Fareed Zakaria: In Defense of a Liberal Education

This book serves as the starting point of my personal inquiry into all things higher education. I’ve worked at four different colleges/universities, each unique and fascinating in its own way. While parents certainly send their children off to school to gain skills for employment, there has always been an unspoken truth that the four-year, residential college experience is about much, much more: the development of the entire person. How does this happen? Through interdisciplinary study, of course.

“For most of human history, education was job training. Hunters, farmers, and warriors taught the young to hunt, farm, and fight. Children of the ruling class received instruction in the arts of war and governance, but this too was intended first and foremost as preparation for the roles they would assume later in society, not for any broader purpose. All that began to change twenty-five hundred years ago in ancient Greece.”

When I was a young undergraduate studying Spanish at Monmouth College, I had a fantastic professor named Zach Erwin. I distinctly remember a conversation in class one day about “las columnas griegas” (“Greek columns”) on Wallace Hall, the centerpiece of campus. “Why do so many universities across America have these Greek columns on campus? Because a well-educated public is the foundation of democracy,” Professor Erwin explained. At that point in my academic career, I still saw education as mostly a means to an end, a box to be checked, even though I still found it thoroughly enjoyable in and of itself. This was the first time I seriously began to ponder education’s greater purpose in society.

Pericles, the Athenian politician, said of ancient Greece, “Our constitution is called a democracy, because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the whole people.” It makes sense, then, that the success of such a democracy is contingent upon an informed proletariat, who are well-versed in many subjects and have the ability to think for themselves. Additionally, as Zakaria notes, broad access to education and information has been proven, time and time again, to reduce inequality in societies.

Monmouth College, my alma mater, is a small liberal arts college in Western Illinois. As part of the curriculum, I had the opportunity to dabble in various subjects, taking courses in business, economics, theatre, food security, Spanish, education, Midwestern government & politics, ecotourism, etc. I also was fortunate enough to study abroad twice – once for a summer termin Spain and later for an ecotourism/biodiversity research trip to Costa Rica. Often the experiences outside of my major (and outside of the classroom) offered me reprieve from the monotony of the usual content, and they also helped me to think of the world in a more holistic way. Not only has this diversity of material helped me personally and professionally; it also instilled in me a sense of innate curiosity that is necessary of all successful people.

The “great books” approach

“… a ‘great books’ program – a core curriculum in which students read prescribed works of history, literature, and philosophy and then gather for small-group discussions guided by faculty members.”

Millennials remember the Accelerated Reading (AR) program that was a staple of the elementary and middle school years. The idea was that each book was assigned a certain number of points based on its difficulty, but students were free to read whatever they wanted. A student could read a few difficult books for a large number of points, or they could read many smaller, easier books to accumulate a similar point total.

During my time in college admissions, I have interviewed dozens of students whose journey with reading mirrored my own. They’d tell me, “I was a pretty voracious reader as a kid, but I kind of fizzled out in high school.” Certainly, during these adolescent years, there is no shortage of higher priorities: social life, romantic life, puberty, etc.… However, I suspect it’s a much deeper issue.

After taking a course titled “Contemporary Issues in Education” as a sophomore in college, I became convinced that I was firmly in the camp against the “great books” approach. In my opinion, it doesn’t matter if someone is reading non-fiction, fantasy, manga, comic books, or Captain Underpants – as long as they’re reading, expanding their vocabulary, learning more about the world, I consider that a positive thing.

Shortly after graduating from college, I made a deal with myself to read at least ten books every year. I have no recollection of why I made this deal, or why ten is the number I settled on; I just knew at the time that there was still much to learn. Since 2017, I’ve averaged just over eleven books per year. The ideas I’ve gleaned from my own informal, personal education from books have brought me great joy and augmented my life exponentially.

Skills-based learning

“In an age defined by technology and globalization, everyone is talking about skills-based learning.”

This section complements my post on Matthew Crawford’s Shop Class as Soul Craft. While Crawford is more so talking about the omission of the industrial arts in high schools, we can see the same thing happening with the gutting of humanities departments in many American colleges & universities. We’ve pushed students towards college and away from the trades, and then, when they get there, we’ve pushed them mainly towards careers in business and tech. We’re obsessed with concrete technical skills that will translate directly to the job market.

However, there are certainly people who aren’t all that interested in learning exclusively about capitalism & computers. And, not everyone is cut out for that kind of work. In fact, the author acknowledges Howard Gardner’s theory of eight separate kinds of intelligence: linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, naturalistic, intrapersonal, and interpersonal.

I would imagine that there is a somewhat equal distribution across all eight of these domains. If there is such a range of aptitudes and interests, it doesn’t seem very fruitful to guide the bulk of students towards a select few lucrative majors.

I loved this passage from the book: “Many of these students might well have been better off taking a richer, deeper set of courses in subjects they found fascinating –and supplementing it, as we all should, with some basic knowledge of computers and math.” I would amend this passage to conclude with “computers and math [and business].“

It’s an interesting idea: let students follow their passions while supplementing them with skills (with computers, math, and business) that are absolutely necessary in the workplace.

I’ll conclude this post with a quote which illustrates the importance of a broad, interdisciplinary, liberal education:

“’The need is increasing for workers with greater foreign-language skills and an expanded knowledge of economics, history, and geography. And who wants a technology-driven economy if those who drive it are not grounded in such fields as ethics?…’”