about having career-specific skills and obtaining a degree, but about intellectual and personal growth will help us survive in the real world.

Even if statistics prove repeatedly that they will be better off in life by going to college, there are reasons that high school graduates have that prevent them from pursuing a higher education. In the essay “Should Everyone Go to College” written by Stephanie Owen and Isabel Sawhill, the authors write about the positive and negative effects of going to college. Based on my personal experience and the experiences of others around me, I say the positive outcomes are better eventually than the negatives. Owen and Sawhill start the discussion by voicing their concern for the young people in our generation with having to choose if

Bloom’s Eros Specialization is not one of the major themes in Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind. However, I find it necessary to address what Bloom calls eros. In my opinion, this is a very important term that has to be dealt with in order to reasonably discuss the impact and role of specialization in today’s society later on. Bloom describes a person’s eros as “the enticing awareness of incompleteness and the quest to overcome it (p.132)”. The longing for intellectual completeness, according to Bloom, is also the longing for education.

While Kern admits that this is a completely valid point, a better argument would be that college teaches a student most importantly how to learn, not what to learn. This distinction matters because, as Kern states that, conversely to what students who consistently label particular subjects like the ones related to liberal arts as useless may think, every branch of knowledge has it’s value and entails a unique learning

Welders Equal Philosophers Consider the idea that a welder deserves the same intellectual respect as a philosopher. If you have conformed to society’s standards of what jobs require the most intellectual activity, then this idea might seem irrational and intriguing. On the other hand, people such as Mike Rose, author of The Mind at Work, would claim that this idea is true and even defends it in his book. Rose is a firm believer that the modern world has undervalued blue-collar workers. It is common for people to criticize vocational schools and advertise for four-year colleges, and that is what provoked Rose to take a stand.

Because of this, American students are being taught ignorance indirectly, European culture is superior because that's the only culture they know is “important enough” to be taught in schools. But through scholarship and leadership this implicit bias taught in schools can be eliminated. With scholarship comes the inherit love for learning, a passion to widen one’s horizons. This passion drives students, in this case, to learn world history, even if this particular story isn’t your own, or your ancestors. Scholarship is what drove me to take advanced history.

If the Liberal Enlightenment Theorists were asked whether or not a Liberal Arts degree is worth pursuing in college, their response may be quite different from the opinion of the parents in this antidote. For John Locke, he might say that getting a degree in Liberal Arts — or a degree of any kind — is beneficial to one’s life. This can be explained by his beliefs of labor and property. According to Locke, “For ’tis labour ended that puts the difference of value on everything…”, meaning the labor you exert on anything, whether it be property or something else, is a determining factor of value you create in society (2002). I would argue that the labor used to obtain an education of any sort is of value.