6 ms·

What liberal arts education is for (2024)

46 points by mr_wiglaf 2mo ago

eddhead 2mo ago
Communist brainwashing for Trust Fund kids? Seriously speaking what in Liberal Arts can you learn that's not already on Youtube now?
- CobaltFire 2mo ago
  This comment really speaks to the article. The commenter didn't even have the curiosity to read and comprehend the article, and made the articles point in that.
- bulbar 2mo ago
  You can learn anything from books, you never needed a college for that. Except, discussing things, having somebody else grade your coursework etc., you don't get that from books or YouTube.
- areoform 2mo ago
  From the article, What can we learn about what other people are thinking, about their mental models of the world, by paying very careful attention to the words they use? A lot of people will make fun of you, but I think everyone should read a book or two that's not airport pulp. Given you're on HN, try Gödel, Escher, Bach. https://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6del-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/dp/0465026567 https://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6del-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden... Be warned though, it'll take you well over a decade.
WalterBright 2mo ago
I took and engineering and science program in college. The education was in learning how to learn, learning how to solve problems, and how to distinguish fact from fiction. It's served me well. To make a living, it is necessary to learn a skill that people are willing to pay for.
- vineyardmike 2mo ago
  > The education was in learning how to learn, learning how to solve problems, and how to distinguish fact from fiction Sounds pretty close to a liberal arts education. That said, not everything is about a job or work. Sometimes (usually) education is itself a goal.
  - WalterBright 2mo ago
    > Sounds pretty close to a liberal arts education That's the plan, but it doesn't seem to work out too well. > not everything is about a job or work Yes, if you are independently wealthy. Need to pay back those student loans!
  - imtringued 2mo ago
    If education is the goal then it is a form of consumption and there is nothing wrong with consumption, but why should the government give out subsidized loans for consumption to young people? If people want to have an education for the sake of an education they should stop arguing in favor of maximally inflated tuition. You want the benefits of the consumer good while paying the least amount of money for it. Meanwhile the standard narrative is that people should be allowed to get into massive unpayable debts that trap them in deadend jobs while people who focus on money end up using their freedom to do the very thing the people who got into debt claim you can only do by getting into debt.
    - fwn 2mo ago
      It is worth noting that most of liberal arts education is fantastically cheap compared to many STEM degrees, especially medicine. Whenever you need a laboratory, a hospital.. it gets much more expensive than anything a liberal arts teacher can come up with. I think it is a uniquely American perspective to automatically assume that worthy (or even just prestigious) education somehow has to cost at least 200k USD financed through life-altering, non-defaultable student loan contracts. I do understand that the money is not just drained. Whenever I was on an American campus as a student, I was in awe at their extravagant setups. Lots of food, an irritating amount of sports, more like a small resort town than a place to do educational work. No wonder there is only a very small fraction of the population who would choose to study humanities in such a system. But it says much more about the system than about the humanities or liberal arts.
CobaltFire 2mo ago
I had an extremely focused career, but am by nature a curious individual who craved the type of discussions the article talks about. They were closed to me because I came from poverty and had to focus to move myself up the ladder. Much like the author however, I found that my natural curiosity, and specifically that desire to ask what the words being used MEANT, to serve me extremely well. When I was a PM for a billion dollar plus project (military can hit that easily) that attitude is what got me the job. The constant push back from those who seem to value only their, and your, positions as cogs in a machine was exhausting. I really agree with this entire article. Thanks for posting it.
ThrowawayR2 2mo ago
Yet another dubious claim that "skills of close reading and critical questioning" are the products of a liberal arts education. Students can gain such things just fine in a STEM field if they care enough and aren't the sort who are just doing the bare minimum to get the sheepskin.
- mdp2021 2mo ago
  > Students can gain such things just fine in a STEM field As long as you do not claim that "living only on proteins or stones and without carbs or leaves would be a good idea".
  - WalterBright 2mo ago
    Those with a liberal arts education do indeed look down on STEM educations as merely a trade. What they miss is the joy of understanding how the world works. I remember many "aha!" moments like somebody turning on the lights in a dark cathedral. Like when I found out how jet engines really worked, not the handwavy cartoons one usually sees. Or when suddenly all the pieces fit together and I knew how a computer worked. Or when Prof Gomez turned math from black+white to color when he taught me calculus.
    - alephnerd 2mo ago
