Jay’s Blog – Liberal Arts in a Highly-Specialized World
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At Grace, we have our Celebration of Learning events coming up, an opportunity to demonstrate for families all that our kids are learning and doing at school. As we prepare for these events, I thought it would be helpful to reinforce Grace’s academic distinctives. One of these is the liberal arts focus, which better prepares students for the world they will face, both now and in the future. Let me explain how.
There are a lot of schools out there, even K-12 schools, that drive students toward specialization. These schools have academies or schools of business, health-related, or technology-related fields. I saw an article the other day about a move as early as middle school to press children to focus their education on specialized fields.
I see why this course of study seems attractive, in much the same way the idea of a middle or high schooler “picking their sport,” to the exclusion of all others, seems attractive. The earlier I can funnel my child into a career path, the earlier I have them make a higher-education decision and then a professional decision. The earlier I can get him or her to a decision point on these things, the sooner they might get into the workforce, and we might save some money in the education process.
There are a couple of reasons why following this train of logic, particularly in the school arena, is problematic. First, while students may certainly begin developing preferences and ideas of what studies they enjoy (and, maybe more importantly, don’t enjoy) at such an early age, the vast majority of them lack the maturity or mental paradigms to make decisions regarding major courses of study that could, in large part, determine the course of their lives. Making a decision too soon often leads to shifts in preferences as students mature, resulting in significant changes to the course of study later on, including abandoning college altogether after significant investment, leading to more time and money lost rather than less.
But the most disturbing aspect of early specialization, and one reason Grace and many stronger Christian schools (like most in the CESA network) resist this trend, is the value of a broad liberal arts education. The “liberal” in liberal arts has nothing to do with politics. The term comes from libero, which is Latin for “book” or “great work,” and also connotes “liberal” in the sense of generous or broad. A liberal arts education is the concept of a broad and general approach to education, learning many different things, many different disciplines; everything from literature, to mathematics, to the social sciences, to what used to be called “gymnastics” and what’s now called “physical education,” or “athletics,” all thoughtfully linked in cross-disciplinary ways to promote broad and varied thinking (in this day and age, it also includes a deep commitment to STEAM- science, technology, engineering, arts, and math, all thoughtfully scoped and sequenced).
Through the liberal arts, students learn how people have lived for thousands of years and what constitutes the good, the beautiful, and the true: the life well lived. They learn what the great writers and thinkers throughout the ages have said and thought about what is noble and good. They learn what it means to be a good man or woman, a good citizen, and a good steward of the things they have been given. And, when they receive a Christian liberal arts education, when they learn all those things through the lens of what the author and creator of the universe has to say about who they are and how they were created to live, it is truly spectacular and life-giving.
Ever since the turn of the century, educators have been writing about 21st-century learning skills and concepts such as critical thinking, reasoning, clear and cogent communication, collaboration, and creativity. In a very real sense, there’s nothing particularly “21st century” about these ideas: they’ve always been necessary to living and functioning well in the workplace and society. And, nothing develops these skills like reading complex texts and critically analyzing them, being able to write and speak in clear and compelling ways, learning to listen and understand the thoughts and feelings of others, learning to work and live with all sorts of people, and learning to solve complex problems both logically and with an eye and ear towards the heart. The liberal arts, a broad course of study, especially one infused and undergirded with God’s truth, are the key to developing all these skills.
A liberal arts education leaves students remarkably resilient in an AI-ubiguitous world, as well. In a recent article, Vijay Kumar, Director of Open Learning at MIT, noted that while technical skills are required for many careers, employers are increasingly focused on human skills, such as critical thinking, collaboration, communication, initiative, creativity, and comfort with ambiguity. These human skills complement technical skills and cannot be replicated by technology.
These skills are increasingly not taught at the higher-education level. With enrollment at liberal arts colleges on the decline and higher education becoming increasingly specialized, and with a diminished focus on the liberal arts as not “career-friendly,” if our children are going to have these opportunities for a broad, resilient, life-giving education anywhere, it will happen at the K-12 level, at those schools that still offer it, schools like Grace. It is an educational mistake to rush them through that process at this level.
From a pragmatic standpoint, research shows it’s a costly mistake as well. The Washington Post reported on a study of liberal arts programs from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. The study found that, over the course of a career, a liberal arts education is remarkably practical, yielding a median return on investment of nearly $1 million of enrollment in a liberal arts program over 40 years. In fact, the study found that the return on investment for participating in programs at liberal arts colleges is more than 25 percent higher than the median for all colleges. The highest return was for a liberal arts education, followed by a professional degree in engineering, medicine, or law.
I had an experience with a CESA institutional review several years ago that supports this finding. We visited a Christian K-12 school near a major high-tech employer in another state out West. Most of the parents were engineers, and a colleague of mine and I were conducting a parent focus group.
We asked the engineer-parents what they majored in when they were in college. Most of them responded with some sort of engineering degree. We then asked them about their bosses’ major courses of study in college. The engineer-parents sheepishly looked at their feet and identified English, history, political science, sociology, or some other liberal arts major, coupled with an engineering master’s degree. The moral? If you want to be an engineer, major in engineering. If you want to lead engineers, major in English, then get your engineering degree. Their leaders understood engineering, but they also understood people, how to think, write, problem-solve, and collaborate, and all the great things they learned from their liberal arts education. That made all the difference. And this was before AI, where, as today, many wonder whether the specialized skills they learn today will be needed tomorrow.
In all the years I’ve been at Grace and all the alumni I’ve seen graduate from our school, I can confidently say that no school better prepares students to think critically, collaborate, communicate, write, and organize their thoughts than ours. If you know an alum of Grace or their parents, you should ask them. This is one of the greatest values of our school, and it’s the product of a strong liberal arts focus.
While there’s absolutely nothing wrong with return on investment, and wise parents should seek good value, at the end of the day (as a wise man said), children are God’s homework assignment to parents. The grade we receive isn’t determined by whether our kids’ average lifetime earnings exceed those of the guy or gal next door. It’s determined by whether they have a relationship with Jesus and know who they are in Christ; whether they know their calling to walk alongside Him in the joy and grief and sadness and ecstasy that the abundant life Christ promises his disciples; whether they know not just how to be good doctors or entrepreneurs or engineers, but how to be good mothers, or fathers or church members, or students, or husbands, or wives, or citizens, or friends- in short, great human beings and image bearers of God. A comprehensive liberal arts education, undergirded and rooted in God’s Word and stewarded by His people, is the best hope I’ve found for developing these essential virtues in our kids.
Jay Ferguson, Ph.D., Head of School at Grace Community School, writes regularly on his blog, JaysBlog.org.