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Aug. 19th, 2011 12:09 pmMartha Nussbaum, a professional political philosopher, has an interesting article up at the ABC
Educating for Profit, Educating for Freedom
(That's the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, not the American company; as best I can tell it's the Aussie equivalent of BBC or PBS.)
Dr. Nussbaum argues that what Americans call liberal-arts education - where all students regardless of major do a certain number of courses across the disciplines - are crucial if you want an educated democratic populace. She does a fabulous job of wading through those points, and she argues basically that a good liberal arts education is the right of every citizen. That's a message I can really get behind.
She also talks about how there is a major difference between educating to maximize profit and educating to, well, educate. As in, helping people become fully-actualized human beings. Again, I quite agree with that - the goals are very different, and steps that will serve one path well won't work so well for the other. I'm not sure how many people (within government or out) expect universities to do the latter. I was a bit of a nerd and looked forward to college for its own sake, but even I knew that others expected it to prepare me for some reasonable career. "Finding myself" was to be done on my own dime.
Still, the first 2/3 or so were really insightful and well done. Toward the end, though, the argument gets a bit screwy. Here she praises how the U.S. handles the humanities because our general education cores + privately-financed universities mean you have a large network of donors who can give mega-bucks to support the humanities. Which the humanities need because, compared to a lot of subjects, they have more cost per pupil since to be effective you need smaller class size. She even says that on this basis the best humanities programs are (and should) be going private.
Why is this necessary? Because, as Dr. Nussbaum puts it,
Here's the line of reasoning, as I understand it.
( Read more... )
All of that said, I do still recommend it. Most of it was a really good explanation of why the humanities (and philosophy in particular) matter.
Educating for Profit, Educating for Freedom
(That's the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, not the American company; as best I can tell it's the Aussie equivalent of BBC or PBS.)
Dr. Nussbaum argues that what Americans call liberal-arts education - where all students regardless of major do a certain number of courses across the disciplines - are crucial if you want an educated democratic populace. She does a fabulous job of wading through those points, and she argues basically that a good liberal arts education is the right of every citizen. That's a message I can really get behind.
She also talks about how there is a major difference between educating to maximize profit and educating to, well, educate. As in, helping people become fully-actualized human beings. Again, I quite agree with that - the goals are very different, and steps that will serve one path well won't work so well for the other. I'm not sure how many people (within government or out) expect universities to do the latter. I was a bit of a nerd and looked forward to college for its own sake, but even I knew that others expected it to prepare me for some reasonable career. "Finding myself" was to be done on my own dime.
Still, the first 2/3 or so were really insightful and well done. Toward the end, though, the argument gets a bit screwy. Here she praises how the U.S. handles the humanities because our general education cores + privately-financed universities mean you have a large network of donors who can give mega-bucks to support the humanities. Which the humanities need because, compared to a lot of subjects, they have more cost per pupil since to be effective you need smaller class size. She even says that on this basis the best humanities programs are (and should) be going private.
Why is this necessary? Because, as Dr. Nussbaum puts it,
Can you imagine a politicians campaigning by telling her constituents, "I've laid the groundwork for the long-term health of democratic institutions by my focus on the humanities." It's too intangible, and would not be likely to succeed.
Here's the line of reasoning, as I understand it.
( Read more... )
All of that said, I do still recommend it. Most of it was a really good explanation of why the humanities (and philosophy in particular) matter.
