Wait! Wait!
Okay, second post of the day.
This is Victor Davis Hanson on the liberal arts:
http://townhall.com/columnists/VictorDavisHanson/2010/12/16/in_defense_of_the_liberal_arts
I’m going to go do somthing now.
2 Responses to 'Wait! Wait!'
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Hanson says “But the liberal arts train students to write, think and argue inductively, while drawing upon evidence from a shared body of knowledge.”
Judging from what Jane has been saying and what my friends in the US say, that is not true any longer. The faculties seem to have given up the fight.
But I’ve been away from the US for 40 years and am reluctant to make judgments.
jd
16 Dec 10 at 5:00 pm
I am VERY sympathetic, but I remain the in-house skeptic. Dr. Hanson seems to be calling for a return to a core curriculum of Greek, Latin, classical philosophy and classical history, in order to sharpen reasoning and improve discussion and debate.
1) Can we measure the skills which are the objective–reasoning and discussion–and not merely the history and languages which are the means?
2) Does reason or prior experience show any other means of reaching the desired end?
3) This is not an original program. Why was it abandoned before?
4) Who are we going to impose the program on, and how?
Dr. Hanson’s article is a ringing defense of the liberal arts as he wishes them to be, but it is not proof, and if he’s right in what he says, HE knows the difference.
robert_piepenbrink
17 Dec 10 at 6:31 am