well it's my great pleasure to introduce Dean John R Rosenberg Dean of the
College of Humanities at Brigham Young University
he assert previously served as an associate dean and his chair of the
Spanish and Portuguese department Dean Rosenberg his research has been 19th and
20th century Spanish literature which he's included in which has included
travel to Spain over 50 times to conduct research in the areas of Spanish
literature and of late that literature's connections with Spanish visual arts the
author of two books an editor of the third he has written scholarly articles
and participated frequently in national and international conferences in 2007
the Institute for educational inquiry named him an agenda for education in a
democracy scholar and his introduction to Hispanic literature course was named
one of the top 25 best world language courses at u.s. colleges and university
by the educational policy Improvement Center as part of Dean Rosenberg's
ongoing commitment to public education he has received eight grants from the
National Endowment for the Humanities to conduct summer seminars for teachers and
serves on the management team of BYU's Center for the improvement of teaching
and schooling and he was a leadership associate at the Institute for
educational inquiry in Rosenberg served a mission in Venezuela received a BA in
psychology and Spanish from BYU and a PhD in Spanish literature from Cornell
University thereafter he returned to BYU to assume a full-time teaching position
he and his wife Gail Emory Greene are the parents of two daughters today Dean
Rosenberg will be speaking on humanities plus the case for a liberal arts
education please join me in welcoming Dean John Rosenberg
well I'm delighted to be here
delighted to see some friends here who are gonna keep me honest Tom from the
south end of campus he is going to make sure that I say things that are
defensible about technology and science and Nancy Christensen in the back I'm
gonna mention a thing or two that she knows a whole lot more about than I do
and Nancy if I get it wrong stand up and say no no it actually needs to be
understood understood this way I'm interested in knowing in who you are
students how many of you would consider yourselves to be students of the liberal
arts almost all of you so this is good this is singing with the choir and I'm
not quite sure whether I'm going to run out of material before I run out of time
if that's the case we'll have a conversation in the remaining time it's
more likely I'm gonna run out of time before I run out of material in which
case we'll just stop at ten minutes to twelve I would like to correct the title
the titles is a great one that that Corey gave us the case for a liberal
arts education I would rather make it a case for a liberal arts education I
don't think there is just a single case that one might make and I'm quite sure
that if Cory were to have the bad judgment to invite me back and repeat
the talk a month from now I would make a different case than the one that I'm
making now but the most critical thing from my point of view is not the case or
a case that I might make but the case that you as liberal arts students will
need to make at some point a case that you will need to make to family members
to roommates to parents to potential employers in fact in my mind the most
critical learning outcome for a liberal arts student is the first one which what
I would say learn to be articulate about why you have chosen a liberal arts
major and to be able to describe to others who are not in the liberal arts
just why that major matters and how it prepares you for the world of work and
for the world of living in general I hope that the things that I amuse myself
about over the next 50 minutes might help you in making your own case for a
liberal arts a liberal arts education let's start with a statement that was
made about 60 years ago by faculty at the University of Chicago as they were
putting together their general education program and at a time when gendered
language was not the same kind of sin that it is today they gave us this
statement which i think is terrific men are born free they are not born wise the
purpose of a liberal education in a democracy is to make free men lies there
seems to be suggested in this very simple aphorism that somehow freedom and
democracy and moral living are connected with an acquired wisdom something that
we're not born with but that we must learn through the hard work of
discipline and that somehow the liberal arts are tied up in that process of
acquiring the knowledge and the skills that we need to be free in a democratic
society and to live a moral life well perhaps we ought to try to unpack a
little bit exactly what we mean by the term liberal arts liberal now there's a
scary word in the heart of Utah County is that what we mean when we say liberal
education that we're talking about the left wing of the Democratic you say yes
dr. Hyer is convinced that that's what it is let me give you a slightly
different definition of that liberal first of all we might understand is a
kind of education historically it was the kind of
education that was made available to free citizens of Greece and Rome as
opposed to the kind of education that was available to slaves non free non
