As you all may be aware, Coastal
Carolina University is embarking on the process of changing how it delivers the
curriculum, in order to make it more flexible and engaging for students. As we do this, we are part of the
broader curricular conversations that are moving through higher education.
In many of the discussions taking place – often about the overall value of
higher education – it seems that there is an underlying anti-intellectual theme.
The theme is apparent in a recent “Yahoo” headline that states: “Four Foolish
Majors to Avoid” and lists Liberal Arts and Philosophy as
the top two “foolish majors”. This theme is also implicit in the comments
flowing around state houses and legislatures suggesting that listing the
employment rates for History majors would help parents and students make
“better” choices in college.
Leaving aside the notion that there is
no such major as “Liberal Arts” – the Liberal Arts are a collection of
disciplines that serve to free one’s mind to think, reflect, and draw
conclusions about a complex, changing world – what is the deeper implication of
this attack on an educational focus that has served us well for hundreds, if
not a thousand years?
In providing a bit of personal
background, I work in a STEM field (Science, Technology, Engineering, and
Math). My career has been as a scientist, researcher, educator, and
administrator. My professional role has been in turning out successful STEM
graduates who move on to valued STEM careers. As a consequence, you might
expect to find me untroubled by this attempted trivialization of the Liberal
Arts.
However, you would be wrong.
In fact, a good part of my success in
my own life is not based upon the technical skills I obtained as an
undergraduate science major, or as a doctoral student, post-doctoral trainee,
or a grant-funded and published research scientist. Instead, my ability
to handle nuance, ambiguity, and complexity, necessary for any successful
career, is more a consequence of the intellectual foundation that I gained from
my experiences at my college prep-school, my experiences growing up abroad, and
my General Education curriculum. This exposure to a variety of
disciplines and points of view, and discussion and debate on those disciplines
and points of view – all hallmarks of the Liberal Arts approach toward
education – played a more important role in my success than any detail I
learned about cell structure in college. In truth, many of the “facts” I
learned in college are no longer “facts”, and many of the technical skills I
learned are no longer relevant.
This inevitable, and incipient,
irrelevance with what I learned during my fairly high-level STEM education is a
general problem with the current push to make sure our educational system
focuses on only the skills one needs for a job, as opposed to the abilities one
needs for a life. The thing that separates us from most other living
organisms is not simply a specific technical ability. What separates us
is the cognitive ability of our brains; our capacity to read, think, reflect,
discuss, debate and learn. Furthermore, these abilities are not likely to
be easily replaced as new technologies are developed.
The problem with an exclusive focus on
technical training – aside from the fact that it may not nurture what makes us
fully human – is that these technical jobs are those most likely to be replaced
as we continue to push back the STEM frontiers. As an example from my own
field of Biology, when I was in graduate school, one could receive a Ph.D. for
cloning a gene. This task is now performed by a machine. I hope we are not embarking down a path
where we train students to be the next cadre of workers rendered unemployed by
a robot.
When one looks at where we should focus
our educational efforts, I would argue that it would be on those things that
celebrate our humanity; we should educate not to create solely a population of
well-trained technically proficient workers; but educate to create a population
of thinking, feeling, creative humans. Only in this way will we have the
insights to handle change, understand our world, expand knowledge; determine
which “facts” are no longer true; which techniques are no longer relevant.
In truth I would contend that an appreciation and understanding of the Liberal
Arts is the best way to ensure our successful future, and the least foolish
choice to make for a successful life. While one example cannot be
considered “data”, I would mention that one of the more successful members of
my immediate family, my sister, has enjoyed a lucrative, nearly 25-year,
corporate career as a senior executive, valued speaker, and published author –
all after graduating with a “foolish” degree in Philosophy.
As we deal with the challenges facing
higher education, and universities across our nation embark upon curricular
conversations to revise how we provide an education for our students, I hope we
remain focused – across the entire academy – on the deeper meaning our
university’s motto: Ex Libertate Veritas.
