--Unknown

 

The above joke, whether you consider it humorous or not, illustrates the idea that there are those who believe that a liberal arts education is useless, that to acquire a major in Liberal Arts (I have one, by the way) relegates you to lower income employment and other work commonly thought of by many people as demeaning or not commensurate with the cost of the education spent to acquire the degree.  However, this couldn't be further from the truth.  A liberal arts education forms the foundation for our own educational system.  Most believe that you should not only learn math, language arts, science, and social studies in years one through twelfth grade, but that music, art, and physical education should be included among them.  This foundational study program does not loose its importance when deciding on which advanced degree to pursue.

 

A liberal arts education is one of the most important gifts that you can give a person, and it is not a modern concept.  In fact, it is very ancient.  Even before the Greeks and Romans incorporated the liberal arts into their educational programs, the Kimetans (Egyptians) believed in educating the entire mind.  George M. James writes in his book Stolen Legacy:

 

"As such, it (the Egyptian Mysteries) regarded the human body as a prison house of the soul, which could be liberated from its bodily impediments, through the disciplines of the Arts and Sciences, and advanced from the level of a mortal to that of a God."

 

This type of thinking would greatly influence Greco-Roman philosophy and the overall manner in which all people are now educated.  Equally well-said is a quote by Albert Einstein:

 

"The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts, but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks."

 

The type of thinking Einstein is speaking of is the essence of the art of freedom.  In other words, how are rational and intuitive leaps accomplished without our intellectual hands being bound by a manual?  Many have their theories, I am sure, but all good teachers will probably agree that the type of leaps Einstein speaks of are of the type that are only possible when the mind is freed.   In fact, the word liberal is derived from the Latin word liber meaning free.    And, what are we if not free?  Slaves of course, a reality that conflicts with not only the literal meaning of the constitution and its amendments but the spirit of them as well.  If you believe that, then a liberal arts education has to be at least as American as apple pie, and at most, the very air that a citizen of a democracy breathes. 

 

My father, Dr. Rudolph R. Windsor, author, rabbi, and educator, often said to me as a youth, "Joel, you have to get your knowledge from more than one book."  As a person who practiced Judaism, he did not confine his mental inquisitiveness to just the Torah or Talmud.  I remember his library being very diverse, introducing me to the Bhagava Gita, Apocrypha, Chariots of the Gods, and even the Nigger Bible, the oddest book I have ever read.  He and my mother, Mary Windsor, a fifth-grade teacher in Philadelphia, were the first people who pushed me to see the world outside of the limited extent of my experience.  Like my father, my mother was a bibliophile and a patron of the liberal arts as well.  She gave her children encyclopedias (adult and youth) to read.  She played the piano and sang to us.  She insisted that I at least try to study music and learn an instrument.  She exposed me to a variety of educational experiences from travel to math to musicals (she loved the work of Rogers and Hammerstein).  So, my first exposure to liberal arts came from the home, and because of my parents I can appreciate the spiritual-physical exploration of Fritjof Capra, the movie Pi by director Darren Aronofsky, the scientific contributions of Emmett Chappelle, the music of Basil Poledouris, or the lyricism of Taalam Acey.  For that I am thankful.

 

Recently, while listening to a talk show, I heard the hosts discussing the benefits of calculus and whether it will ever be of any importance to them.  They understood that there are other professions that make regular use of a variety of mathematical disciplines, but did not think that they would ever find a use for those studies.  I thought that there are a lot of professions and jobs (maybe most) that will rarely involve the conscious use of higher mathematics.  Algebra, geometry, calculus, and trigonometry are for geeks who work for NASA, an architectural firm, or Microsoft, right.  To the hosts’ credit, they spoke of a caller who said the usefulness of mathematics goes beyond the equations, that mathematics is useful because it enhances a way of thinking in a logical and rational manner.  Good point.  I would also add that the world of mathematics has its share of intuitive and creative thinkers, people who see numbers much in the same way that Romare Bearden sees paper scraps from magazines.  Calculus, in particular, is the mathematical study of change.  It was created by Sir Isaac Newton in the 1680s.  For a moment, think about the things in this world or universe that don't change.  If you exclude God (most think that God is immutable), you probably cannot come up with one thing that does not continually transform.  Considering this fact, how important is calculus and what an act of creative genius!

 

Wouldn’t it be great if one day a person became enlightened to how the universe works while facing Mecca, listening to Jazz, and chanting y = mx + b or some other combination of science, spiritualism, art, and math.  And, at that moment, that person will realize what it really means to be freed by the arts.  And, if this person happens to work at a fast food restaurant and asks you “Would you like fries with that?” after you order, don’t think of him or her as a failure or even weird.  After all, when that person has figured out the workings of the cosmos, no one will need money anyway.  But fries?  Well, that is a different thing altogether.

 

“And I think it enriches one’s life, to be able to have a conception of how the universe came to be, and where it’s going. Being broadly trained, in the liberal arts sense, is hugely important because you don’t know what’s going to be important to you in the long run. The world changes.”

 
-Vijay Balasubramanian