Liberal Arts Education Is Not (Necessarily) a Waste of Time

Thursday, December 7, 2017

The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal


Harvard history professor Jill LePore tells this story. She was hosting an event in her home for new students, promoting the university’s history and literature program. One of the students there was suddenly distracted by urgent text messages from her parents telling her, “Leave right now, get out of there, that is a house of pain.”

LePore’s tale exemplifies the attitude that many Americans now have with regard to liberal arts education—it’s a waste of time; a “house of pain.” Studying history, literature, philosophy or anything else that doesn’t have a clear occupational path is just throwing away years of school time and a great deal of money. Focus instead on practical subjects that might at least lead to a job after college.
 https://www.jamesgmartin.center

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I teach them all the good I can, and recommend them to others from whom I think they will get some moral benefit. And the treasures that the wise men of old have left us in their writings I open and explore with my friends. If we come on any good thing, we extract it, and we set much store on being useful to one another. - Socrates, Memorabilia
 
 
 
What we maintain is that in none of the problems of life can men afford to lose sight of the storehouse bequeathed to them by the ancients. In the complexus of everything which differentiates man from the brute creation, the voice of antiquity must be heard...

-H. Browne, quoted in "Classics and Citizenship" The Classical Quarterly, 1920