Professor Elam

Weekend August 8, 2015

John Agresto has a piece in this weekend's WSJ in defense of liberal arts and what he thinks is wrong  with its teaching. Here is my take. 

 The idea of a liberal arts education might be a good one, if in  fact we can find a student who has learned anything about the liberal arts. For example, in one of my business classes a student began her presentation  with the famous line, 

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. 

I stopped her right there and asked, who wrote it and what was the author writing about. 

Out of two of my classes of some 20 students on only one person could identify the author as Dickens 

Worse, I got guesses that it was Shakespeare. Oh and the average age of my group is 32, these are not 19 year olds. My point being that these 'students' learned absolutely zilch zero nada about liberal arts in the required high school and community college literature classes. And by the way, stroll through any airport where people are reading, is anyone reading the Iliad, just wondered. 

Shakespeare is at best hard to read, watching Richard Burton do it is much easier to understand. But I suspect students might better profit from learning why the Iliad was written. Many have compared that story to Luke Skywalker of Star Wars or Harry Potter at Hogwarts. All three were orphans on a long journey of challenge. That is the story and that is the point, I don't know that struggling to read Middle English makes that point. Indeed J K Rowling has earned praise for writing an engaging tale that younger students do like to read. 

I would say there is as much to learn in Tom Wolfe' The Right Stuff as there is in  MacBeth, and it is a lot easier to read. Too bad Wolfe went from non fiction to fiction, I was riveted by the  Kandy Colored Tangerine Flake  Streamlined Baby when I was in college.

And while I am on the topic it is regrettable that we do not require students to take advantage of the money offerings here in San Antonio. How many have attended a live play at one of our many community theaters or a docent led discussion at the McNay or San Antonio art museum?