Michael S. Roth: Good and Risky: the Promise of a Liberal Education
[Michael S. Roth is president of Wesleyan University.]
On the very first page of her slim new book, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, the philosopher Martha Nussbaum warns, "We are in a crisis of massive proportions and grave global significance." She's not talking about a calamity caused by climate change, nor is she referring to nuclear proliferation, global poverty, or unchecked population growth.
No, the worldwide crisis that frightens Nussbaum is the decline of a model of liberal education based on the arts and humanities. Although a liberal-arts education has never been common in most of the world, she thinks that this decline puts contemporary industrial societies at risk of "producing generations of useful machines, rather than complete citizens who can think for themselves."
On the final page of Diane Ravitch's new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, the historian of education notes, "At the present time public education is in peril. Efforts to reform public education are, ironically, diminishing its quality and endangering its very survival."
Both Nussbaum and Ravitch see a crisis in education brought on in part by an emphasis on testing and corporate-management techniques. For both, the crisis in our education systems is a crisis for our democracy....
The humanities are rightly seen as the heart of a liberal education, and in recent years many observers have bemoaned their decline at the university level. The rise of interdisciplinarity has not diminished the hyperspecialization in the academy, and the resultant pursuit of status through esoteric language has deepened the gulf between humanists and the public. Advanced work in literature, the arts, and critical theory—although it may reject profit and standardized testing—has certainly not promoted the education of citizens for responsible participation in representative democracies. The ironic sophistication that ruled universities in the 1990s and early 2000s and the development of theoretical "posthumanism" today aren't especially fertile soil for planting trees of freedom and responsible citizenship....
An honest defense of liberal learning must be prepared to acknowledge the extraordinary variety of ways in which the arts and sciences can be taught or put to use. We cannot promise specific political and social results without undermining our credibility as humanists (or even posthumanists) willing to critically examine our own presuppositions. A pragmatic, reflexive approach to liberal arts (including the sciences) would be open to political irrelevance as well as to making a contribution to the public good. A pragmatic, reflexive approach would allow for profit as well as for self-examination—for practical, measurable success at specific tasks as well as for self-consciousness and empathy. A pragmatic, reflexive approach to education would enable students to discover what they love to do, to get better at it, and then to be able to explain why what they love to do might be of interest to somebody else....
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On the very first page of her slim new book, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, the philosopher Martha Nussbaum warns, "We are in a crisis of massive proportions and grave global significance." She's not talking about a calamity caused by climate change, nor is she referring to nuclear proliferation, global poverty, or unchecked population growth.
No, the worldwide crisis that frightens Nussbaum is the decline of a model of liberal education based on the arts and humanities. Although a liberal-arts education has never been common in most of the world, she thinks that this decline puts contemporary industrial societies at risk of "producing generations of useful machines, rather than complete citizens who can think for themselves."
On the final page of Diane Ravitch's new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, the historian of education notes, "At the present time public education is in peril. Efforts to reform public education are, ironically, diminishing its quality and endangering its very survival."
Both Nussbaum and Ravitch see a crisis in education brought on in part by an emphasis on testing and corporate-management techniques. For both, the crisis in our education systems is a crisis for our democracy....
The humanities are rightly seen as the heart of a liberal education, and in recent years many observers have bemoaned their decline at the university level. The rise of interdisciplinarity has not diminished the hyperspecialization in the academy, and the resultant pursuit of status through esoteric language has deepened the gulf between humanists and the public. Advanced work in literature, the arts, and critical theory—although it may reject profit and standardized testing—has certainly not promoted the education of citizens for responsible participation in representative democracies. The ironic sophistication that ruled universities in the 1990s and early 2000s and the development of theoretical "posthumanism" today aren't especially fertile soil for planting trees of freedom and responsible citizenship....
An honest defense of liberal learning must be prepared to acknowledge the extraordinary variety of ways in which the arts and sciences can be taught or put to use. We cannot promise specific political and social results without undermining our credibility as humanists (or even posthumanists) willing to critically examine our own presuppositions. A pragmatic, reflexive approach to liberal arts (including the sciences) would be open to political irrelevance as well as to making a contribution to the public good. A pragmatic, reflexive approach would allow for profit as well as for self-examination—for practical, measurable success at specific tasks as well as for self-consciousness and empathy. A pragmatic, reflexive approach to education would enable students to discover what they love to do, to get better at it, and then to be able to explain why what they love to do might be of interest to somebody else....