      > Those with a liberal arts education do indeed look down on STEM educations as merely a trade Maybe it's a generational thing, but I haven't noticed this amongst my peers and those younger than me, but I do agree that there is some degree of ressentiment amongst humanities majors to STEM because of the earning trajectory.
- creesch 2mo ago
  > a STEM field if they care enough and aren't the sort who are just doing the bare minimum to get the sheepskin. That's the thing though, part of it is about caring. Part of it is being exposed to other things in order to realize there is more out there. I honestly think that STEM field education would benefit from including Liberal Art related courses exactly because of that. Basically as a way to broaden students world view and the way they might interact in it. The same is probably true the other way around as well btw.
alephnerd 2mo ago
I've always been a huge proponent of CMU, UIUC, and Stanford's CS+X programs for this very reason. Innovation is inherently interdisciplinary, and learning how to synthesize multiple different domains has tremendous value.
Animats 2mo ago
> The class turned out to be more or less “A Letter (singular) of Paul:” we spent the semester reading Paul’s letter to the Romans, at a rate of about 3 sentences per week. Per week! That's not a liberal education. That's religious brainwashing. It's the kind of thing madrassas and yeshivas do - obsessively school students on a very few texts said to be sacred. Liberal education was traditionally broad. There are curricula based on the Great Books. [1] They can be criticized for being retro, but they are not narrow. [1] https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/undergraduate/great-books-reading-list https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/undergraduate/great-bo...
- alephnerd 2mo ago
  There's nothing inherently wrong with theological education assuming it is also clubbed with other curricula and is not dogmatic in nature. Most major theological programs in the US like Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Chicago, Vandy, and Notre Dame take this kind of an interdisciplinary approach. The issue with madrassas and some hardcore yeshivas and seminaries is they do not allow any curricula that isn't litigurical in nature. > Liberal education was traditionally broad. There are curricula based on the Great Books. [1] They can be criticized for being retro, but they are not narrow I've found the Great Books curricula to be closer in style to madrassa and hardcore yeshivot curricula than a traditional liberal arts education, as they don't actively try to connect past texts and treatise with the present. The Great Books curriculum is itself a holdover from back when UChicago was meant to be a fundy evangelical theological program.
- photios 2mo ago
  St. Paul's writing has this effect on people. It's either a burst of love and joy or seething hatred. Never in the middle. :D > There are curricula based on the Great Books. List not including the greatest book of them all... What did they mean by this?
  - defrost 2mo ago
    > List not including the greatest book of them all... The linked list included both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament in the Sophomore year section. If it was The Bhagavad Gita you were jonesing for, that appears later in the Junior section.
mlsu 2mo ago
The liberal arts education was originally conceived to educate the leaders of society. That is where the free-minded pedagogical angle comes from, it's explicitly privileged. The idea was that if the leaders of society learned what it means to have values, integrity, what it is to be virtuous, etc, then they would diffuse those values into society and create a just world. Society would transcend in the image of the great works. Books from 500 years ago can teach us what being ethical means because human values are transcendental and totally outside of technological or vocational fads. Unfortunately, at some point in the last 30-40 years, we've totally abandoned this idea. The most powerful people in society are not just indifferent to the liberal arts but are actively hostile towards it. They see it as a frivolous waste of resources. Why waste time studying a great work of literature when you could be "building" instead? Of course, it's predictable where this leads. We did all this building, but forgot what justice means, what it means to have values, what it means to do right. So now our society is ugly, corrupt, and rotten. Hey, at least we (the leaders) are rich!
- gdwatson 2mo ago
  There are two angles on this. There is the rejection of the humanities in favor of science and wealth, which are good things in themselves but are not everything. But, on the other hand, what many modern humanities faculties offer is a very time-bound activism that rejects books from 500 years ago and is not interested in the permanent things.
  - yorwba 2mo ago
    It probably doesn't help that much of the medieval liberal arts curriculum is now taught in high school using modern textbooks, much diminishing the value of learning Ancient Greek so you can study Euclid's now 2300-year-old Elements for your Master of Arts degree.
  - snapplebobapple 2mo ago
    They offer generalized marxism (that isn't even generalized well. Had that slop taken over a physics department instead of humanities we would have gotten all the * studies currently plagueing us and all the rest they havent generalized to yet in the firat two weeks. Its not a good or productive look, which is why i have given up on humanities despite holding a humanities degree in economics.
ajkjk 2mo ago
Related: https://acoup.blog/2020/07/03/collections-the-practical-case-on-why-we-need-the-humanities/ https://acoup.blog/2020/07/03/collections-the-practical-case...

