What should a liberal education be? What disciplines should be emphasized? The Daniel Webster Project Conference, which begins tomorrow, examines these interesting and important questions in educational philosophy with respect to Socrates and Rousseau.
Dartmouth has, over time, introduced courses that seem almost pre-professional: Mathematical Finance, Operations Research, Computer Science, Business Chinese, Public Policy etc. I couldn't help but wonder if these 'useful arts' have a place in the liberal academic education that Dartmouth prides itself on.
Granted, the distinctions between the two lie on a spectrum. Practical subjects like engineering or computer science have uncontestable academic weight, while the traditional arts subjects that have persisted from medieval times -- mathematics, rhetoric, logic, for instance -- are undeniably useful, too. Two criteria determine the position of a course on this spectrum.
First, is it concentrated on providing a toolkit immediately applicable to paid work, or does it focus on intellectual, academic study? Theater 40: Technical Production would fall into the first category; it claims to instruct students on drafting, construction, stage equipment, rigging and safety. Theater 15: World Theater History I is a clear example of the latter; its curriculum covers theater from a literary, historical and artistic perspective.
Second, is the course material esoteric to the extent that it only serves the purposes of a specialist practitioner and not those of an undergraduate seeking a general education? A course like Biological Sciences 68: The Biophysical Chemistry of Biological Motors and Their Filament Tracks seems to be to be of limited use even to Biology majors, unless they intend to pursue research in that area.
With such course offerings, has Dartmouth compromised its liberal arts mission in an attempt to yield to students' and employers' demands? By and large, I think not. A liberal education should include a secondary education in the useful arts.
A historical context will put this in perspective -- allow me to turn to the Greeks once again. Aristotle conceived the first formal liberal arts education partly for the pursuit of intellectual pleasure and partly as intellectual preparation for a career in Athenian politics. Such an occupation demanded powerful oratory, astute logic and knowledge of mathematics. These skill sets are directly imparted through the classical liberal education. While we don't have Aristotle's Lyceum today, we do have the Daniel Webster Project. A faculty initiative promoting a classical core curriculum focused on the 'Great Books' of all subject areas, the program exemplifies the essence of a liberal arts education as the backdrop for further intellectual and professional development.
It is against this backdrop that secondary education in the useful arts should be conceived. Our future careers entail an unprecedented level of technical complexity. Mastering this technical complexity on the job without any conceptual framework makes for an unnecessarily steep learning curve. Introductions to the useful arts are necessary to build this conceptual framework, enabling us to pick up the skills quickly on the job. The role of the liberal arts is then twofold: to sharpen general critical thinking skills and to use them to learn and appraise the practical knowledge accorded by the useful arts or gathered on the job.
Moreover, if the purpose of the liberal arts education is for appreciating knowledge in and of itself, practical knowledge can also fulfill this end. The intellectual satisfaction one gains ruminating about an abstract philosophical question could be akin to that of solving a real-world engineering or computer science problem. Indeed, the practical arts could even be the more satisfying intellectual endeavors because of their tangible nature. Ironically, some previously practical disciplines slowly developed abstract offshoots solely for the pleasure of contemplation and knowledge advancement. Physics, for example, began as a corollary of engineering; today, theoretical physics is at the fore.
Dartmouth should continue to promote its current offerings in the useful arts, as well as propose new courses, particularly in business and law. One possibility is business strategy, a complex interdisciplinary subject in which doctorates have been awarded. Similar offerings now include Economics 35: Games and Economic Behavior and Sociology 66: Markets and Management. Why not go one step further? Likewise for an introduction to law: Regardless of one's career path, knowledge of the legal parameters and processes by which we live is necessary to be a responsible worker and citizen. Current offerings only cover the sociological and economic perspectives of law but not law itself. Consequently, these courses should not dominate the curriculum and overshadow liberal arts; they should be secondary offerings complementing the liberal arts core. After all, according to Aristotle, it is good to know how to play the flute -- but not to know how to play it too well.
