The liberal arts have often been under the gun, but more so in recent times, when the word “liberal” means “creep” to half our country. Democrats, who generally embrace liberal values, are afraid to use the word. And because it’s been so poorly defended, the liberal arts foundation that made our education the envy of the world is in danger of collapsing.
Cuts in funding are being made from kindergarten through the universities; and when the schools have to decide what to cut, they’re looking at the liberal arts, mainly literature, history, poetry, art, music. When they add something, it’s usually work- and career-related.
What Samuel Johnson said about poetry is true about “liberal”: “Why Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not.” Liberalism isn’t restrictive, closed, suppressive, stingy. Imagine a funnel. Liberal education is an open-ended funnel which provides a wide general basis for its recipients to become free citizens in a democracy. The “work-based” changes being inflicted upon schools reverse the funnel, pouring “practical” information out of the little end to mold narrowly based engineers, lawyers, professionals and semi-professionals. Even my beloved slow-to-change alma mater, Hamilton College, is paying “heightened attention to career preparation.”
When I went there, in the 1950s, it offered the traditional liberal education combining science and the arts. Being taught broadly to be skeptical in a polite way, most students developed a nose for false statement. In our day, we were required to take four years of public speaking, a much-derided but ultimately useful course run by a deep-voiced professor we called Swampy Marsh. Debate, memorized speeches and poems, and — most terrifying — impromptu: “Meinke, give me five minutes on fishing,” Swampy would thunder. “What sane person would go fishing?” I’d get up and say, or something like that. Who would stand around trying to torture a panicking wiggling worm, who never did anything to us, impaling it on a curved bit of steel?” “I would!” and “Boo!” the trapped audience shouted. We tended to make up long sentences to fill the time. But we learned to argue, make persuasive sense, and prepare carefully (especially in debate and longer speeches); and to not take anyone’s statement at face value. Today, when our country’s in trouble, bombarded by inflated advertising and misleading political “news,” these are useful skills.
“Liber” in Latin means “free,” and “liberalis” means “worthy of a free person.” These words and values are the basis of Western democracy. This is an important battle: Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker sent in his budget, cutting the State University’s funding by $300 million, proposing to change its motto from “the search for truth” to meeting “the state’s work-force needs.” Although he’s since backed down (partially), it’s clear, as a serious presidential contender, that he believes that’s what the Republican voters want. I don’t think he’s right, yet, but if we cut the arts and humanities from our high school and college requirements, the truth will be much harder for Americans to find. (St. Pete’s own Eckerd College is bucking this trend: They’ll start building a new $12 million Center for the Visual Arts in May.)
John Adams is believed to have said, “I am a revolutionary so my child can be a farmer so his child can be a poet.” Because of men like him, we’re free citizens in a free country. It’s up to us to keep American schools focused on the search for truth.
Peter Meinke will be reading from his work at St. Pete’s Main Public Library (3745 9th Av. N) on Saturday Mar. 7 at 2 p.m.
This article appears in Mar 5-11, 2015.