Why Bother with a Liberal Arts Education?
The short answer? To be the ‘T-shaped’ Individual
What is the purpose of liberal arts education? Is it the imparting of knowledge, the learning of how to think beyond what can be seen or heard, or the journey to be a useful citizen of the world? For me, education transcends beyond these, which are undoubtedly important, but not the ultimate objective of an education. I believe the purpose of a liberal arts education is to be a ‘T-shaped’ individual; one who has the breadth of knowledge and experiences spanning across diverse subjects, including the arts, humanities and sciences (forming the horizontal stroke of the T), yet has chosen a particular subject area to take specialized interest in and actively pursue (forming the vertical stroke of the T).
As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “the mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions”, one acquires breadth and diversity of perspectives through knowledge they have otherwise unheard of. Considered to be “the indispensable condition of expansion of mind and the instrument of attaining to it”, knowledge in diverse and almost unrelated areas of knowledge, from a philosophical appreciation of Plato’s Republic to a rigorous understanding of differential calculus, is instrumental towards building breadth and opening the mind up to a world of possibilities and excitement.
As we think back about how we started learning the phonetics of the English alphabet as a child, followed by grammar rules and sentence structure, then the acquisition of knowledge beyond the English language such as the arithmetic and biology, we can, quite literally, feel the true enlargement of the mind.
Yet, as I build up my breadth and diversity of experiences, figuratively extending the length of the horizontal stroke as a ‘T-shaped’ individual, I am acutely aware of the need to gradually discover a depth to actively pursue during my education - an area which satisfies the conditions of firstly, my keen interest in the particular area, and secondly, my inclination and competence towards creating value to advance the wellbeing of those within that community.
Of course, it goes without saying that building up a breadth and depth of knowledge are not mutually exclusive, and in fact, it would be optimal to grow both in tandem, weaving the knowledge from the most unrelated of topics into the depth I am pursuing in order to push the boundaries.
My greatest concern is the false dichotomy between pursuing the breadth and depth as an individual; that a liberal arts education means we should simply pursue knowledge as an end unto itself and a professional/vocational education suggests we should learn practical knowledge and be unconcerned about unrelated issues. On the one hand, single-mindedly pursuing breadth and diversity of knowledge will lead to a learned individual that has little impact to innovation or the advancement of knowledge for s/he is simply learning what is already known, and true innovation or advancement of knowledge happens at the boundary of what is already known, at the cusp of the knowledge circle. On the other hand, ignoring breadth for depth leads to narrow-mindedness and the inability to possess an interconnected view of knowledge as a result of the hyper-focus.
Education should not be an end to itself, but a means to an end -- to being useful, well-educated and learned citizens of the world.
This post is an edited excerpt from a writing assignment at Stanford University's Education as a Self-Fashioning program.
Credit: Newman, John Henry, and I. T. Ker. The Idea of a University: Defined and Illustrated : I. In Nine Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin. II. In Occasional Lectures and Essays Addressed to the Members of the Catholic University. Oxford: Clarendon, 1976. 113. Print.
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