Dear President Obama: The Importance of the Liberal Arts in Our
Changeable World
Written by: Michelle E. Skinner
Dear President Obama,
In your inaugural address, you made few promises on behalf of
yourself and your administration. You reiterate this out of a
conviction that it is not a person that rebuilds a nation-it is a
whole people.
This is partly why we elected you. You tell us about a nation
that we can help create, and this inspires us to act. You also tell
us about ourselves-that in light of the "gathering clouds and
raging storms," our inborn capacities as human beings can never be
diminished. "Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and
services no less needed than they were last week or last month or
last year," you tell us confidently. In your eyes, we are a nation
of "risk-takers, doers, and makers of things," and we respond to
this because the notion of possibility stirs our ambitions.
You're right: Being human, we are born with the capacity to go,
do, and create, and to use our skills for moral purposes. However,
while these original capacities will never be diminished, it is
important to recognize that our capacities will cease to be
realized if they are repeatedly ignored in our education system.
Like muscles, our capacities will atrophy if we do not exercise
them.
All across the nation, public schools are cutting their arts
programs because of insufficient government funding. This comes as
no surprise- in times of economic instability, the arts are
generally the first to suffer. By virtue of not being part of what
the public school system considers essential to a standard core
curriculum, children are quickly losing their chances to sing in
choirs, paint at easels, or play a musical instrument. The belief
underlying these cuts is the argument that arts programs do not
teach students to calculate or think critically to the extent that
math or science programs do-that the arts are "extra" rather than
an integral part of a full education.
As a student who has had the privilege of having a higher
education in the liberal arts at a distinguished university, I
recognize the glaring problems in this belief. Because we are the
sum of individual experiences, every experience we have is
formative. By this logic, I know that education is most successful
when its horizons are broad. If we isolate the arts from the
sciences, for instance, we risk creating students who feel like
they must operate as machines-always creating something new for a
market of consumers. If we isolate students in the sciences, we
risk creating students who feel like calculating drones. But if we
are interested in creating students who regard themselves as unique
individuals with the capacities to do many things-to learn a
formula and imagine one-then we must agree that no one discipline
is totally effective unto itself, and that each discipline is most
valuable when considered as part of a whole fabric. Such is the
nature of a liberal arts education.
The sum total of my education in the liberal arts eludes any one
category. Rather than prepare me for a particular career, it has
prepared me for all of them. It has made me an idealist wherein
being an active agent of change in my world isn't just a vague
aspiration-it's essential to my self-worth. It has made me want to
live an examined, deliberate life, steeped in the cultures I have
learned to adore.
Considering my own experience, I therefore know that by not
stressing the importance of a liberal arts education in our public
schools, we are doing ourselves a great disservice. In denying
grade school children the outlets for their creative energies, we
are denying them the chance to realize the full range of their
humanity. By limiting the opportunities of young people to exercise
their capacities in all disciplines, we are by extension the
possibilities for the future of our nation.
At this crisis moment, an emphasis in a full education has never
been more critically important. Focused study in the sciences and
the humanities teaches reverence for our natural world, and
conditions the skills that will help fix it. It teaches respect for
the other. It installs in its students a healthy skepticism for
sinister marketing tactics, excess technology, and inefficient
government. Finally, study in the liberal arts promotes a
collective spirit, reminding us that though we may often disagree,
we share the same bodies and the same human capacities.
I therefore ask that your term in office include an agenda that
has a renewed public emphasis on the value of a diverse education
in the liberal arts. Central to this is increased expectations and
wages for public school teachers as well as protection for
disadvantaged children. In addition, there should be greater
support for non-profit literacy groups and organizations like Teach
for America that create jobs for people who strive for the
betterment of our education system.
The thesis of my Butler education might be: A study in all
disciplines shows us that the self is made, not inherited. For me,
this is the salient point of a liberal arts education. When people
realize this, they will begin to regard themselves as agents in a
changeable world rather than subjects in a static one.