What color are tennis balls? I know they come in all sorts of funky colors these days, and I've heard they were originally white. But normal tennis balls -- what color are they?
Two days ago I was sure I knew the answer. Tennis balls are green, no doubt about it. Then someone told me they are yellow. She was as sure they were yellow as I was sure they were green. Neither of us had any doubts, and yet we disagreed.
To settle the matter I blitzed a few friends. I assured them I was not under the influence of any illicit substances. I expected to be fully vindicated. My friends were supposed to prove that tennis balls are green, and I would win the argument.
Wrong.
Most people said yellow, a few said green and one friend (who is colorblind) said orange.
I hate to lose an argument, so I set to work on some good old fashioned rationalization and realized that the whole point of my Dartmouth education is to lose arguments over tennis balls.
Now you might be sure that you are here to study government, or prepare yourself for medical school, or to get into a good law school, but you are wrong -- as wrong as I was about the color of tennis balls.
A liberal arts education is all about tennis balls. Some of us come in here thinking they are green, some of us think New York is the center of the Universe, and some of us think that things are the way they are because that is the way they are supposed to be. We are all wrong.
There is tremendous value in learning how to question those assumptions which we take for knowledge, in recognizing that much of what we call fact is really theory.
It is more than just valuable -- it is the whole point. Twenty years from now, I may not remember if Napoleon was born in Corsica and exiled on Elba or if it was the other way around. But it really doesn't matter as long as I retain the questioning ability that is the core of a liberal arts education.
That is why there are distributive requirements, why we are encouraged to study off-campus and why there is inherent value in diversity. All of these things force us to question what goes on in our own little worlds.
What confuses me is that so many people seem convinced that college is supposed to reinforce all their assumptions. This manifests itself in all sorts of ways.
People are offended by art that questions their sensibilities. They throw a holy fit when a fellow columnist writes about masturbation and other taboos. Or they simply cannot understand why there is a problem with organizations that do little in the way of questioning and much in the way of reinforcing assumptions.
If you aren't here to question your beliefs, to question yourself, and to question the institutions you support, then why didn't you go to vocational school?
A liberal education is not supposed to be easy. Much of the time it feels like you are losing an argument -- something we all like to avoid. But to avoid is to get nothing in return for all that money your parents are spending. Because if you are paying to learn the facts about Napoleon, what return do you have left when the details of his life have slipped your mind?
Next time you look at a tennis ball, think about the color. There's a liberal education in there. By the way, I'd still call it green.