liberal people one in in thinking about that difference one might be tempted to
use a couple of Greek phrases the kind of education that free citizens received
was often referred to as ap STEMI whereas the kind of education that
slaves received was referred to as techne now you'll notice those roots in
some words that we use today technology and epistemology epistemic was
understood as knowledge and particularly as a kind of knowledge that was stable
that was immutable that one could count on
whereas techne was a craft it was a skill that was contingent based on
particular particular circumstances it would be really easy to grasp on to that
binary opposition of AP stem a and techne and say well one of them is
better than the other obviously if free people got AP stem a
it must be better than the technique or we can jump to the 20th century and say
clearly no obviously the technology is superior to the APIs temmie but it's
very clear Nancy I think as we study the literature of this period that the Greek
philosophers and the Romans who followed them understood these two terms not as
oppositional but craft and knowledge knowing about and knowing how were two
sides of the very same coin of being competent in the business of
understanding what it means to be a human being and I think the primary
message that I want to be able to deliver today is that fact that we must
reject the opposition between science and technology and Arts and Letters as
somehow opposed to each other as somehow rivals
in the domains for understanding the human
edition and see them as necessary partners and companions yes we go about
our education and I'll try to make a case for that as we go we go a little
bit a little bit further so one sense of the word liberal then is the kind of
education that a certain kind of citizen received another way of understanding
the term liberal might be a kind of education that itself is liberating and
I love this particular statement by the classicist Peter Brown describing what
the liberal arts in particular the humanities meant to the Romans he says
long before the humanities became in modern times a bundle of university
disciplines they were not a subject but a mighty virtue Humanitas in the
singular was a central value to the ancient Romans Humanitas meant a sense
of measure based on awareness of a common human condition you mani toss
assumed that the primary duty of humans was to deal with other human beings not
with abstractions but with persons of flesh and blood and of like passions to
their own above all Humanitas was a virtue that needed to be fought for to
uphold a code of respect for human beings and of love for those things
which help to make them yet more human that was never easy it involved a moral
militancy an interesting phrase which we should never underestimate Humanitas
involved an insistence on integrity candor good counsel in relation to those
who wielded power and on personal restraint in situations fraught with
occasions for arrogance sensuality and cruelty above all for the good roman it
involved a strenuous attachment to wisdom and to humane good humor in the
face of ignorance false certainty and rage Humanitas was the unwritten moral
constitution of the empire in my view what we do in the liberal arts is much
more than pursue a degree a certification it is all about pursuing a
way of life and of interacting with other human beings during the entire
course of our experience well so there's a sense of what it might mean in terms
of liberal what about the notion of arts what do we understand when
say liberal arts well that word is kind of loaded for us our art historians
think of paintings Steve Jones thinks of notes on on on the piano some people
from the south side of campus might say well the arts are the soft and fuzzy
part of the university and then you have the hard sciences when you set up that
kind of opposition you start to get some really unfortunate associations the arts
are soft they're idealistic they're reflective they lead to a life of
poverty the on the other side of things you know the hard sciences are hard
they're more rigorous they're more practical they lead to action as opposed
to reflection and they lead to lots of money in in employment those are the
opposition's that we tend to set up when we think of art as opposed to sciences
but the way that the word originally is used ours means not just art it also
means skill and when the writers in Latin talked about liberal arts they
were really talking about liberal skills or liberal pursuits that would lead not
only to a certain set of knowledge about the world but a set of skills that would
help them to interact in the world and so what are the liberal arts the liberal
arts are the pursuit of a kind of knowledge and a set of skills that in
themselves will be liberating liberating in intellectual terms in social terms I
would say in spiritual terms and yes in economic terms
so having laid that foundation let me ask the question how many liberal arts
are there 10 who wants to guess
Martha how many liberal arts are there seven because she knows that already and
she knows Botticelli wonderful painting and the 1480s Martha a young man being
presented to the seven liberal arts we could go through and take 15 minutes and
actually identify I think each one of them but they are easier to see in a
