Liberal Education: Indoctrinating Your Kids with the Socialist Agenda

Though people who witnessed my questions at the time may not have seen it, I was really impressed by what Debra Humphreys had to say on liberal education. As college students sick of grades, we often complain that the institution does not really appreciate education for its own sake. I feel that the turn towards liberal education is a step towards that appreciation. However, the relatively static definition of "education" and "civic engagement" has caused led to the under-appreciation of our generation.

Ms. Humphreys showed liberal education as a progressive step away from the valuing of grades, test scores, and very specific (yet limited) knowledge. Instead she reiterated that businesses look less towards the C you got sophomore year and more at what you learned at your job or internship. This concentration on skills and concrete experiences, instead of academic hypotheticals meant to predict one's potential for success, is a smarter move for colleges. The other major concept behind liberal education that really impressed me was the concentration on civic responsibility and ethics. Stanley Katz's quote in Humphreys' article sums it up: "What counts, I think, is that their liberal education causes them to reflect on what it is they are doing for a living, how they are doing it, and what more they can do to live a fully examined life.” It's the fabrication of the long promoted idea that it is not about the money, but doing what is good and makes you happy.

As much as I appreciated the concepts presented by Ms. Humphreys, I did have some issues within her article and her presentation in that she seemed to sell short the quality of our generation. In her article, she referred to us as "larger, more diverse, and probably less well prepared for college-level learning than were cohorts in earlier eras." This seemed odd considering most of our generation learned more in high school than our parents did in college (if they went). During her presentation, Ms. Humphreys also referred to our generation's "decline in civic engagement." This definitely has some truth to it (especially if you consider protesting in the sixties as civic engagement), however, our generation has had more internships than any previous, the most community service, and the Obama campaign led to unseen numbers in young voters. The danger seemed to be in her generalizations.

Ms. Humphrey's explanation was clear, well-crafted, and satisfactory. The percentages of kids in our generation that go to college is extremely high. We send kids to college whether they're ready or not. In previous generations, only those best-prepared to go, were able to. Therefore, our top 10% are extremely qualified as I explained earlier, but our average student did not necessarily get the preparation that they needed. Additionally, the expectations to compete in the modern world are much higher and more complicated than those for the world of previous generations. In these regards, our generation is nearly impossible to compare to previous ones.