Universal Education In the Liberal Arts Should Be A Social Priority

School children often ask why learning one or another subject is good for them. Sometimes we answer by enlightening them on practical application of what they are learning. Or perhaps we could expound upon the fact that they are young and don't know yet what will interest them until they've learned about a lot of different things. If we're feeling a bit more adventurous, we might try to explain the more nebulous goal of creating a well rounded person. Such a lecture will then be met by eye rolls. That isn't to say that children of many ages can't understand the importance of educational breadth to their emotional well being. We should give them more credit than that.

However, the reason why we ought to give them more credit is the same reason why they won't enjoy the lecture. Education is essential to establishing intellectual autonomy. It's how you avoid becoming a dupe. Perhaps that leads to the most effective argument for encouraging a child's curiosity: put an end to all lectures by proving your parents wrong with more information and better reasoning skills than they have. One can dream.

Allan Bloom became famous for his book "The Closing of the American Mind" (he also wrote a prominent translation of Plato's "Republic", but I don't think that one hit the New York Times Bestseller List). It's a great book if you received a classical liberal arts education and like feeling superior to other people. He spends a lot of time critiquing the relativistic tenor of university liberal arts education, but during this discussion he has to also point out that some universities allow students to eschew liberal arts requirements altogether. As tuition paying adults, students can ask the same question as school children, only a little more forcefully. Why should someone in a social work program be forced to take a semester of chemistry or a pre-med student be required to write papers about King Lear?

Well, because they paid for it. That's why. I'm not leveling any particular criticism at Bloom, only pointing out the reality of modern economics and its relationship to education. College is no longer the domain of middle to upper class gentlemen. College is no longer even college, given the vast array of tertiary education that extends from online certificate programs to the Ivy League enclaves of post doctoral researchers. The majority of people seeking to fill the gap left by high school are trying to make themselves economically viable in a world where information and intellectual skills is what divides the classes. They are steaming along under their own power, whether they are working their way through school or competing for scholarships. People of course should be commended for wanting to better themselves in the most efficient way possible. Wouldn't that have made Ben Franklin proud?

The only problem with this laudable course is that the democratization of education has developed along side the development of democracy itself. Back when only the well heeled packed their bags for the local Hogwarts, the well heeled were running the world. There was some sense that they could not rule without both skills and a broad knowledge base. Who know what new crisis may face a country? Leadership is not so well defined as heart surgery. You have to be prepared for anything. More important still than what you learned in school was your appetite and ability to learn new things as the world changed.

Perhaps I'm looking at the past through rosy glasses. That's fine, because my description of the ideal aristocrat merely serves as a segue into the ideal commoner. Today, society rests in our hands. That is, we have the tools to guide the course of government towards what truly benefits society, even if we don't use it. Why wouldn't we use it? Why are the powerful often still in power? I guess they still manipulate things, but they can only do so if we let them. Have we been duped?

A broad education for the broadest segment of the population is the best defense against a democracy devolving into tyranny. Not only does it allow us to reason about those who propose to lead us, it also inoculates us against the fear of the unknown and the unfamiliar that eventually becomes the best tool of every dictator. Hitler's success depended not only on racism, but on a country irrecoverably altered by rapid industrialization and social change. Easily identifiable outsiders were the best remedy psychologically, if not in reality. A deep and wide educational system that stretched into the artisan and farming classes would've been more than sensitivity training on the important of a multi-cultural society. It could have prepared people whose livelihoods were slipping into the past to embrace the future and react with constructive courage rather than reactionary terror.

Oh, but in America we each have to pay our own way. I forgot about that. It's not unreasonable to demand that if you're footing the bill, you get to choose your own syllabus. Perhaps the fault lies in the funding? I understand that universal liberal arts education is expensive, but - to stoop to a cliche - can we afford not to provide it? What do you think would happen if everyone, and I mean everyone, had the background to vote for the best policies and the best representatives of their interests? We'd be unstoppable.