manuscript that was produced a couple of hundred years before Botticelli got
around to his fresco in which we have them encircling the queen of all
disciplines philosophy of course you can see Socrates and Plato underneath in the
in the queen of philosophy in the middle but you'll notice at the very top you
have grammar she has a whip because of course students have to be beat into
understanding their grammar you have rhetoric Nancy you have dialectics those
are three language based liberal arts they were known as the Trivium they were
sort of like the undergraduate lower division general education in the middle
in medieval University you had to master the language arts before you could move
on to the next four liberal arts that were known as the quadrivium and what do
they happen to be well music arithmetic geometry and astronomy it's very
interesting if we had a lot more time we could actually think about the way those
four elements of the quadrivium at least in an idealistic sense constitute what
we understand as the Gothic cathedral during during the Middle Ages but we
won't we don't have time we don't have time to go into that during the
Renaissance Nancy I think it's true that the pursuit of the liberal arts was not
done for its own sake but in order to be able to act well to be able to take
action to be able to do something and primarily to be able to provide
leadership for the polities that were growing up around these these new
universities there was a harmony not a tension but there was a harmony
between liberal arts letters and what at that point in history was known as
natural philosophy natural philosophy is now what's taught on the south side of
campus but back in the Renaissance it was considered philosophy physics was
philosophy the biological sciences astronomy those were all philosophical
disciplines but they were in attempt to understand the natural world through
philosophical methodology but they were the world of poetry the world of letters
was not seen in opposition to these things it was a complementary a
complementary discipline when we get into the 19th century that starts to
fall apart and now these are seen as asymmetrical pursuits of human knowledge
and a binary opposition gets created and Science and Technology begins to
displace letters and the liberal arts as valid means of coming to understand the
human condition that really continues through most of the 20th century but
those of you that are paying attention are beginning to see that that's
changing and we're now beginning to go back to more of the Renaissance notion
of the harmony of these two different domains of understanding our experience
there is of course Steve Jobs famous sign the crossroads Apple as is at the
crossroads of what ap stem a and technique of Technology and the liberal
arts and in a book that I can recommend Daniel pink published a few years ago a
whole new mind why right-brainers will rule the future the book isn't quite as
reductive as that but he is making the case that those of you that will be
successful in the next job environment will be people who can Wed both
technological skills with liberal arts skills they are not oppositional they
rely on each other well what I would like to do in in the time we have is to
to talk a little bit about these terms again of AP stem a and techne perhaps in
the sense of the liberal arts as a way of being the
liberal arts to be and the liberal arts to do let me see if I've got enough time
to get through some of these slides first of all and what I have are a
number of quotations from interesting people starting in the 15th century up
through the 20th century we all know Machiavelli everybody wanted to have an
uncle like Machiavelli right a dear relative kindly gentleman
famous for writing the Prince of course that great treatise on statesmanship in
1513 he wrote a letter to a friend that historians pay great attention to
because it is in that letter where he describes the composition of the prince
but I love this quote that comes before that particular portion he says
describing his own habits of reading he says when I when evening comes I return
to my home and I go into my study and on the threshold I take off my everyday
clothes which are covered with mud and mire and I put on regal robes and
dressed in a more appropriate manner I enter into the ancient Courts of ancient
man and am welcomed by them kindly I love that notion of dressing to read I
actually have a colleague at the University of Washington who does that
comes in from playing tennis he must shower and dress properly before
picking up a book there's something Marvis ly respectful about the world of
ideas in that in that habit and there I am not ashamed to speak to them to ask
them the reasons for their actions and they and their humanity answer me and I
feel no boredom I dismiss every affliction I no longer fear poverty nor
do I tremble at the thought of death I become completely part of them one of
the beans of liberal arts is to read passionately and with insight you'll
notice that this is not passive reading this is not Machiavelli just sitting
there wondering how many pages he needs to get through in order to not be
embarrassed at class the next day this is reading as exchange
