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After what is now 50 years of post-graduation experience--my class reunion took place last weekend--I think I qualify as something of an authority on the question: Do we need the liberal arts? What good are they, anyhow?
That's because I attended a small, idyllic, classic liberal arts college along the Fox River in Wisconsin, Lawrence University. The scene was, and continues to be, bucolic, engendering discussions on the meaning of life, love, and education and its meaning in the bigger picture of things (while also providing plenty of opportunity to escape from any responsibilities to develop them), holding back the hustle and bustle of daily life to engage in reflection.
It's that last concept that brings some people up short. Philosophy, or what passes for it, isn't the watchword for all those who value higher education. Deep musings about authors, scientific research, forecasting economic development here and elsewhere, how people made their food during BCE, aren't for everyone who look at education as a way to punch one's ticket into the professional world. You take the courses, you get your grades, and you might even remember some of the course work on your way to being given that piece of paper, the diploma, which gets you legitimacy on resumes and into someone's interview room, along with heaven knows how many other folks straining to do the same thing. There are plenty of universities, mainly the larger ones, that operate in such fashion because of the specificity of some of the majors.
It all has the echo of an assembly line, a formless stepping stone, which has always diminished its meaning. If you just have to endure coursework, tests, and term papers, and not have to draw from any of those experiences, aren't we all just fooling ourselves? How much and what kind of education do we need, anyway? Should college be just advanced apprenticeship?
The fall after I graduated, in 1973, I remember reading something called "My Turn," which ran on the back page of the then weekly periodical, Newsweek (To which I subscribed. I preferred it to the then more conservative, stodgy Time), written by a graduate student in engineering from the college that most people think of when considering that profession, Purdue. But having driven himself through that silo of learning, he became afflicted, apparently, with reflection about it. He asked--and I'm not quoting directly, but I have the gist of it--what good is it if we build bridges without knowing why?
That has stayed with me through half a century. I wasn't at all sold on the idea of big-picture education, designed to make one think outside their silos and boxes, at the start. Having done well in high school, I was originally intent on a career in journalism--but couldn't go to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, my original bellweather choice, because my Dad (who of course had the money bags) concluded that, because of the ferocious student protests of the late '60s, my education would suffer (I still believe that that was because he had never been close to college himself and in fact he couldn't have been more wrong if he tried.). Neither did I want to go somewhere within the UW system, to a "state" school. So, resentful, I applied myself to playing sports and substituting (at first) being an English major and getting into journalism that way.
As I learned quickly through doing no more than glancing at the course offerings, majoring in English had as much to do with what I originally wanted out of a college education than transplanting a calf's liver for the one that I had. But the intellectual atmosphere was, at first, overwhelming for someone who wasn't at all sure, now, where he was going and why. Lawrence isn't a good place to be if you don't know what you want from it. I floundered for much of my first two years, even going on probation for one semester. I cursed my decision to go to what seemed like a flighty, unconnected, irrelevant place. I felt trapped. With other factors combining, I thought about leaving.
There was something about the place that continued to attract me, though. It did not, for instance, require a "minor," as it's called, at least at that time. That allowed me to experiment, as it were, taking things I wouldn't otherwise have considered--like The History of Modern Painting, which I took senior year, which opened myself to the significance of artistic work. Had I been at a larger university and found it possible to narrow my studies, I would have been good at one thing but uninformed and unenlightened at several others, such as that one. I would have jettisoned an excellent opportunity at enrichment.
And, as I've told more than one fellow graduate, I would on some days enter the university's library and, in rebellion against required reading, spend an afternoon exploring books I wouldn't have ever thought were there. One of them, by a political scientist named David Easton, helped me with a course on research design that the Political Science (my chosen major) department was just getting into. It had a survey of elementary kids on how they regarded the president as compared to other authority figures. I managed to get myself into a Catholic school down the street (Appleton not being very large) and the teachers were great in allowing me to indulge. It did wonders for my confidence and sense of relevance.
At the end, I "got" it. I liked what was happening. My grades got better--not great, but better--and I knew I would miss that place when I was done. But, first--comprehensive exams, known as "comps," the ultimate showdown with what one might bring away from them and claim that they've been "educated." Diplomas would not be rewarded unless seniors managed to pass them.
One part of my college experience I was never really able to overcome was text anxiety. My initial foot-dragging, too, came back to haunt. Comps doubled down on that, and I failed my first try miserably. But the university also allowed a second taking, and there I succeeded.
Do colleges need comps? I don't know. The concept is, literally, old school. You can make good arguments both ways. But I do know this: Part of what I dived back into to bone up on what I should far more easily have remembered the first time around was contained in a book called Power and Poverty, by Bachrach and Baratz. They broke down political relationships into, mostly, two parts: One framed by power and the other framed by influence. It re-charged my thinking and made a new kind of decent sense. I never forgot it, used it very often in my teaching, and even brought it to the table of the National Education Association Executive Committee one day. I think I stunned the rest of the group by stating that our members don't like power even though they could enhance their careers and image if they understood it; would rather that someone else in the realm (like us at that table) wield it; and would rather, because of their chosen profession, be the kind of people who displayed and extended influence (often mistakenly made into a synonym, but it's not nearly the same) instead of power. My hated comps, my feared comps, then, paid off just when they needed to, to show why the NEA always will have trouble recruiting members and why the ones we do recruit are reluctant to be strident in advocating for what they (we) have always deserved ("We have met the enemy and he is us," said Pogo).
Had I graduated without comps, I might have learned about power vs. influence by-the-by, but those would have been long odds. Ironically, I found out last weekend that we, Class of 1973, were the last ones to take comps at Lawrence. After all the angst I went through and genuine depression after failure, I'm not sure all that was worth it. On the other hand, having spent the vast majority of my career in education, I managed to pivot and make the most of what I genuinely valued. Almost in spite of myself, I had turned into a product of the liberal arts, one who reflects upon processes instead of burying oneself into them so far I couldn't have seen out. And was glad for it.
Do we need the liberal arts? Hell, yes. We need their challenge. We need their endless relevance. We need the enlightenment they bring. Enrollment in liberal arts majors--and the humanities, an important offshoot of them--are presently dropping, says The New Yorker. Not disappearing, though. We still have students who focus equally on the Why? instead of just the What? They keep asking. They keep interpreting. They believe that learning is life-long. If we are to escape from the various maladies that seem to keep us spinning our tires in the mud, the way out will be led by those who not only keep trying, but keep thinking and asking as they try.
Let us hope so.
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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