|
Liberal Arts is just a review of high school. Most students come to college right out of high school
so I see no point in making them redo these classes. I believe these classes are just a requirement
to make more money for the schools. If you need a refresher course, that is one thing but to take 2
years of English and Math is ridiculous. Let students start taking the classes for their majors,
save some money and graduate without having to retake all the liberal arts classes. |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
Universities are only for the studies of general subjects like mathematics, physics, chemistry,
biological sciences and so on. Liberal arts should not be included in university’s studies as it
may give the hostility to those who are just there for general studies. Liberal studies are only
based on the practical applications. It is not at all dependant on studies on arts. If anybody wants
to go through the liberal arts, he or she should need the proper place for practicing the arts
rather than the studies that is based on arts. The studies on arts would make them concrete in
context to the knowledge of arts but it is not enough to the context of its applicability.
University is not the proper place to become a firm applicator of liberal arts. Thus it can be
stated determinedly that liberal arts should not be included to university contents. |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
Not only should liberal arts not be taught in universities and colleges, they should not be taught
in the traditional sense at all. The Liberal Arts have become a place to store your children before
they have to go into the real world. What is the value of a degree in the Liberal Arts and how
would it help one survive in the real world?
I’m always told that graduates of Liberal Arts courses are far better prepared to face the world
than many other types of graduates. This seems like rubbish to me. Someone who made a video for a
piece of coursework in college, is less able in many ways than those people who start off at the
bottom rung in the film industry. If you want to sing, take singing lessons, but do not engage in a
degree in music. If you love literature, read poems, novels and plays and discuss them with other
people who love them, but do not go off to college and make someone a job out of telling you what
these things mean or don’t mean.
An entire industry exists, we call it tertiary education, in which the Liberal Arts are thought to
play an essential role. But the essential role that they really place is to support the rest of the
industry by providing hundreds and thousands of students of no real inclination and even less talent
or sense of graft with something to do whilst they pay their tuition fees.
Performance Studies has replaced Acting. Video has replaced Film. Installation has replaced Art.
Why? Because it normalises these arts and makes the accessible by all. However, the Arts, liberal
or otherwise, were never meant to be for all. They were for all to enjoy the results, but not all
to enjoy the process. It’s like telling someone that because they can dress a white coat and know
the parts of the body that they can be a doctor. It’s a joke and it makes the liberal arts
themselves a joke.
Students in the liberal arts are almost unemployable. It’s almost impossible to employ them,
because they cannot do anything useful. They can tell you about their quirky ways for staging
Macbeth or what they think the imagery in this painting or this or that book means, but they would
struggle to write one. If they could write or paint, why aren’t they doing that thing?
A university education in the liberal arts is a waste of time and money, it is like dodging the
draft, it is buying time and it is something other than useful as David Mamet would say.
No one needs a degree in painting, they need to paint, in a studio, around other painters. Actors
need to act and be directed and experience the roar of the crowd and the feel of make up on their
faces. The arts are hierarchies of graft and liberal arts have created their own form of hierarchy,
but it lead to nowhere, as many disillusioned graduates eventually realise. Start at the bottom and
graft until you reach the place you want. This is how one learns about the arts. A degree in the
liberal arts is a license to talk about driving a car, or offer alternative ways of driving the car.
Universities particularly are places to hide and harbour those who love their subject, but were
clearly no good at all at it. |
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
 |
|
Universities are preparations for students to succeed in the fields they choose to major. Many want
to make their living out of fields included in liberal arts, and I see no wrong in that. Liberal
arts education build character, while arithmetics and science are mere knowledge. |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
What a sorry world this would be if we had no liberal-arts education!
This debate is about the relevancy of studying history, which includes history proper, classic
literature, philosophy, past art and music, and social sciences. These are the disciplines that make
us truly human, separating us from the robotic animals, which are ruled by base bodily needs.
Kill liberal-arts education, and you kill our emotional and sympathetic intellectual lives. Have you
never head the expression, “Man cannot live by bread alone”? This means that we need
intellectual stimulation not based solely on science.
I agree that liberal arts can be the basis of many careers. I am a copy editor. My extensive
background in the liberal arts is an essential part of my training. In the copy of folks who only
studied journalism, I catch endless errors of history, art, anthropology, literary references, even
geography because of this background. |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
Liberal Arts Colleges are extremely good universities. It allows people to be educated about a
variety of things that they wouldn't normally have tried to learn on their own. It opens up new
doors and opportunities. It can show people that they really like something they never thought they
would like.
Also, it prepares people for the world and for a successful future. You learn about math, the
sciences, arts and culture, writing, literature, communications, the world and its people. It
prepares you to be a good writer and to speak well; you learn to communicate with others about your
thoughts and ideas, which is an extremely important thing when it comes to success.
Its understandable that if you want to sing or act or be an artist, it takes a natural talent and
many feel an education can't help you with that, but it can. You learn how to market yourself in an
arts-related career. You can show people that you've taken the time to improve your skills and learn
about your craft. Education is an extremely important thing regardless of what you want to do with
your life. People in the world do not underestimate the value of a liberal arts education. |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
A liberal arts education provides students with interpretive skills that are valued by most
employers. Students in literature, for example, are accustomed to reading large amounts of material,
after which they are expected to extract from this the key themes and messages that an author may be
trying to convey. This skill is useful in both the public and private sectors, where an employee may
have to sort through hundreds of pages of documents in order to produce a succinct, concise report
for his/her superiors.
Another reason why we cannot simply dismiss a liberal arts education, is because no one is entirely
certain as to which subjects qualify as liberal arts, and which do not. For example, does history
belong with the liberal arts, or is it a social science? This is a major debate among academics.
Some would argue that a historical text is little more than a piece of literature, with footnotes,
which conveys an author's personal biases. Others, however, believe that history is a precise
science. |
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
19 Dec 2007 18:39
Sign In
For and Against Recent Activity