as conversation as dialog he asked questions the books respond back they're
engaged in conversation and tell in a very important intellectual sense he
becomes one of them that's what the liberal arts can do before us if we
approach it properly 19th century wonderful fellow by the name of John
Henry Cardinal Newman you might recognize Cardinal Newman
because he wrote the hymn lead kindly light he also in the 1850s wrote a very
important book called the idea of a university that I strongly recommend and
in that book he gives us the following wisdom the student profits by an
intellectual tradition which is independent of particular teachers which
guides him in his choice of subjects and duly interprets for him those which he
chooses he apprehends the great outlines of knowledge the principles on which it
rests that's interesting specifics and theoretical principles the scale of its
parts its lights and its shades it's great points and its little as he
otherwise cannot apprehend them hence it is that his education is called liberal
a habit of mind is formed which lasts through life of which the attributes are
freedom equitable Ness calmness moderation and wisdom this then I would
assign as the special fruit of the education furnished at a university as
contrasted with other places of teaching this is the main purpose of a university
in its treatment of its students I love this idea of a liberal education
allowing us to understand the great outlines and the underlying principles
to be able to make connections between peoples and tongues and languages and
times to be under to be able to understand the interrelatedness of human
experience that is one of the primary virtues that one who aspires to be
liberally educated will attain next there's a British political philosopher
conservative political philosopher just wanted to
make that clear that we could quote conservatives in a conversation about
liberal education michael Oakshott who was one who argued by the way that
poetry and by poetry he meant the arts in general had lost or been denied its
voice in the great human conversation because the sciences were screaming so
loudly and argued that poetry needed to find its voice again at that at that
table in defining conversation we have this this is actually in an obituary
that was written for Oakshott when he died about 20 years ago conversation for
Oakshott was not merely the preferred pedagogical method it was for him the
very basis of education and a metaphor for civilization itself the languages of
science and mathematics of Arts and Letters of sport religion the trades and
the professions were all for him part of a conversation that made up the human
inheritance can you see how he's breaking down opposition's he's saying
all of these domains of understanding human experience are voices of the
conversation that we need to become fluent in only in entering this
conversation could one become fully human education was everywhere the price
of entry the ultimate business of Education then was learning to be a
human being it might include training in a trade or a skill or a discipline but
to focus on the merely employable or certifiable aspects of education
truncated one's vision of human possibility the teacher however humble
his sphere had to be understood and respected and to understand and respect
himself as the agent par excellence of civilization and I love this last line
it inspires me at the beginning of every school year the calling of the teacher
was neither more nor less than to initiate the pupil into the conversation
of mankind one of the virtues of a liberal education then is becoming
fluent in all of the voices of the conversation of mankind ap stem a
technique science math art poetry another voice Neil postman Neil postman
was a media critic professor at New York University a writer of terrific books
and by the way that I'm going to have a number of books that I put up here on
the screen that I highly recommend you look at in all of the spare time that
you have Neil postman in in one of his books the end of education has a
wonderful chapter on language and on narratives that are spun he that the
book is all about the defining narratives of Western civilization and
which narratives need to be jettisoned which narratives are not helpful to us
such as in postman's words the narrative of economic utility he finds that a
narrative that is not constructive to Western society and instead proposes
more healthy narratives well one of the narratives that he proposes is around
the way language works and he suggests that we need to be much more attentive
in our education into exactly the way our language functions in building our
understanding of the world around us he says for example a metaphor is not an
ornament as we might learn in my Spanish 339 class it's not just a trick that a
poet plays a metaphor is an organ of perception I love that notion and he
goes on to explain that he says for example in the in the ancient Jewish
Mishnah they used four different metaphors for learning learning might be
a sponge it might be a funnel it might be a strainer or it might be a sieve and
then he asks which is the best metaphor for education well can't be a sponge
that soaks up everything indiscriminately of what is worthy of
being retained and not the funnel that's not so good in one end out the other the
