On the Uses of a Liberal Education

Mark Edmunson’s article “On the Uses of a Liberal Education” brilliantly articulated the trends that have emerged in education.

The liberal arts education began as a luxury. Chatting about the finer points of a poem is certainly a luxury when compared to apprenticeships or any other forms of education focused purely on future occupation. Even today, tuitions are higher at the elite liberal arts schools like Williams College than they are at large public institutions like UCLA or Michigan. The value has changed, certainly: college is no longer a way to supply aristocratic sons with party conversation topics. But still, an elite college education is considered a springboard into elite job positions and elite social circles. You pay to come to school with your classmates, to interact with professors of a certain caliber, to hobnob with the type of people you’d like to do business with one day. The boost in salary that college graduates see is very likely a result of college’s sign value more than its use value.

A student’s journey through college today is certainly different than it was a generation ago. Edmunson’s despair is, at some points, simply an eloquently disguised “kids today” lament. It is not the college system’s fault that students want a high quality of life for four years. It is not the professor’s fault that students are better at rating their instructor than procuring an eloquent thought before their morning coffee binge. Edmunson is upset that “kids today” treat everything like consumption, that they are apathetic about the classics and that academic passion isn’t considered cool But his priorities may not be aligned with ours. After all, college is about growing as a human—growing in “mind, body, and spirit,” not just about memorizing things in the classroom or even learning how to analyze quantitatively and qualitatively.

The students who don’t voluntarily write essays about Marx may light up when planning a formal dance and go on to use that talent to plan a political campaign. Those who passively learn Economics may not even realize that the science is framing their worldview and will eventually inspire them to found a free-trade fashion line. Sports, governance boards, and every extra-curricular we pursue (even the likes of drinking and dating) can have transformative effects on us as people. Whether or not that’s reflected in every class is irrelevant to the power of our college experience.

Williams is certainly a “northern outpost of Club Med” complete with the student activities office and ski lodge-esque common spaces. But what’s wrong with that? I don’t think being surrounded by nature distracts from intellectual pursuits; rather it probably encourages them. Joy in life doesn’t make us lazy, it makes us thirsty for more. Working hard and playing hard might worry parents, but it makes for productive and fast-maturing students.

Conversely, the damning comment that we have become an uninterested generation, “whose sad denizens drift from coffee bar to Prozac dispensary, unfired by ideals, by the glowing image of the self that one might become” rang true. After all, I was ready this at a coffee bar. And I had just walked by a poster advertising the mental health services of this fine college. There is a general despondence among my peers. I don’t know that intellectual stimulation is the cure—it might be that we need to stop the shifting sands of modernity that urge us to define ourselves instead of simply living.

The truth is, there are gaps in education today. There are students who sit passively and who never engage, with anyone or anything. For all of us, there are new challenges that we could meet.

But I think we’re all going to be OK. As Edmunson admits, “there’s still the library, still the museum, there’s still the occasional teacher who lives to find things greater than herself to admire. There are still fellow students who have not been cowed.” At Williams, I think nearly every single student will graduate having been challenged both academically and personally. I think we will have learned the joy of thinking and I think we will have a passion for something—no matter how frivolous it may seem to the ignorant outsider.

As for me? Maybe it’s just that I’m one of those “people so pleased with themselves… that they cannot imaging humanity could do better.” But I’m confident that my education has been strong and that I’ve encountered professors who really challenged me to change my mind. Still, I’m willing to spend the next in-class debate waving in exuberance, because inspiring myself to meet a new challenge sounds like a lot of fun.