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elleng

(130,156 posts)
Thu Aug 25, 2016, 09:40 PM Aug 2016

Why Get a Liberal Education?

It is the “life and breath of medicine.”

*At the same time, as the cost of an undergraduate education skyrockets, the validity of a broad-based liberal education has also come increasingly under fire. People question the value of a liberal arts education in a digital economy compared to the hard, technical skills from the STEM fields in making graduates marketable in today’s world.

The confluence of these two shifts is particularly marked in smaller medical centers like ours at Dartmouth. This raises the question: Does a medical school belong with a liberal arts school? Or are we (as we are sometimes called) an overly expensive trade school that produces “body mechanics” and outside the school’s dedicated mission to liberal education?

As medical school faculty members and administrators, we sought to explore this question.

A Need to Know How to Communicate

Many may be surprised to learn that liberal education is deeply ingrained in medical school curricula. Yes, medical students learn anatomy, physiology, biochemistry and neuroscience, but they also have required courses in ethics, leadership, policy, economics, sociology and psychology.

To succeed at their trade, doctors not only need to have a sophisticated knowledge of biology, they also must master the complex clinical micro—and macro-systems in which their patients live and they work.'>>>

https://news.dartmouth.edu/news/2016/08/why-get-liberal-education

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Why Get a Liberal Education? (Original Post) elleng Aug 2016 OP
I personally think everyone should have a firm foundation in liberal arts beginnin in middle school. TexasProgresive Aug 2016 #1
I agree, elleng Aug 2016 #2
Because it teaches you how to think. Volaris Aug 2016 #3
We're fighting people who dont see a need for public education any more. Seriously. Baobab Aug 2016 #9
A liberal arts education exposes you to a little about everything. Old and In the Way Aug 2016 #4
Nice! Buckeye_Democrat Aug 2016 #5
See. here's the difficulty. malthaussen Aug 2016 #6
MY education about 'ethics' was not derived from schools, elleng Aug 2016 #7
Which is rather the point I was making. malthaussen Aug 2016 #8

TexasProgresive

(12,148 posts)
1. I personally think everyone should have a firm foundation in liberal arts beginnin in middle school.
Thu Aug 25, 2016, 09:59 PM
Aug 2016

We need a population that has a complete tool box which enables them to think rationally and to communicate well. This push denigrating a liberal education has been going on for quite sometime to the detriment of us all. Few people can produce the prose of our founders.

And wouldn't it be great if your physician could speak in well formed sentences filled with good information as to your diagnoses and treatment?

Volaris

(10,260 posts)
3. Because it teaches you how to think.
Thu Aug 25, 2016, 10:16 PM
Aug 2016

I don't want to live in a community of technically proficient idiots. That's what totalitarian bureaucracies are made of. It's the essence of what enables the dysfunction of the Corporate State, and it's why millions of Morans are going to vote for Trump in November.

Baobab

(4,667 posts)
9. We're fighting people who dont see a need for public education any more. Seriously.
Sat Aug 27, 2016, 02:13 AM
Aug 2016

Ive had private conversations with people who tell me that its time to get rid of public education. We need to disconnect education from jobs because as jobs go away the financial argument for college will get weaker, as more and more people fail to get a job after four or six or even eight years of college. Employment will become the exception rather than the norm by mid century.

Frankly, we need a national discussion on the jobless future that asks the important questions like what kind of future do we want in a world where the bar to employment is so high that most people never attain that level of skill in their lifetimes.

Do we want a society that pushes the vast majority of us out? I think we should start seeing education as its own reward.

Corruption will just get worse and worse and one possibility is that people will just become disgusted with the evils caused by money.

Old and In the Way

(37,540 posts)
4. A liberal arts education exposes you to a little about everything.
Thu Aug 25, 2016, 10:27 PM
Aug 2016

A consevative arts degree wouuld expose you to a lot of nothing

malthaussen

(17,066 posts)
6. See. here's the difficulty.
Fri Aug 26, 2016, 09:09 AM
Aug 2016

In the bad old days, the ruling class, the business class, and the professional class all had liberal educations. It was rather the expected thing. And with this education, they were expected to lead nations into enlightenment and bring peace and progress to the human race. So, since they were all educated at the same schools and in the same traditions, why didn't this happen? We are where we are today, arguably, because those educated in the liberal tradition did not respect it enough to follow its precepts, and were willing to betray the principles said education supposedly inculcates for expediency and personal advantage. It really matters little how many ethics courses one takes if one is laughing up his sleeve the whole time; and after all, ethics are still part of law education, and we can see what that's worth.

I've been liberally educated, largely at my own initiative, and I find the liberal arts endless sources of joy and delight, but I can't claim that a liberal education -- or any education at all, if it comes to that -- is some kind of panacea for all our social ills. That liberal education is discouraged by the fascists who want to eliminate critical thinking in the masses is true, I suppose, but those self-same fascists are often the products of the liberal education it is being claimed is their best opposition. Something is missing in the equation.

-- Mal

elleng

(130,156 posts)
7. MY education about 'ethics' was not derived from schools,
Fri Aug 26, 2016, 01:01 PM
Aug 2016

but from my parents. My 'liberal education' surely buttressed my 'home' schooling re: ethics, but nothing much more than that.

malthaussen

(17,066 posts)
8. Which is rather the point I was making.
Fri Aug 26, 2016, 04:15 PM
Aug 2016

All the education in the world, liberal or otherwise, is not going to make good citizens if the student has not learned already to value good citizenship.

-- Mal

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