strainer the strainer you pour the wine through
I suppose the grape juice and it lets the wine go through and retains the
dregs that's kind of the opposite but the sieve the sieve lets through the
dust and retains the fine flour well metaphors the ones that we choose
to use to describe our experience affect our very perception and experience and
he says here at the bottom world making through language is a narrative of power
durability and inspiration it is the story of how we make ourselves known to
the world it is a story that plays a role in all other narratives for
whatever we believe in or don't believe in is to a considerable extent the
function of how our language addresses the world and so we haven't we and all
of my colleagues here would come up with a different list but we have four
possible ways of being associated with the liberal arts education to read with
passion and insight to see the great outlines of human experience to become
fluent in the human conversation and to become sensitive users and consumers of
of language now all of this requires work a liberal arts education is of no
value if we do not pursue it with rigor with passion with excitement and
unapologetically as I am fond of telling my children something that I learned
from a professor of mine many years ago that which is easy is never satisfying
for very long none of the skills that I mentioned above can be acquired through
laziness or through lack of passion or discipline that we bring to our studies
and I love this notion by Erasmus it's actually Erasmus loved this particular
adage this particular notion it actually has its origins clear back in the times
of the Emperor Augustus in Rome and came through the Middle Ages in a variety of
forms but it's the the latin phrase Festina lente which means literally to
hasten slowly and the emblem that was used to describe this adage was the
dolphin Raptor Anker a dolphin suggesting tradition and
restraint and patience the anchor suggesting forward motion urgency
pursuit of a goal what Erasmus says is this about this
particular adage if to make haste slowly is not forgotten which means the right
timing and the right degree govern delight by vigilance and patience so
that nothing regrettable is done through haste and nothing left undone through
sloth that may that may contribute to the well-being of the Commonwealth could
any student be more successful more stable and firmly rooted than this I
love this notion in our studies of being patient and thorough and rooted it's not
just tradition but in scholarship and in what great minds have said before but to
do so with an urgency of moving forward or pursuit pursuing argue our goals
Festina lente sounds like a paradox but in that paradox there is a great truth
about how we should pursue our liberal arts education so that's the to be part
I firmly believe that a preparation and liberal arts helps us to be something it
helps us to be good readers it helps us to be good users of language it helps us
to be fluent in the human conversation etc etc etc but it also helps us to do
things our very own Brigham Young you can find
this in the founding documents of the University in the aims of a BYU
education said this education is the power to think clearly
sounds like liberal arts the power to act well in the world's work and the
power to appreciate life appreciate life sounds like liberal arts well what about
the power to act well in the world's work well no I better get that someplace
else on campus not true and what I'd like to do in the next couple of minutes
is just share with you some of the things that we have been learning about
wide liberal arts prepare us to act well in the world's work first of all let me
just share a couple of citations the first one refers to a study this was
reported in The Chronicle of higher education a few years ago
where 305 executives were asked what skills that they thought colleges and
universities ought to instill in their students what were great corporate
leaders expecting to find in their future employees and what do they
respond top three choices teamwork skills critical thinking and analytical
analytic reasoning skills and oral and written communication that sounds like
the liberal arts to me and then a Dean of a Business School not our own Dean of
the business school although I think our I think I think our Dean would probably
agree with this as well said the following learning how to think
critically how to imaginatively frame questions and consider multiple
perspectives has historically been associated with a liberal arts education
not a business school curriculum so this change presumably in business school
curricula of the future represents something of a tectonic shift for
business school leaders the liberal arts desire is to produce holistic thinkers
who think broadly and make these important moral decisions now one of the
books that has caused the most trembling this year in higher education is a study
that was produced at the beginning of the year called academically adrift or
what was the subtitle why colleges and universities are failing our children
and grandchild like that and it was a comprehensive
study of colleges and universities across the United States in which
students were subjected to the collegiate learning assessment a test
