Redeeming the Liberal Arts
Few subjects have suffered as much as the liberal arts from the numbing power of stale rhetoric, hollow appeals to tradition, and unrelenting journalistic misrepresentation. Together, these three factors have generated and legitimated public skepticism about the liberal arts. A liberal arts education (which is rarely identified with the acquisition of scientific literacy) seems either a useless enterprise or a decorative habit cherished by a narrow elite, comparable to someon
