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On the uses of a liberal education as a weapon summary
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Full disclosure: I've lived my entire life wanting to be an engineer. My father is a manufacturing engineer. My grandfather was an electrical engineer. My girlfriend is currently studying at Iowa State in mechanical Engineering. I am an engineer at heart. Given that, it must be understandable that I've never been one for a liberal education. One of my favorite quotes is the following by Aristotle: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it". For the purpose of this essay, and as an extension this class, I will entertain the thought of a liberal education. After reading Ungar's misperceptions in the essay The New Liberal Arts, Sanford J. Ungar, I acknowledge each is factually sound and make …show more content…
If everyone in a company had a liberal education degree, what happens to the product? If everyone had a degree in communication, theres nobody to design the product. If everyone had a degree in French, theres would be nobody to program the apps or maintain the website. Look at Congress! People with a political education talk and talk, but nothing ever seems to gets done. Theres no product when people don't have a diversified skill set. I agree with the points Ungar makes, but I think it only applies to a select group of people. We still need the mechanics to repair our cars. We still need the technicians to run our medical tests. I agree that a liberal education is great for out-of-the-box thinkers, but out-of-the-box thinking isn't reserved for just those with a liberal education degree. Engineers are problem solvers and have to come up with clever, out-of-the-box solutions. Scientists and researchers need to explore areas of knowledge that are foreign to them, out-of-the-box. Even an entry level burger flipper with the high school diploma need to think outside of the box when it comes to choosing what to do with the rest of their life. If everyone does the same thing, nothing gets done. I will entertain the thought of a liberal education, but I feel the concepts learned can be learned just as well in other degree
But the best argument against a liberal education is perhaps the simplest. When students go to any college, they choose a major and take classes that are related to that major. However to get to those classes they have to take courses in , reading, writing, and history. I don’t think that Zakaria realises this. By the time these students graduate, they will be able to understand all of the technical aspects of their field, as well as being able to express their thoughts and ideas clearly. All of this without a traditional Liberal
With the advent of the internet, technical schools, and computers in general, jobs today are more specialized than ever before, and they will continue to increase in particularity, thus a purely liberal arts curriculum is very untimely. Most people take four years to attain a bachelor’s degree of some kind and if they want a salary increase it requires at least two more years of graduate school before they can even think about entering the workplace. If people study only humanities for six of their most pivotal years of life, depending on their field of work, they may have a very small base of technical knowledge to utilize.
In my view, offering classes to students whose minds and interests are distant from liberal arts is a waste of time and money. Why I have this opinion? First, while I was in medical college, students ignored philosophy and sociology classes there for the reason of being busy with major disciplines. Since they were mandatory classes in order to graduate, students got credits even for their rudimentary knowledge in liberal arts. This examples drives me to an idea, that making available liberal arts classes for broad range of students do not reach the goal, which is development of minds. Second, Samuelson argues that only the elite has an easy access to liberal arts, which is far from the truth. The education starts way earlier than in college. Every public school performs a screening tests annually to determine whether a student is capable of advanced education for gifted children. On the top of that, the education is free of charge. Furthermore, any adult who is able to read have an access to "high goods of humanity" through choosing certain books. All public libraries in the United States are also free, so you do not need a penny to develop your mind at any period of your life. Where is a will, there is a
Throughout the article “The New Liberal Arts,” Ungar masks an unsound argument with emotion and perceived credibility. Ungar presents himself as a credible source due to his interaction and experience as a presidents at a liberal arts institution. Though he presents himself with knowledge, the arguments he draws attention to are poorly developed and lack any solid background information to why he is right over the opposing
Liberal arts education produces analytical thinking, and professions are looking for that as an alternative to just specializing in one subject. “Who wants to hire somebody with an irrelevant major like philosophy or French,” but in reality, everyone is finding it harder to find a job in this economy, not just liberal arts majors. He then answers the question about “being a low income, or first generation college student,” and Ungar begins to state that it is ignorant to consider that just because an individual is the first generation that they cannot be given the same kind of education as someone else who is not a first generation. Some may believe that liberal arts does not take part in the mathematical and scientific side of education, but it does in the broadest parts. Sanford Ungar has the right idea that more people should major in the liberal arts, and I definitely like how he put his essays into the “seven misconceptions.”
