There are many different ideas floating out there about the best method of education and everyone wants to champion their own ideas. However, I believe that a liberal arts education(or at least the underlying mindset) is absolutely invaluable. In fact, I would go as far to say that it is crucial to succeeding.
There is a lot of hype surrounding the phrase so allow me to state it simply:
A liberal arts education requires that you learn as broadly and as deeply as possible.
I have recently heard from a number of people who were skeptical of it; why bother learning about things that seem to be impractical and have no application in the real world? Why not simply use the time you spent reading Chaucer and Milton to learn...oh I don't know...engineering or something of the sort.
To say that subjects like Philosophy, Art History, Political Science, Sociology and yes, even Biology have no basis in real world situations is the most close-minded and erroneous opinion I have heard to date.
I have recently come to the conclusion that it is a fundamental part of the human condition to search for meaning in life, a certain type of truth. A liberal arts education enriches our understanding of the world in so many ways.
Every single action that we have, everything that makes us who we are as people is based off of centuries worth of history, art and language. Without intellectuals like Socrates and Aristotle, I highly doubt that you would even be able to process this blog post because you would not have the underlying logic to understand it. Without learning different languages we couldn't even begin to communicate with eachother and I imagine it would be akin to the barbaric tribes under the Roman Republic with each small sector of people going about their business but being completely isolated. There would be no mathematics because people would not have been able to standardize it in the first place. Literally everything that we know to be true was built on the basis of other minds and without these subjects we would not even be able to comprehend anything, really.
On a much more immediate level, having a background in many different subject gives you a very special and unique understanding of the world around us right now and has so many implications for the future. I can not even count the number of times that ideas from my Humanities classes have come up in my science classes. Without having a knowledge of different subjects, you would not be able to see connections between fields. It would be like trying to read a book with every other page torn out.
So while some may scoff at the idea of a liberal arts education, never forget that what you are doing is so incredibly important, Wendys. I really cannot think of anything more noble or more crucial than the pursuit of all forms of knowledge. While some other students may be able to be incredibly useful in a specific situation, you will be the enlightened thinkers who saw the connection in the first place.
Best of luck with exams,
T
