Artes-Liberalis

artes liberales   Higher Education Liberal Arts Core Curricula Gen Ed History resources links   If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be Thomas Jefferson   a blog by michael anton budd

[introspectivepoet]

Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.

W.H. Auden, New Year Letter (via introspectivepoet)

[infoneer-pulse]

Unfortunately, the way computer science is currently taught in high school tends to throw students into the programming deep end, reinforcing the notion that code is just for coders, not artists or doctors or librarians. But there is good news: Researchers have been experimenting with new ways of teaching computer science, with intriguing results. For one thing, they’ve seen that leading with computational thinking instead of code itself, and helping students imagine how being computer savvy could help them in any career, boosts the number of girls and kids of color taking—and sticking with—computer science. Upending our notions of what it means to interface with computers could help democratize the biggest engine of wealth since the Industrial Revolution.

Is Coding the New Literacy? | Mother Jones (via infoneer-pulse)

[stoweboyd]

Every age has a theory of rising and falling, of growth and decay, of bloom and wilt: a theory of nature. Every age also has a theory about the past and the present, of what was and what is, a notion of time: a theory of history. Theories of history used to be supernatural: the divine ruled time; the hand of God, a special providence, lay behind the fall of each sparrow. If the present differed from the past, it was usually worse: supernatural theories of history tend to involve decline, a fall from grace, the loss of God’s favor, corruption. Beginning in the eighteenth century, as the intellectual historian Dorothy Ross once pointed out, theories of history became secular; then they started something new—historicism, the idea “that all events in historical time can be explained by prior events in historical time.” Things began looking up. First, there was that, then there was this, and this is better than that. The eighteenth century embraced the idea of progress; the nineteenth century had evolution; the twentieth century had growth and then innovation. Our era has disruption, which, despite its futurism, is atavistic. It’s a theory of history founded on a profound anxiety about financial collapse, an apocalyptic fear of global devastation, and shaky evidence. Most big ideas have loud critics. Not disruption. Disruptive innovation as the explanation for how change happens has been subject to little serious criticism, partly because it’s headlong, while critical inquiry is unhurried; partly because disrupters ridicule doubters by charging them with fogyism, as if to criticize a theory of change were identical to decrying change; and partly because, in its modern usage, innovation is the idea of progress jammed into a criticism-proof jack-in-the-box.

Jill Lepore, What the Theory of “Disruptive Innovation” Gets Wrong

(via stoweboyd)

[artes-liberales]

The Miseducation of America

The film Ivory Tower reflects the sound bites, horror stories, and misinformation marring the debate about higher education.

The Miseducation of America - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education 

[artes-liberales]

Yes, the Humanities Are Struggling, but They Will Endure – The Conversation - Blogs - The Chronicle of Higher Education

[artes-liberales]

Down With Downsizing the Liberal Arts

Smaller won't be better; smaller will be worse.

Down With Downsizing the Liberal Arts - Advice - The Chronicle of Higher Education 

[artes-liberales]

Colleges and universities are cities in miniature, with complex bureaucracies and often-astonishing diversity. So why do critics continue to insist that we’re disconnected from reality?

Welcome to the Real World of Academe | Vitae 

[artes-liberales]

My beloved university exemplifies the crisis faced by many small, private institutions across the country. Sadly, some of its struggles were foreseeable all along.

My Alma Mater, the Cautionary Tale | Vitae 

[explore-blog]

Our whole theory of education is based on the absurd notion that we must learn to swim on land before tackling the water. It applies to the pursuit of the arts as well as to the pursuit of knowledge.

Henry Miller on reading and what’s wrong with our model of education (via explore-blog)

[georgetownuniversitypress]

Parents have always worried when their children become English majors. What is an English major good for? In a way, the best answer has always been, wait and see — an answer that satisfies no one. And yet it is a real answer, one that reflects the versatility of thought and language that comes from studying literature. Former English majors turn up almost anywhere, in almost any career, and they nearly always bring with them a rich sense of the possibilities of language, literary and otherwise.

Verlyn Klinkenborg, The Decline and Fall of the English Major, The New York Times

As a former English Major, I second this article!

(via georgetownuniversitypress)

[kiplinger]

Liberal-Arts Degrees Pay Off in the End

[artes-liberales]

At the peak of their careers, graduates who studied humanities and social sciences out-earn other majors.

[swallowtheredpill]

In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists. […] It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations - past and present - are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual’s hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millenia.

Eric Hoffer (via swallowtheredpill)

[katiescollegeblog]

The Decline and Fall of the English Major

In the drift away from the humanities, we risk losing something essential in ourselves.

An insightful article about undergraduate English/humanities programs in the US (and how they’ve suffered in recent years). I think this is the sort of thing everyone should read, even if you aren’t planning on pursuing something within the realm of humanities yourself.