46 points by mr_wiglaf 2mo ago

Communist brainwashing for Trust Fund kids? Seriously speaking what in Liberal Arts can you learn that's not already on Youtube now?

CobaltFire 2mo ago
This comment really speaks to the article. The commenter didn't even have the curiosity to read and comprehend the article, and made the articles point in that.
bulbar 2mo ago
You can learn anything from books, you never needed a college for that. Except, discussing things, having somebody else grade your coursework etc., you don't get that from books or YouTube.
areoform 2mo ago
From the article, What can we learn about what other people are thinking, about their mental models of the world, by paying very careful attention to the words they use? A lot of people will make fun of you, but I think everyone should read a book or two that's not airport pulp. Given you're on HN, try Gödel, Escher, Bach. https://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6del-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/dp/0465026567 https://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6del-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden... Be warned though, it'll take you well over a decade.

WalterBright 2mo ago

I took and engineering and science program in college. The education was in learning how to learn, learning how to solve problems, and how to distinguish fact from fiction. It's served me well. To make a living, it is necessary to learn a skill that people are willing to pay for.

vineyardmike 2mo ago
> The education was in learning how to learn, learning how to solve problems, and how to distinguish fact from fiction Sounds pretty close to a liberal arts education. That said, not everything is about a job or work. Sometimes (usually) education is itself a goal.
- WalterBright 2mo ago
  > Sounds pretty close to a liberal arts education That's the plan, but it doesn't seem to work out too well. > not everything is about a job or work Yes, if you are independently wealthy. Need to pay back those student loans!
- imtringued 2mo ago
  If education is the goal then it is a form of consumption and there is nothing wrong with consumption, but why should the government give out subsidized loans for consumption to young people? If people want to have an education for the sake of an education they should stop arguing in favor of maximally inflated tuition. You want the benefits of the consumer good while paying the least amount of money for it. Meanwhile the standard narrative is that people should be allowed to get into massive unpayable debts that trap them in deadend jobs while people who focus on money end up using their freedom to do the very thing the people who got into debt claim you can only do by getting into debt.
  - fwn 2mo ago
    It is worth noting that most of liberal arts education is fantastically cheap compared to many STEM degrees, especially medicine. Whenever you need a laboratory, a hospital.. it gets much more expensive than anything a liberal arts teacher can come up with. I think it is a uniquely American perspective to automatically assume that worthy (or even just prestigious) education somehow has to cost at least 200k USD financed through life-altering, non-defaultable student loan contracts. I do understand that the money is not just drained. Whenever I was on an American campus as a student, I was in awe at their extravagant setups. Lots of food, an irritating amount of sports, more like a small resort town than a place to do educational work. No wonder there is only a very small fraction of the population who would choose to study humanities in such a system. But it says much more about the system than about the humanities or liberal arts.

CobaltFire 2mo ago

I had an extremely focused career, but am by nature a curious individual who craved the type of discussions the article talks about. They were closed to me because I came from poverty and had to focus to move myself up the ladder. Much like the author however, I found that my natural curiosity, and specifically that desire to ask what the words being used MEANT, to serve me extremely well. When I was a PM for a billion dollar plus project (military can hit that easily) that attitude is what got me the job. The constant push back from those who seem to value only their, and your, positions as cogs in a machine was exhausting. I really agree with this entire article. Thanks for posting it.

ThrowawayR2 2mo ago

Yet another dubious claim that "skills of close reading and critical questioning" are the products of a liberal arts education. Students can gain such things just fine in a STEM field if they care enough and aren't the sort who are just doing the bare minimum to get the sheepskin.

mdp2021 2mo ago
> Students can gain such things just fine in a STEM field As long as you do not claim that "living only on proteins or stones and without carbs or leaves would be a good idea".
- WalterBright 2mo ago
  Those with a liberal arts education do indeed look down on STEM educations as merely a trade. What they miss is the joy of understanding how the world works. I remember many "aha!" moments like somebody turning on the lights in a dark cathedral. Like when I found out how jet engines really worked, not the handwavy cartoons one usually sees. Or when suddenly all the pieces fit together and I knew how a computer worked. Or when Prof Gomez turned math from black+white to color when he taught me calculus.
  - alephnerd 2mo ago
    > Those with a liberal arts education do indeed look down on STEM educations as merely a trade Maybe it's a generational thing, but I haven't noticed this amongst my peers and those younger than me, but I do agree that there is some degree of ressentiment amongst humanities majors to STEM because of the earning trajectory.
creesch 2mo ago
> a STEM field if they care enough and aren't the sort who are just doing the bare minimum to get the sheepskin. That's the thing though, part of it is about caring. Part of it is being exposed to other things in order to realize there is more out there. I honestly think that STEM field education would benefit from including Liberal Art related courses exactly because of that. Basically as a way to broaden students world view and the way they might interact in it. The same is probably true the other way around as well btw.

