ShareThisYears ago, when our eldest daughter changed her college major from early childhood development to general studies, I commented sourly to my wife: "Just so she doesn't think this will teach her how to be a general."
I was reminded of that moment when The New York Times recently revealed that the liberal arts are now endangered species in the nation's college. Over the past three months more than two-dozen colleges have canceled or postponed faculty searches in religion and philosophy. Job listings in English, literature, and foreign languages are down 21 percent, the biggest decline in 34 years.
My wife and I are both graduates of small liberal arts colleges -- she in music and literature, me in philosophy and religion. To this day we do not regret our choices, but we didn't expect them to lead to paying jobs. Observers of higher education have long noted that English graduates disproportionately wind up driving taxis and waiting tables in restaurants.
The liberal arts (or "humanities") include languages, literature, the arts, history, cultural studies, philosophy and religion. Their sacred mission is to explore, as one scholar puts it, "what it means to be a human being." Albert Delbanco, director of American Studies at Columbia University, acknowledges that, "although people in humanities have always lamented the state of the field, they have never felt quite as much of a panic that their field is becoming irrelevant."
Teachers of the humanities argue that these subjects are prerequisites for personal growth and good citizenship, regardless of one's career choice. They point to Plato's dictum: "Know thyself" as the foundation of education.
Given the astronomical increases in college expenses, it's not surprising that many students and their parents prefer to invest their educational dollars in paying careers rather than in the acquisition of wisdom.
Back in the 1970s I worked for the Association of American Colleges and Universities in Washington, D.C., which champions liberal education. Recently my old employer issued a report arguing that the humanities should abandon the "old Ivory Tower view of liberal education" in favor of emphasizing its practical and economic value.
Yale University law professor Anthony T. Kronman laments that, as money tightens, a humanities education may become the province of the wealthy. Coming "to grips with the question of what living is for" may become "a great luxury that many cannot afford."
I would argue that wisdom is not only the consequence of years of formal study, but is available to everyone.
Academic education can actually impede wisdom, when it remains merely speculative and uncommitted. By contrast, the people Jesus of Nazareth taught were not philosophers or theologians, yet they grasped what he had to say about the value of being human. The wisdom he imparted to them and us was not merely intellectual, but heartfelt and practical: to know oneself but also to serve others.
David Yount's "Celebrating the Single Life" (Praeger) has just been published. He answers readers at P.O. Box 2758, Woodbridge, VA 22195 and dyount(at)erols.com.
AMAZING GRACE