[econsociology]

"The ‪humanities‬ and social sciences are an essential part of undergraduate ‪education‬. Most successful careers, including in technology and engineering, do not result simply from technical knowledge. They require leadership skills, social and emotional intelligence, cultural understanding, a capacity for strategic decision-making and a global perspective. Put another way, success in life requires a sensibility about the world and one’s place in it that the humanities seek to cultivate, as well as an understanding of economic and societal context that the social sciences provide… We [Presidents of the University of Michigan and Stanford University] believe that the role and importance of the humanities and social sciences needs to be discussed elsewhere: at dinner tables where families talk about college and career choices and in Congress, statehouses and government agencies where funding decisions are made with an eye toward what is “useful”.”

Mary Sue Coleman is president of the University of Michigan. John L. Hennessy is president of Stanford University.

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lessons-from-the-humanities-and-social-sciences/2013/11/14/7441f9b6-4655-11e3-a196-3544a03c2351_story.html

(via econsociology)

[wsswatson]

Do you think there is a massive distinction between the purpose of studying the arts/humanities compared to the sciences? What do you think is the purpose of having the arts/humanities as areas of study? I'm not trying to be critical of these areas of study just curious:). Thank you for your wonderful blog!

You’re welcome! Thank you!

Well, obviously there’s a distinction between the purpose of studying them comparatively. They serve totally different purposes in society. The arts are about creativity and pleasure and aesthetics and beauty, the humanities about understanding human nature and being able to work towards a better world by learning from mistakes and picking up on patterns and increasing empathy, and the sciences, and related subjects such as maths, are about understanding ‘the HTML of the universe’, as I call it - how our world literally functions, and hence how we function, and how we may develop products to improve or enhance our lives.

While the sciences provide a more fundamental understanding of our world and of ourselves, I think it would be naive to say that it is more important. While I do love science, at college, I studied two arts - English literature and media studies - and two humanities - history and philosophy. I would certainly hate to live in a world in which they were not taught, for entirely different reasons.

The humanities are what make us aware of the complexities and similarities and differences of members of our race. History teaches us the mistakes that have been made so that we may try to avoid them in the future, and so that we may predict when we are taking a turn for the worst and understand human behaviour and motivation. Geography teaches us an understanding of our world on a more human level, and allows us to care for it and work to undo the destruction that has been inflicted on it, and understand that people have different customs and ways of life to those that we’re used to. It allows us to prepare for natural disasters, too - the typhoon in the Philippines would have had even more dire effects were it not for the study of geography. Religious studies allow us to understand how other people think, and broadens our mind to a whole array of beliefs and perspectives, making us more open-minded people. Philosophy literally means ‘love of knowledge’, and teaches us to be free and critical thinkers who are not mentally constrained by what we are led to presume must or must not be true without any solid evidence to support it.

Then there’s the arts. As an English literature and creative writing student, this is my area of study. I chose my area of study because I adhere to the Aesthetic philosophy of figures of the fin de siècle, such as Oscar Wilde. I believe in beauty, and its powers and pleasures. I love art, I love music, I love theatre, I love fashion, I love film, I love television, I love literature, and I would not want to live in a world without art. Art and beauty are such key contributors to the pleasures and happiness of the human race. They’re influential, too. I’m a great fan of this passage from The Picture of Dorian Gray:

'Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?'

Ironically, it was THOSE words that have perhaps had the most profound influence on me. I’m a small woman. I’m not particularly strong or fast. I can’t fight, not do I want to. I wasn’t born into power. What I do have, though, is intelligence and a voice, and I will never cease to use those for as long as I think I can make a difference. I know I have made a difference in the world already. People have told me that they are more informed or open-minded because of me. People have been influenced by the analytical work I’ve written for tumblr on Sherlock and other works. And all that from a blog. What could I do as a writer, then? What power could I have? Yes, my primary purpose in writing is to create beautiful things that people enjoy, but if I can make the world a better place by doing so, I certainly won’t try to filter that out. We live in a media age. Our lives are not only influenced, but dictated by the media. In the wrong hands, that’s a very dangerous power to have, but in the right ones, it acts as a large step towards equality that we’ve been striving for for centuries. Art is the current driving force behind society.

[admitted-ly]

The 'Useless' College Majors Of The World's Most Successful People

[malevichsquare-deactivated20150]

“It’s where we’re nearest to our humanness. Useless knowledge for its own sake. Useful knowledge is good, too, but it’s for the faint-hearted, an elaboration of the real thing, which is only to shine some light, it doesn’t matter where on what, it’s the light itself, against the darkness, it’s what’s left of God’s purpose when you take away God.”

from “The Invention of Love” (1997) by Tom Stoppard (via malevichsquare)