Nurture the Goose

A former colleague shared on Facebook recently an article that seemed to defend the humanities ( http://chronicle.com/article/Beyond-Critical-Thinking/63288/) while challenging the fact that critical-thinking has become erroneously defined as singularly critical.  Then, I attended a symposium and ended up talking with the admirable presenter, an educator, and for all the intelligent conversation we did have, one thing discussed with another colleague struck and disturbed me for which I did not have words to respond at the time. 

The long done erosion of fine arts in schools, what appears to be a need to defend the humanities curriculum in higher education, and then the promotion of competency based training… at the expense of liberal arts in higher education, leaves me fundamentally disturbed.  The comment that started this discussion that ended with this latter observation was “who has ever been asked to deconstruct Beowulf in an interview?”!!! I have to say I was astounded to hear this dialogue between my colleagues whom I admire as intelligent.

I’ll own the fact that I may be biased, having been educated in the arts.  I held concern early on how such an education would translate into the world of employment and was assured that the liberal arts breed true leadership.  They do this because they expose us to a broader purview and to activity that expands the capacity of the brain, that feeds creativity.

Is creativity not tantamount to innovation in the business world?  And I read all over, and truly believe, innovation to be a critical element to success in a global economy.  So why is it that we seem to want to undermine our capacity in this realm?  There is something to everything, so yes community colleges offering competency based education has a definite place, but could it be that through this under-exposure to the arts that we have undermined our societal capacity to conceptualize, think “out of the box”?  Are we now recognizing a need for that which we have bred out through the loss of arts based education?

Just because we do not understand a thing, because we can not recognize immediate value, is it of any less value.  Truly, there is something to everything; though no one thing is the end all, be all in itself.  I propose that under-exposure to the arts has created a kind of prejudice, one that devalues diversity of thinking.  We see it in communication training where the art of conversation has been usurped by one’s ability to form a sound bite that has any chance of being heard.  Our capacity to listen, to hear, to just appreciate something for what it is, to reflect, to share in-depth, to take… time…  Are we literally breeding this out ourselves as a society?  Have we become the society of the “quick fix”?

I witness this in a focus on short-term and short-sighted problem solving, in a reluctance to invest in potential for the long-term, in our need for “specialists” who can fill an immediate skill requirement with no regard to satisfying our human craving for growth.  Technology could allow us more time to spend on one another as humans, but instead it has fed a desire for even we humans to produce better and faster.  Are we set to dehumanize our selves?  Turn ourselves into the robots we seek to create from technology?  Is that it?  In order to create robots in our own image, must we first reduce ourselves to becoming the robots we seek to create?

Take… time… and give someone a hug.  It is so much more than a handshake.

~ Jacqueline