that would measure their achievement in three areas critical thinking complex
reasoning and the study found that American University
students weren't learning much in any of those three areas that we weren't having
much effect unless they were humanities and social science students or science
and math students now I don't want to make any comment about those with short
bars you know don't want to go down that road but what I am trying to suggest is
that precisely the kinds of skills that erroneously have been considered soft
skills that come from a study of the liberal arts are now many of the hard
skills that we are finding that employers are seeking for and it appears
that those skills are being acquired at a disproportionate rate among students
of what we traditionally call the liberal arts you can get much more
information about this on our website free of charge you don't have to pay to
subscribe it's called humanities Plus dot BYU dot edu
every week sometimes more often there is a posting a posting that helps students
of the liberal arts and our case specifically students of the humanities
but the information is applicable to all students of the liberal arts that will
help them identify what is being said outside of the university about the
value of a liberal arts education sometimes they are studies sometimes
they're articles in The Chronicle of Education sometimes there are comments
made by CEOs sometimes they are postings of opportunities for companies that are
coming to interview and who are looking specifically for liberal arts students
we would encourage you to take advantage of this resource it will help you I am
quite sure become more articulate about why you are majoring in a liberal art
and just what liberal art can do for you as you leave
campus part of our effort to to get a handle on the relationship between a
liberal arts education and what happens after we leave the university in other
words how we help each other build a bridge between the liberal arts
education and the world of work that awaits us is what we have been calling
in my college humanities plus or plus humanities let me describe humanities
Plus briefly humanities Plus says this to our humanity students congratulations
you have chosen a terrific major you need to be proud of that major you need
to pursue that major with passion and with excitement and become the best
reader the best writer the best thinker that you can possibly become and never
apologise to anyone never feel like you need to make excuses for having majored
in English or in Spanish or in any of the other majors in our College but
we're saying we want you to supplement that primary experience with a suite of
optional activities that will help you leverage your first-rate liberal arts
education when you leave BYU well what might some of those optional activities
be well internships for example participating in the Honors Program we
think that's a great way to turbocharge a liberal arts education to get a minor
or a double major in an area that is unrelated or not closely related we are
working out this fall for example with the School of Business to try to create
a major in international business that would have a high language requirement
and that we think would be of particular interest to students of the humanities
and would help them leverage again their liberal arts training with future
employment that might be coming but we also say we think that there is a place
for plus humanities and that is if you are a chemist or a biology
or an engineer or a physicist terrific the world needs all of those professions
we rely on competent people in those areas to drive our economies and to
provide the much of the lifestyle that we have become accustomed to terrific
we're glad you're majoring those things but we think that in a global world not
just a global economy but a global culture that your education might be
enriched if you were to acquire some humanities content to go along with your
technological degree how have we done that well one of the ways is through
what our College does as well as any place in the world really which is
language we're saying supplement your language experience you served a mission
you've learned languages other places find some ways to build on those
language experiences so that your language can become a tool in your
particular domain of knowledge and so it can enrich you in your life for the
remainder of your years to facilitate that we have created in the last year
language certificates that for students who are not able to find the time to do
a minor or to do a major in a foreign language they can with through a
combination of three courses and sitting for a an internationally recognised
examination in oral and written proficiency can walk away with a
certificate that indicates they have a certain level of competency in the
language of your choice we think that that is a terrific way to add a
credential to non liberal arts majors we've also created secondary majors for
those who want to go a little bit further if you have a primary major in
history but you would love to be able to do a major in French we can accommodate
that for fewer hours than would be required if you did the French major by
itself what we're trying to do is increase the total amount of language
