It is the Year of the Horse, and I’m on my high horse again about the value of the humanities and the liberal arts education.
A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education reports on studies concerning what preparation a liberal arts degree offers to students once they enter the workforce and suggests that the long-term outcomes (in terms of career and steady employment) bode very well. As I embark on another semester of trying to persuade sophomores that the study of poetry can offer some value to their lives, it helps me to know there is at least some evidence that I’m not just making this up!
~
ann e michael 
You are definitely not making it up!! humanity is suffering from the loss of the humanities and arts in education, beginning pre-kindergarten, I am finding out right now! the latest sorry news I heard from an elementary art teacher was, kids are no longer able to cut out paper with scissors in her 5th grade class, because they don’t even have access to scissors at home or in kindergarten, they are too busy learning stuff on computers (and wasting their childhoods without the benefits of tactile learning experiences) so, yeah. Keep fighting the Good Fight, Ann!!! hugs, Leigh
LikeLike
Well, that is a disheartening story indeed. Our response as artists is to keep making art, I guess. Maybe I could start a movement: Bring scissors back to the humanities!
Onward…and thanks for YOUR support of “the good fight.”
LikeLike
As I have mentioned previously, a liberal arts education is the good fight, and my own successful working years in so many non-academic areas have always been my “proof” as it were. It does dismay me that children are not being exposed to so much that ultimately is so valuable. I could go on but the choir knows the song. Good for you, Ann, for keeping on, keeping on.
Karen
LikeLike