College Is About More than Just Getting a Good Job

By David Mazel

One of the lessons of global warming is that our planet is becoming more and more of an artifact. More and more, our world is not what nature made it but what we are making it.
What kind of world is it that we are making? And what kind of world should we be making?
You will note that the first of these questions is a matter of facts, not values. The second is a matter of values, not facts.
How many of you students are here because you want to be able to answer such questions well? To put it another way, how many of you are here because you want to get a liberal arts education?
The word “liberal” shares the same root as the words liberty and liberation. Back in the day, the “liberal arts” referred to the kind of education appropriate for free people, which back then meant the elite, as opposed to the sort of education appropriate to people who were not free.
There were the liberal arts, and there were the servile arts. One kind of education for the rulers, and another for the ruled.
The rulers needed a kind of education that stressed the ability to think critically, to communicate clearly and persuasively, to distinguish fact from falsehood, to understand the source of their own values, and so on. They needed what we now call science, English, philosophy, and the like.
None of this really mattered for the slaves, since they weren’t the ones making the decisions that shaped the world. They just needed to be competent at their craft and to do as they were told. For them it was enough to be schooled in what we still call the “manual arts.”
Fast forward to the modern world of liberal democracy. In liberal democracies like ours, at least theoretically, everyone is free. Everyone may participate in making the decisions that create the world.
And to do that well, everyone needs a liberal arts education.
This is why the governments of liberal democracies subsidize universal public education. This is why our federal government and the State of Colorado help pay for you to attend Adams State College, and why the college requires you to take “general education” courses in the sciences and humanities.
It’s not so you can get a good job. It’s so that when you do get that job you exercise the powers that attend it knowledgeably and wisely. And it’s not just the workplace where we make decisions that create the world — it happens in the voting booth as well, and in the home when we rear our children, and everywhere else we exercise our democratic freedoms.
You’re not here just to better yourself, though there’s nothing wrong with that. You’re here to acquire the skills and dispositions that will enable you to better the world, to help build a better planet for everyone.
Just something to think about as you write that Comm Arts essay or study for that psych exam.