alephnerd 2mo ago

I've always been a huge proponent of CMU, UIUC, and Stanford's CS+X programs for this very reason. Innovation is inherently interdisciplinary, and learning how to synthesize multiple different domains has tremendous value.

Animats 2mo ago

> The class turned out to be more or less “A Letter (singular) of Paul:” we spent the semester reading Paul’s letter to the Romans, at a rate of about 3 sentences per week. Per week! That's not a liberal education. That's religious brainwashing. It's the kind of thing madrassas and yeshivas do - obsessively school students on a very few texts said to be sacred. Liberal education was traditionally broad. There are curricula based on the Great Books. [1] They can be criticized for being retro, but they are not narrow. [1] https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/undergraduate/great-books-reading-list https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/undergraduate/great-bo...

alephnerd 2mo ago
There's nothing inherently wrong with theological education assuming it is also clubbed with other curricula and is not dogmatic in nature. Most major theological programs in the US like Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Chicago, Vandy, and Notre Dame take this kind of an interdisciplinary approach. The issue with madrassas and some hardcore yeshivas and seminaries is they do not allow any curricula that isn't litigurical in nature. > Liberal education was traditionally broad. There are curricula based on the Great Books. [1] They can be criticized for being retro, but they are not narrow I've found the Great Books curricula to be closer in style to madrassa and hardcore yeshivot curricula than a traditional liberal arts education, as they don't actively try to connect past texts and treatise with the present. The Great Books curriculum is itself a holdover from back when UChicago was meant to be a fundy evangelical theological program.
photios 2mo ago
St. Paul's writing has this effect on people. It's either a burst of love and joy or seething hatred. Never in the middle. :D > There are curricula based on the Great Books. List not including the greatest book of them all... What did they mean by this?
- defrost 2mo ago
  > List not including the greatest book of them all... The linked list included both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament in the Sophomore year section. If it was The Bhagavad Gita you were jonesing for, that appears later in the Junior section.

mlsu 2mo ago

The liberal arts education was originally conceived to educate the leaders of society. That is where the free-minded pedagogical angle comes from, it's explicitly privileged. The idea was that if the leaders of society learned what it means to have values, integrity, what it is to be virtuous, etc, then they would diffuse those values into society and create a just world. Society would transcend in the image of the great works. Books from 500 years ago can teach us what being ethical means because human values are transcendental and totally outside of technological or vocational fads. Unfortunately, at some point in the last 30-40 years, we've totally abandoned this idea. The most powerful people in society are not just indifferent to the liberal arts but are actively hostile towards it. They see it as a frivolous waste of resources. Why waste time studying a great work of literature when you could be "building" instead? Of course, it's predictable where this leads. We did all this building, but forgot what justice means, what it means to have values, what it means to do right. So now our society is ugly, corrupt, and rotten. Hey, at least we (the leaders) are rich!

gdwatson 2mo ago
There are two angles on this. There is the rejection of the humanities in favor of science and wealth, which are good things in themselves but are not everything. But, on the other hand, what many modern humanities faculties offer is a very time-bound activism that rejects books from 500 years ago and is not interested in the permanent things.
- yorwba 2mo ago
  It probably doesn't help that much of the medieval liberal arts curriculum is now taught in high school using modern textbooks, much diminishing the value of learning Ancient Greek so you can study Euclid's now 2300-year-old Elements for your Master of Arts degree.
- snapplebobapple 2mo ago
  They offer generalized marxism (that isn't even generalized well. Had that slop taken over a physics department instead of humanities we would have gotten all the * studies currently plagueing us and all the rest they havent generalized to yet in the firat two weeks. Its not a good or productive look, which is why i have given up on humanities despite holding a humanities degree in economics.

ajkjk 2mo ago

Related: https://acoup.blog/2020/07/03/collections-the-practical-case-on-why-we-need-the-humanities/ https://acoup.blog/2020/07/03/collections-the-practical-case...