An Unconvincing Argument for the Liberal Arts

We say we prepare students for undefined futures. Are they better for it?

https://www.chronicle.com/article/an-unconvincing-argument-for-the-liberal-arts

The medieval European understanding of liberal arts, based partially on a reinterpretation of classical ideas, suggested that elites needed an open-ended education based on the trivium and quadrivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy) because, as rulers, they would face complex and unexpected problems, whereas others only needed an introduction to “practical arts” relevant to specific repeated labor.

either everyone needs liberal arts or no one does. If liberal arts and preparation for uncertainty are synonymous, it can’t possibly make sense to limit that training to future leaders or a small elite.

Liberal-arts faculty can be surprisingly incurious about how teaching actually happens in educational settings different from their own

Helga Nowotny calls “the cunning of uncertainty” and accept her argument that everyone — rich and poor, college educated in a liberal-arts curriculum, or high-school educated in a trade — can and should live with and even embrace that cunning. By “cunning,” Nowotny means that uncertainty is an irreducible part of human life and the physical universe, and that we should follow where it leads us.

John Kay has called obliquity: that in a very concrete and empirical sense, many of our most cherished goals and values are achievable only if we do not try to achieve them directly.

Maybe a liberal education is, or could be, about embracing uncertainty where it is generative, necessary, and useful.

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more on liberal arts in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=Liberal+Arts