Over the past decade one of favorite defenses of the liberal arts, an area currently under attack by those who seek more professionalized and job-tailored education, comes from Mark Edmundson, a Professor of English at the University of Virginia. His 2004 book, Why Read?, explores the importance of literature for and through our lives. Throughout the book, there are golden nuggets of wisdom. Let me share a few.
"A true liberal arts education requires that the student's whole life be radically changed by it, that what he learns may affect his action, his tastes, his choices, that no previous attachment be immune to examination and hence re-evaluation. Liberal education puts everything at risk and requires students who are able to risk everything." (p. 6)
How many students, and teachers, today really risk "everything" in their education....all preconceived ideas, or previously learned behaviors to jump off into the realm of where knowledge may take you? As I am learning more each year, any growth requires discomfort and risk. You may fail...miserably fail, but the flip side is that you may experience surprising success. Advice: Take the risk.
"A liberal arts education uses books to rejuvenate, reaffirm, revise, overwhelm, replace, in some cases (alas) even help begin to generate the web of words that we're defined by...A new language, whether we learn it from a historian, a poet, a painter, or a composer of music, is potentially a new way to live." (p. 31-32)
I love the preceding quote because it reminds me that through study, I sometimes learn that what I am feeling, or thinking, or experiencing, has been dealt with before by others. It has a name, a context, a history. This brings great comfort. The liberal arts also show us potentially better ways to live life. If you've watched Jersey Shore, Buckwild, or any of the Real Housewives series, you know we could all benefit from someone gently suggesting better life choices. But, how do I know what I want if I have never seen or heard of it before? Education helps to show you. Author John Mason Brown notes, "The more one has seen of the good, the more one asks for the better."
Thirdly, a quote from Edmundson on what some may perceive as growing student and general public apathy toward challenging, difficult reading.
"Describing his initiation into modern literature, into Kafka, Joyce, Proust, and their contemporaries, Lionel Trilling writes: 'Some of these books at first rejected me; I bored them. But as I grew older and they knew me better, they came to have more sympathy with me and to understand my hidden meanings. Their nature is such that our relationship has been very intimate.' 'I bored them,' says Trilling. Given the form of literary education now broadly available, it is almost impossible that a student would say of a group of books, 'I bored them.'" (p. 47)
This line provides a great comeback for any instructor. When the students start to complain that the reading is boring, read them this quote, and just tell the student that perhaps it's them that is boring. Enough said, you'll get dead silence.
Finally, a recent editorial in the Raleigh News & Observer by Western Carolina University professor Bruce Henderson, sums things up nicely. "There is nothing magical about a liberal arts education," Henderson writes, "it works when students are required to read a lot, write a lot and think a lot." End of story.
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