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Comment by Helmet | Hacker News Reader

Liberal arts education is essential if our goal is to have a well-rounded, educated, ethical, and cultured citizenry.

But, of course, this would mean that the liberal arts would have to actually go back to teaching the Western canon, and not simply using their positions as educators to repudiate Western and European art and culture at any turn, to radicalize students and spew their ideological fantasies, to engage in censorship and stoke racial tensions, and, this should go without saying, stop committing acts of physical assault, such as smashing people in the head with metal bike-locks, when they disagree with you (Eric Clanton, Tariq Khan, Eric Canin..etc).

These are just suggestions of course, I'm sure the enlightened intelligentsia will find its way.

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I think you're cherry-picking what liberal arts education is all about today. Most Universities do teach Western canon and not the sensationalist things that you mention. Perhaps the latter is easier to notice because it is sensational; but most liberal arts graduates I meet have a very well rounded education and understanding of the world.

The sciences show us how to do something. Liberal arts shows us the ramifications of doing said actions.

I know plenty a scientists who'd love to create the next game-changing thing. But philosophy, governance, debate, argument, and understanding are not aspects taught in any good regard in STEM. Or should that thing even be created?

If anything, when I think of liberal arts, I think of the Greats of Rome and Greece. I remember the ancients in India, or the rulers in China. I think of the discussions reported about the Roman Senate. Or how civilizations rise and fall and why. Or of social sciences, why people do certain things as a collective? This all is indeed logic and science, but with many more degrees of freedom and lack of understanding. Liberal Arts is essential to understanding the core of a problem, and not just the numbers and symbolics that it represents.

I went to college in between deployments, (~6 years ago) with the belief that college existed primarily to teach people how to learn for themselves. After a year and half I was almost happy to be deployed again, although at the time there were a number of classes I took which I would consider quality educational experiences.

I looked at the same college a few months after that deployment, and realized I didn't want to subsidize dogmatic obedience. Since then it appears to have gone even further downhill.

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