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Coming to the Defense of Liberal Education
By Michael Roth, Huffington Post, June 9, 2010
Commentator Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University, has been thrilled to see a number of recent op-eds and opinion columns in prominent publications defending a liberal education. In a June 9 piece in Huffington Post, Roth describes the justifications of liberal learning penned by David Brooks and Stanley Fish in the New York Times, and by Peter Berkowitz in the Wall Street Journal. As Roth writes, all three commentators describe their respect for a broad, liberal postsecondary education and the benefits it delivers to students: the ability to think clearly, to understand the “grammar of intellectual, artistic, and social practices so that one can participate in them,” and to “discover what they love to do, and to get better at it.” Roth bemoans the fact that the Obama administration, the high-ranking members of which are beneficiaries of liberal education, is operating with “the narrow vision of an educated work force as a bunch of effective test takers.” Roth and his co-commentators worry that, “in our results-oriented regime, the study of history, literature, and the arts is being compromised or eliminated in favor of narrow skills that fit into so-called objective tests.” For our country to thrive, our view of education must broaden, not narrow, to educate citizens “capable of moving from one problem to another with confidence, capable of moving from one opportunity to another with courage.”
Michael Roth is a member of AAC&U’s LEAP Presidents’ Trust. His entire opinion piece may be read online.
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