Liberal Arts

[ellenkushner]

I have really enjoyed our brief time at Hollins U., and hope to return someday. Meanwhile, who can resist cracking open HOLLINS COLLEGE: AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY?? A fascinating look at a Southern institution for women's many turns over nearly 2 centuries. In it I find this description from 1952 of the 2 Great Objectives of a Liberal Arts Education:

1) The liberation of the mind and spirit from unconsciously and uncritically accepted values and propositions, to develop qualities of wisdom, virtue & civility.

2) The establishment of a firm foundation of fact and theory which will serve as a frame of reference and a guide for adequately meeting...new problems and situations.

I've been having so many conversations lately with friends, some in high school, some parents, some university teachers . . .all trying to figure out what college is really for. For many, it has become a sophisticated Trade School; and indeed, for many, quickly learning a trade is what is required to launch one in the world. But for those with the leisure to pursue four years in the liberal arts, we could do worse than to contemplate and aspire to those objectives.

Comments

[rmthunter.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I can consider pursuit of the liberal arts something for those with the leisure: critical thinking skills are painfully lacking these days, as is obvious from most of our public discourse.

Those two objectives from Hollins, though, are gratifying to see. I wonder how many institutions that began with those ideas still adhere to them.

[feuervogel]

I got a BS in chem and German from a liberal arts college in PA. Lots of breadth requirements, and about 1/4 of my class studied abroad.

I guess my point is this: liberal arts doesn't have to mean getting a BLA or a BA, or studying, say, English or philosophy; one can receive the benefits of a liberal arts education and still study science or medicine, which could be considered trades.

I'm extremely glad I went to a 4-year liberal arts school (non-R1, so no grad students doing the teaching), even if it meant I had double the time to get my career going. IMO, the 6-year pharmacy program is a terrible idea, though it's the norm. There's no time to do anything *but* the pre-pharm and general university requirements in the 2 years before pharmacy school. You could also see a huge difference in maturity levels between the 6-year-plan kids and the third of us who had previous degrees.

Basically, I agree with your statement, but disagree that 'studying liberal arts' itself is a necessary part of achieving those objectives. I could, however, be interpreting poorly, because I'm suffering from massive jet lag (just got back from Japan. Still quite muzzy.)

[scbutler.livejournal.com]

There's a reason a liberal arts education has lasted this long. Whether it's going to continue to last is an open question.

[bluestalking.livejournal.com]

Hurrah for liberal arts! Whether it distressingly fades in the future or not, I am certainly glad that it has lasted long enough for me to get one. As a trade school, it's all very well, and I certainly hope that it helps me get to where I want to be (I think it may?). However, I don't think that this most utilitarian aspect is the thing that I will remember best about these years.

Thus far, college has been for this: for learning things I didn't know; for learning things I thought I knew; for finding who my friends are, and realizing that not only do all friends start as strangers, but that most strangers could be friends; it has taught me to live without privacy and to live with independence; It has taught me to think; taught me to argue; taught me to accept; taught me to see; taught me to look; taught me to leap. And taught me, of course, what happens when you do.

Kay Boyle remembered a fairly racist school from her time there.

[mouseworks.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking that if all of us who've been involved in various power struggles at work had been in academia, we'd have gone on far longer than we did. We have to work together to get real stuff done.

Liberal arts in Europe started as a trade school for priests -- learn to read and write in Latin and Greek, learn enough philosophy to be able to connect pre-Christian philosophy with Augustine and company, be able to argue persuasively. I don't know if the average school ever taught genuinely critical thinking.

I also think that our culture has changed so much that we're in the position of the Neolithics with regard to Paleolithic cave art -- much of the liberal arts curriculum doesn't speak to us now. The critical thinking is in science and technology, where reality grades the work, not in fields where force of personality can have undue impact.

A lot of people are not convinced that people in academia are better, more judicious, more tolerant, more insightful about real people, than any number of other people whose daily lives aren't filled with lying 19 year olds. For every Chip Delany, there's ten people who are grandiose and petty (and who think that publishing science fiction disqualifies writers from being taken seriously as real writers).

I'm glad I was in Academia; I'm also glad now to be out of it.

The classical Liberal Arts curriculum was also way more rigorous than the typical liberal arts curriculum at even some of the more prestigious colleges now. Most of us didn't learn Latin or even a modern language well enough to actually speak it.

I think we all know how cushy those creative writing gigs are and how morally dubious (my graduate director said he regretted participating the in great pyramid scheme that was the proliferation of MFA programs). I don't have any problem with undergraduate programs with concentrations in Creative Writing -- UPenn's, Yale's, Princeton's. I really have a problem with MFA programs and the whole proliferation of graduate programs whose only rationale is keeping the tenured faculty from having to teach general required courses.

The liberal arts as we know them are relatively new -- English as a separate study dates from the 1880s. History is a bit older than that. The old liberal arts, whatever else it did, took middle class and upper class people out of their cultures and asked them to get to know, though the classics, people of radically different times and places. On one hand, we know even more about more radically different people than a 18th Century Englishman come down from Oxford would have known. On the other, what we learn about people who aren't like us comes less from the classroom and more from places like this.

[otterdance.livejournal.com]

1) The liberation of the mind and spirit from unconsciously and uncritically accepted values and propositions, to develop qualities of wisdom, virtue & civility.

2) The establishment of a firm foundation of fact and theory which will serve as a frame of reference and a guide for adequately meeting...new problems and situations.

I'm passing this along to my university professor husband. Excellent.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

No, we don't disagree at all! The breadth is what matters.

A Hollins Alum

[(Anonymous)]

I'm sorry I missed you at Hollins. I spent two years there getting my MFA, and I miss it in a strange way. As Northern/Midwestern male teaching and studying at an old-fashioned Southern school for women, it was a bit of a culture shock, but over all, it was great. Again, I am really bummed that they didn't get you while I was still down there. Peace.

Patrick S. McGinnity
http://keltickarnival.blogspot.com/

Re: A Hollins Alum

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed the sense that this was a place I'd never been before, with some very different traditions. Glad to know you felt the same!