Most people will readily agree that higher education is crucial to success although tremendously expensive in some cases. When it comes to the liberal
In Charles Murray’s essay entitled “Are Too Many People Going to College?”, he discusses the influx of Americans getting a college education. He addresses the topic of Liberal Arts education, and explains that not many people are ready for the rigorous challenges a liberal-arts degree offers. In addition, Murray explains that instead of a traditional degree more people should apply to technical schools. He believes that college should not be wide spread, and that it is only for those who can handle it. These viewpoints harshly contrast with Sanford J. Ungar’s views. Ungar believes college education should be widespread, because a liberal-arts degree is, in his opinion, a necessity. He argues that a liberal-arts college is the only place that
I think the way he structured his essay was definitely the most effective way, instead of making it one continuous text, breaking it up into bullet points makes it easier for him to get his point across and for the reader to understand his points. One thing that made me step back and say, “wait what,” was when Ungar was discussing liberal arts for low income students in misconception three. Ungar says, “It is condescending to imply that those who have less cannot understand and appreciate the finer elements of knowledge- another way of saying, really, that the rich folks will do the important thinking, and the lower classes will simply carry out their ideas.” (228-229) But he later goes onto say, “They catch up quickly.” (229) I understand that Ungar probably didn’t mean anything negative from this statement, but the way I interpreted this was him saying that all poorer people start out stupid, but with the miracle of a liberal arts education they just might become smart. Ignoring this, I do agree with a lot of things that Ungar talks
We live the truth every day, working to keep the ideal of democratic education alive. The best reason to care for college, who goes,and what happens to them when they get there, is not what it does for society, but what it can do for individuals.like the elder guy said, you thought me how to enjoy life. What he meant is college helped him read, help him crave for works of art, heightened his alertness to color from melody. He was grateful for such an education given to him. As a person regardless of what kind of origin we have, we have the right to pursue happiness. In america today at every kind of institution education is at risk. Student are persuade and program, trained to live from task to task. To many colleges do to little to save them debilitating frenzy that makes liberal education marginal if it is offered at
In modern times, the importance of liberal arts is questioned. The article “Myth: A Liberal Arts Education is Becoming Irrelevant” by Carol T. Christ makes the argument that a liberal arts education provides a broader range of knowledge which is useful because it produces a critically thinking student. Obtaining a career is the main focus of college education. Knowing this, Christ emphasizes how a liberal arts education is useful when looking for employment. She refutes the conception that a liberal arts education is irrelevant in today’s society by identifying the useful qualities it provides the employers look for such as, “Flexibility, creativity, critical thinking, strong communication skills (particulary writing)” (Christ,
According to Harris,” together with the tools of examination and analysis that you will learn to use, will enable you to develop your own opinions, attitudes, values, and beliefs, based not upon the authority of parents, peers, or professors, and not upon ignorance, whim, or prejudice, but upon your own worthy apprehension, examination, and evaluation of argument and evidence.” In other words liberal arts can help you learn how to think and how to learn which will help you develop you own ideas and arguments. As well as help you be able to clearly get out your thoughts and clearly think of the in your head. This can help people be able to change things in the society with ideas that other people haven’t thought of yet. It will also allow people to stick to what they believe in and develop things that can help them take their beliefs and take an action with it in society. It can also help people to exercise their brain and wise throughout the years because liberal arts help you work out your brain as well as teaching you how to continue working out you brain. This will help you stay and get smarter throughout the years, which can also help the society as well as the
Education— or rather, the act of being educated— can take a wide variety of forms; the term education in itself is very broad and nonspecific. People learn new things every day whether they are conscious of it or not, which begs the question “what constitutes an education?” Higher education, for example, typically consists of being affiliated with some institution such as a university, or a lone college. Such educations may also follow the liberal arts methodology, depending on the values of the institution that is being attended. A liberal arts education, as opposed to some more straight forward methods of education such as STEM, allows for far more freedom of choice in your education—in fact, a broad education is encouraged at such institutions. Therefore, a true liberal arts education would lead to a far more-well-rounded pupil than those that follow more direct—or
Higher education is optional, but to enter a respectable career, one must continue their education in order to achieve his financial and/or personal goals. Teenagers who attend college use their extended schooling to further obtain knowledge. The primary objective of higher education is to enhance one’s abilities for his future. A student can learn from school in numerous ways, but liberal education is not a way to attract students into further and higher education. However, students can learn a lot more through experiences that have affected their personal lives. I agree with author Mike Rose’s theory that education needs are reached to obtain a higher academic level by teaching students information that can be related to their personal experiences and mentality.
Our society so values education that sociologists have recognized the problem of "over-education" (Hadjicostandi). Many people are spending years pursuing degrees which they simply do not need for the jobs they perform. It is therefore prudent for students to question whether pursuing a liberal education is really as important as our society believes. What is the point of a college education? Does it have any purpose beyond its material benefits. Are these benefits worth their cost? These are important questions that need answering. In the end, we may see that there is far more to this debate than simple accounting. Perhaps what makes education worth pursuing is that it gives us the freedom to makes these kinds of decisions about what is best for us.
Liberal education is not something that is not defined easily. There are various different aspects of liberal education that make it what it is. Part of the liberal education classes that Grand Valley offers work to help students understand and define liberal education better. Not only that, but liberal education helps make students what they are today. Through out the various readings, exercises, and various forms of expression, our liberal education class has helped shape the idea of liberal education and how we, and a university can use it to better enhance our experiences in our daily lives.