http://www.theatlantic.com/education/ar … ts/410500/Christian Nattiel rattles off the way his course of studies has prepared him for his prestigious role as a company commander in charge of 120 fellow cadets at the U.S. Military Academy.
Nattiel, of Dade City, Florida, isn’t focusing at West Point on military science, or strategy, or leadership. He’s majoring in philosophy.
Ramrod straight in his Army combat uniform on the historic campus—where future officers are required to take humanities and social-sciences courses such as history, composition, psychology, literature, and languages—he said that, in philosophy, “There’s no right answer, and that’s very useful in the Army, so you’re not so rigid.”
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“Some people are surprised, yes,” said Brigadier General Timothy Trainor, West Point’s academic dean, in his high-ceilinged, wood-paneled office in the Gothic-style stone administration building.
“It’s important to develop in young people the ability to think broadly, to operate in the context of other societies and become agile and adaptive thinkers,” Trainor said. “What you're trying to do is teach them to deal with complexity, diversity, and change. They’re having to deal with people from other cultures. They have to think very intuitively to solve problems on the ground.”
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Throughout higher education as a whole, however, institutions have been dropping the liberal arts. Between 2007 and 2012, four-year universities reduced their number of departments offering art history, English, languages, history, linguistics, literature, and religion, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences reports. The proportion of all bachelor’s degrees awarded that are in humanities disciplines has dropped to 6 percent from a peak of 17 percent in 1968.
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The retreat from the humanities is more pronounced at public than private universities, propelled by governors, legislators, and others who question subsidizing programs such as women’s studies and philosophy on the grounds that they’re not practical.
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A task force in Florida recommended that public universities there charge more for “non-strategic majors” such as history and English, than for degrees in science, technology, engineering, and health. “Is it a vital interest of the state to have more anthropologists? I don’t think so,” Governor Rick Scott told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
“If you want to take gender studies, that’s fine. Go to a private school and take it,” said North Carolina Governor Patrick McCrory in a 2013 radio interview. “But I don’t want to subsidize that if that’s not going to get someone a job.”
The Republican presidential contender Senator Marco Rubio has questioned whether it’s worth taking out student loans “to study, you know—I don’t want to offend anybody—Roman history? Are there any Romans here?”
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The stakes are even higher in the military, said Bruce Keith, a professor of sociology at West Point. Cadets who graduate from there “will be in charge of people’s lives. We want to make sure they have the ability to not only make decisions but reflect on the consequences of those decisions for themselves and for everyone else involved.”
That’s among the reasons liberal arts now referred to by academics as “liberal education”—are being expanded instead of eliminated at such places as military academies, Trainor and others say. The Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, is now ranked ninth among the nation’s liberal-arts schools by U.S. News and World Report’s influential “Best Colleges” rankings, West Point 22nd, and the Air Force Academy 29th.
You would think the military would be more interested in creating people who won't think but just obey. I know they are training officers which are expected to be sharper than grunts but still.
Perhaps I am reaching but I think the decline in the quality of our political system is tied to the fact that education in the liberal arts and sciences fell in favor of business degrees and other specialist education. I don't think the world needs much more people with degrees in human resources. More voters with backgrounds in history and political science would change how elections are run and what kind of candidates win.
I took a few business classes and of course low level classes can't be used to judge entire majors but the things I learned in those few business classes didn't seem very complex, useful in practice, and esoteric enough that they couldn't be learned in the office or in a company paid training program. It is kind of wrong that people are expected to educate themselves in business for 4 years for jobs that no longer exists or is all done in China. Especially if the company could have offered the same workshops like they once did. Obviously very specialised business degrees such as accounting are very practical and useful but I don't think the person with a business degree from TCNJ, The College of New Jersey (real school), is any better off as a human than the person with a Sociology degree from NYU. At least once both people's job goes to India, the sociology major still has a built on knowledge base that is applicable in their life beyond just how much value they add to a soulless corporation.
I am super bias though. I am a history/political science major. And I find that discussing one of those things with someone with a decent education in that subject is a lot better than with Joe Smith Community college IT certificate.
