why kids should study the liberal arts: a real-world example

Chester Finn and Diane Ravitch had a pretty weak op-ed defending the liberal arts in the WSJ this week. You can can read it at Education Gadly.

The liberal arts, by the way, are the core "liberal" subjects:

• math
• science
• history
• literature
• philosophy

(I'm embarrassed to say that I don't know how art history or studio art fits in ... sigh.)

Math and science are core liberal arts disciplines, and Finn and Ravitch are quite wrong to imply that the phrase "liberal arts" means literally the arts. It does not. This is why liberal arts colleges invariably have names like "College of Arts and Sciences" or, alternatively, "College of Letters and Sciences."

The term for the subjects Finn and Ravitch are defending is the humanities.

The word "discipline" is important, too. A liberal arts discipline has particular modes of research and reasoning that take years to master and are different from the modes of research in other liberal arts disciplines.

Ed discovered this when he team-taught a course with a literature professor from the French Department. Until that experience, he had no idea how different his mode of reading a text was from a literary specialist's mode.

As Ed put it, "To Richard, a text isn't a document."

Who knew?

The liberal arts disciplines are under chronic attack by progressive educators, who have always and everywhere pressed for "interdisciplinary" course content, as far as I can tell. They won an early victory in the case of history; that's why U.S. kids learn social studies. The best statement I've read on the subject was left in a comment by David Foster on joannejacobs (I think it was joannejacobs), who said (paraphrasing), that "Public schools are filled with people who want to turn all subjects into social studies or crafts."

True.

It's hard to defend the liberal arts. At least, it's hard for me. I don't know enough about them even to know what I'm defending half the time.

After reading Hirsch on the importance of background knowledge, and after discovering that the possession of background knowledge causes you to acquire new knowledge faster, it occurred to me that there is a striking pragmatic case to be made for giving children a broad education in the liberal arts, which is that the liberal arts would actually turn them into the flexible & speedy little learners the 21st century is apparently going to require.

This morning I encountered a terrific example of this.

The Times had a story on the new NAEP test of economics knowledge, which included these two sample questions.

I didn't know the answer to number 2. I'd never heard of price equilibrium (is that the term?); I'd never seen a chart like this; I knew nothing about the subject.

However, because I have a relatively decent knowledge of the relevant liberal arts, the instant Ed explained it to me I got it. The instant. I had a moment of extremely rapid learning because I have an education in the core liberal arts disciplines.^*

The relevant liberal arts are, in this case:

• math, meaning algebra 1, which includes the topic of linear functions
  

• probably science, which frequently uses concepts like equilibrium and homeostasis
  

• probably history and political philosophy, both of which allow you to understand that people can and do act as societies, that black markets have always sprung up in societies that attempted to set prices, that only a dictatorship can effectively enforce laws against black markets, etc.
  

The liberal arts disciplines are "the basics" one needs to become a lifelong learner.


update

Remind me not to rag on Diane Ravitch anymore.


the NCTM on interdisciplinary learning in math: An interdisciplinary approach to science, mathematics, and reading: Learning as children learn
American Academy for Liberal Education
The Seven Liberal Arts (Catholic Encyclopedia)
Phi Beta Kappa Society statement of support for AALE
Philosophy of Liberal Education
Coaches Shouldn't Teach History by Diane Ravitch


^* I had a terrible time with the one economics course I took in college. I absolutely could not get the idea of a group of consumers in the aggregate. I kept thinking, "What if some lady decides not to buy panthose?" You may laugh - hah! - but in fact, the idea of macroeconomics, and of statistical aggregates, does not come naturally. If you're going to pick it up quickly, you're going to need a better high school education than I had.