that is taking place on this campus because we think that that is one of the
great things that distinguishes BYU from other universities around around the
world I have six minutes and ten pieces of advice and one story I can do that in
six minutes here are the 10 pieces of advice to make your liberal arts degree
something that you can both leverage in the world of work and that can become
indeed a way of living a way of being for the rest of your life I suggest
these 10 things if I were to come up with another less next week there might
be 10 different things but this is a pretty good start first go to our
humanities Plus blog I've already talked about that spend time on it every week
you'll get some information that will be really helpful to you second read
newspapers newspapers are being replaced by a less profound source of information
about the world around us long articles being replaced by sound bites by short
bits of information we need to read newspapers good newspapers and I'm not
I'm not want said anything bad about the daily universe the daily universe has a
very important function on campus but it can't be your source of news about this
complex world that we live in the New York Times can the Washington Post can
the Los Angeles time can most of the or or El Pais in Madrid or
we could go to major newspapers in countries all around the world reading
from a great newspaper every day will help you follow the counsel of the 88
section of the Doctrine and Covenants I won't go any further in that but you
know know what I'm talking about non compulsory reading jorge luiz moura case
the great Argentine writer said I hate compulsory reading you're having to do a
lot of reading in class you need to be reading stuff in addition to what we are
assigning you and you need to turn off the TV in order to do it one of the
great cultural changes that has taken place in higher ed since I was a student
from the time that you were student is the ubiquitousness of televisions and
apartments when I was your age nobody had televisions in their apartments now
we have to you know put in our cubby planner time to make sure that we get
our favorite show in get rid of the TV and read a good book
what about c-span well c-span is fine but it's not but it's not it's not the
same thing as the kind of conversation that Machiavelli was having with the
great books in his study and that's the kind of experience that we need to have
if we're really going to leverage our liberal arts education campus culture
dean jones we've got some of the best stuff in any university in the united
states plays concerts lecture series devotionals and forums for a liberal
arts students those are an essential part of our curriculum they're not
extracurricular they are a critical part of our curriculum and would encourage
you to take advantage of those things ask a good question every day when I
tell my 16 year old daughter goodbye goodbye Marie I love you ask a good
question today develop that habit every time you go to class prepare yourself in
such a way that you can ask a good question
discover what your professors hang on their walls in order to do that you have
to be in their offices I would encourage you to know by the end of this semester
what every one of your professors has hanging on his or her wall by
discovering that conversations will start
take place that will again enrich your liberal arts education consider an
honours degree you don't have to have a 36 a CT or a 4.0 GPA anybody can do
honors consider an internship we've learned that internships for
liberal arts students are no longer a luxury they are absolutely critical to
building that bridge to the world of work learn a second language
well the superior level that I'm mentioning there is the level that the
test takers the test creators tell us is required in order for you to use that
language in a professional setting that should be the goal of every liberal arts
student and finally be passionate be excited be rigorous demand a lot of
yourselves don't give up too early and finally the story in the last couple of
minutes John Gardner in his very polemical book from the 1970s called on
moral fiction tells this particular story he says it was said in the old
days that every year Thor made a circle around the Middle earth beating back the
enemies of order Thor got older every year in the circle occupied by the gods
and men grew smaller the wisdom God Woden pictured here went out to the king
of the trolls got in in Amman armlock and demanded to know of him how order my
triumph over chaos give me your left I said the king of the trolls and I'll
tell you without hesitation Vodun gave up his left eye you can see doesn't have
a left eye in the picture now tell me demanded Vodun the troll said the secret
is watch with both eyes what I would like you to remember from this
presentation is that we must see the world stereoscopically it is not arts or
sciences it is not a piste ma or technique it has seen the world with
both eyes and that what we need to pursue as liberal arts students is the
ability to see with depth and clarity using both eyes and I hope we've said a
few things today that will help you in that pursuit thank you very much for
your time
you
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