6 ms·

Historically, the liberal arts were practiced by the rich. Engineering, and to a lesser extent the professional fields like Law and Medicine were intended to l

Historically, the liberal arts were practiced by the rich. Engineering, and to a lesser extent the professional fields like Law and Medicine were intended to let smart bourgeoisie bootstrap themselves. I doubt there is anyone anywhere who has taken on an english major and said "this will make me my first $1,000,000". So why is this common sense knowledge constantly peddled around as something "new" in newspapers?

stcredzero 15y ago
So why is this common sense knowledge constantly peddled around as something "new" in newspapers? It's just the newspaper version of a repost.
Pooter 15y ago
> I doubt there is anyone anywhere who has taken on an english major and said "this will make me my first $1,000,000". Well, no. Honestly, though, if your whole goal for education is maximizing your earnings potential, you're missing one of the major values of education - learning stuff to expand your mind and personal horizons. Perhaps it's just a bourgeois upbringing and lifestyle that allows me to subscribe to that kind of ideology, though.
jonnathanson 15y ago
More to that point, liberal arts were practiced by the rich in societies with rigid class structures. If you were the scion of a comfortable fortune, you majored in the "classics" or the liberal arts because you wanted, more or less, to have the background to enable you to live an exciting and fulfilling life of leisure. To make great conversation at cocktail parties and charity balls. To provide the intellectual background behind gentleman-scholarship and amateur pursuits. To help you toy around with a novel or two. And so forth. This isn't the way our society works anymore, and the liberal arts curricula never really adapted with the times. To some extent, liberal arts is still a valuable major for those wanting to pursue Law, and whose colleges do not have a discrete "pre-law" curriculum. Other than that, however, liberal arts is fairly impractical. Still valuable for intellectual development, but intellectual development of a sort that's not prized or valued or applicable to modern working society.
- _delirium 15y ago
  That's the typical stereotype of liberal-arts education's history, but I don't think it's that historically accurate, though it probably does describe some of the Victorian era's schooling more specifically. But the traditional liberal arts weren't greatly separated from what we now think of as the sciences, though they were indeed separated from engineering and crafts. "Amateur pursuits" typically included not only "toy[ing] around with a novel or two", but also toying around with a telescope and a beaker or formula or two; most great scientists and mathematicians before the modern era were a product of liberal-arts education. It's also been popular in the American context, which isn't a society that has a rigid class structure. That at least used to be connected with a certain view of democracy and self-government, which held that liberal-arts education was a prerequisite for a working democratic society (e.g. Thomas Jefferson's views).
  - true_religion 15y ago
    I'll grant you that---I forgot about the time period where "natural philosophy" was science.
hugh3 15y ago
I doubt there is anyone anywhere who has taken on an english major and said "this will make me my first $1,000,000". So why is this common sense knowledge constantly peddled around as something "new" in newspapers? Well, the constant supply of graduates with six figures of debt and a degree in medieval basket weaving complaining that they can't find a decent job suggests that this obvious lesson still hasn't sunk in. Besides, not everything in your newspaper has to be new. Oh, and a third thing: it fits in well with the recent "higher education bubble" meme. Higher education isn't overpriced if you do it right, but it is overpriced if you study the wrong things.

stcredzero 15y ago

So why is this common sense knowledge constantly peddled around as something "new" in newspapers? It's just the newspaper version of a repost.

Pooter 15y ago

> I doubt there is anyone anywhere who has taken on an english major and said "this will make me my first $1,000,000". Well, no. Honestly, though, if your whole goal for education is maximizing your earnings potential, you're missing one of the major values of education - learning stuff to expand your mind and personal horizons. Perhaps it's just a bourgeois upbringing and lifestyle that allows me to subscribe to that kind of ideology, though.

jonnathanson 15y ago

More to that point, liberal arts were practiced by the rich in societies with rigid class structures. If you were the scion of a comfortable fortune, you majored in the "classics" or the liberal arts because you wanted, more or less, to have the background to enable you to live an exciting and fulfilling life of leisure. To make great conversation at cocktail parties and charity balls. To provide the intellectual background behind gentleman-scholarship and amateur pursuits. To help you toy around with a novel or two. And so forth. This isn't the way our society works anymore, and the liberal arts curricula never really adapted with the times. To some extent, liberal arts is still a valuable major for those wanting to pursue Law, and whose colleges do not have a discrete "pre-law" curriculum. Other than that, however, liberal arts is fairly impractical. Still valuable for intellectual development, but intellectual development of a sort that's not prized or valued or applicable to modern working society.

_delirium 15y ago
That's the typical stereotype of liberal-arts education's history, but I don't think it's that historically accurate, though it probably does describe some of the Victorian era's schooling more specifically. But the traditional liberal arts weren't greatly separated from what we now think of as the sciences, though they were indeed separated from engineering and crafts. "Amateur pursuits" typically included not only "toy[ing] around with a novel or two", but also toying around with a telescope and a beaker or formula or two; most great scientists and mathematicians before the modern era were a product of liberal-arts education. It's also been popular in the American context, which isn't a society that has a rigid class structure. That at least used to be connected with a certain view of democracy and self-government, which held that liberal-arts education was a prerequisite for a working democratic society (e.g. Thomas Jefferson's views).
- true_religion 15y ago
  I'll grant you that---I forgot about the time period where "natural philosophy" was science.

hugh3 15y ago

I doubt there is anyone anywhere who has taken on an english major and said "this will make me my first $1,000,000". So why is this common sense knowledge constantly peddled around as something "new" in newspapers? Well, the constant supply of graduates with six figures of debt and a degree in medieval basket weaving complaining that they can't find a decent job suggests that this obvious lesson still hasn't sunk in. Besides, not everything in your newspaper has to be new. Oh, and a third thing: it fits in well with the recent "higher education bubble" meme. Higher education isn't overpriced if you do it right, but it is overpriced if you study the wrong things.