Bob Confer: The value of classical education

We need more “well-rounded, inquisitive, reasoned and creative” thinkers

A COLUMN By Bob Confer, photo from Alfred University

The 2020s have been a wild ride. We’ve seen everything from a virus and its public responses to runaway inflation to social unrest to trade wars. 

Organizations – be they businesses, non-profits, or governments – that have best weathered the unique circumstances of this decade are those with creative thinkers as their leaders or in positions of responsibility within their enterprises. In many cases, they’ve made navigation of this series of events look easy.

What’s not easy, though, is finding people like that.

We, as a society, have driven the workforce to specialization and, in turn, narrow scopes, narrow worldviews, and narrow thinking. The over-reliance on severely focused fields of study – it doesn’t matter if you’re talking about degrees in business, public administration, psychology or any number of certifications – works well in normal times: You have a job; you do it; and you do it well. But, when stuff hits the fan, just as it has in these crises and will in the next ones, you need a different sort of person to master the nuances, extremes, and ever-changing new normal — people who can break free of the reins of situational myopia.

That highlight the incredible value of liberal arts degrees.

The liberal arts – the studies of the sciences, arts and humanities – had long been held in high esteem. Their studies created the foundation of education in the Western world and saw their dawn in ancient Greece, a society known for deep intellect and reasoning. The Greeks saw a desire for a universal understanding and the liberal arts promoted that.

That love affair with intellectual versatility continued for centuries. For a good portion of the United States’ early history, the liberal arts were the predominant method of study in our universities and colleges. But, after the Civil War, things changed dramatically. Those in academia capitulated to statehouses and businesses which wanted something different. They didn’t want well-rounded citizens; they wanted task-specific workers. They wanted cogs in their machine; they didn’t want someone else mastering that machine.

Higher education was transformed, as was the view of classical education. It has been the case that liberal arts diplomas have been reviled by misguided employers, institutions of higher education, and prospective students. In the academic year beginning in 1975, only 2 percent of the bachelor’s degrees conferred in the US were for liberal arts. Fifty years later, that percentage remains the same.

That’s unfortunate given the incredible value it could bring to the table. Just think about what the manager of a small business or the lawmaker in a state capital have faced in the past five-plus years. How do you navigate a changing economy? How did they adjust to mandates or create protocols? What are the expectations of your customers, coworkers and community in this ever-changing world? What impact has this all had on the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of those who are served? What can we learn from other places? What can we learn from observing? What can we learn from history? What will the future hold? What can we make the future be?

Those best prepared to answer those questions and weather this storm are the versatile souls who were once known as Renaissance Men or Women. Think of how well-rounded, inquisitive, reasoned and creative someone has had to be to navigate the nuances of the ‘20s – they’ve had to be a sort of expert on health, science, government, economics, and people while still holding true to their job as an organizational leader or doer.

We’ve been failing as a country in the development of free thinkers. We don’t have enough of them and I don’t know if we can achieve that, either. Despite there being 1,500 colleges and universities in this country, only 200 still consider themselves liberal arts schools. Also, most other colleges, when setting degree requirements, don’t emphasize the use of classical education in the later years of one’s program, they are more or less thrown at underclassmen as core courses then devalued thereafter.     

The central academic disciplines of a liberal arts degree are philosophy, logic, linguistics, literature, history, political science, sociology, and psychology. Those are considerably important tools and their proper use – all at once — could pay considerable dividends to the person, the organization, and the world. 

And realize, too, that history is but an endless series of crises and the 2020s have been just the latest in that cycle. Before this, we had the Great Recession. Before that terrorism. Before that the Cold War. I could go on and on. More are going to happen. Even businesses, non-profits, and governments – large and small – have to deal with their own individual crises quite often. 

This decade has shown that we need special people who know a little about everything, think deeply, and react appropriately and justly. We need those people with generalist degrees whom you once asked: “What the heck are you going to do with that diploma?”