At one time justification of the arts and humanities was unnecessary because, as Anthony Kronman puts it in a new book, “Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life,” it was assumed that “a college was above all a place for the training of character, for the nurturing of those intellectual and moral habits that together form the basis for living the best life one can.”
- Will the Humanities Save Us? by Stanley Fish, Think Again (NY Times Blog), 01.06.08
Considering I have a Sociology degree with a minor in Creative Writing, I can't say that my college classes prepared me exceptionally well for my current career but that freshman year focused on The Roots of Western Civilization and Philosophy definitely have informed who I am and the choices I make. I consider Morality and Ethics and Truth and big ticket concepts like them in my every day life. I cycle through those words and ideas that resonated in class in real world scenarios all the time. I learned, perhaps more than anything, to continue to acquire knowledge. I don't believe I know everything or learned it all in kindergarten. My classes may not have taught me how to put together a great power point deck or excel at project and people management but I've acquired those skills and I use those character-enhancing handouts and discussions and microfiche sessions and trips to museums as constant reference points in my quest to be a good human being.
Goodness, I hope we still value our universities as those kinds of training grounds.
update: edited for grammar, 01.13.08
Advice about when and where not to read was once a medical specialty.
Sometimes I forget that I'm part of something big.
One controller is shaped like a sleek television remote (sometimes called the Wii-mote); the other plugs into the remote with a short wire, creating a vague resemblance to the two-handled martial-arts weapon it is named for, the nunchuk.
And beneath the controllers’ white plastic shells are an array of time-tested digital technologies working together in new ways.
- At the Heart of the Wii, Micron-Size Machines by Michel Marriott. The New York Times, 12.21.06
Now if only stores actually had wii-motes and nunchuks in stock...