Not an Intruder – Just an Intern

"“Ma’am, don’t leave your post!” the bailiff nearly shouted into the phone. “I think we’ve got an intruder. Don’t let him leave, and don’t you dare let him take anything out of that backpack!”"

Artes Liberales: Alma Mater*

A reflective response to Donald Kagan’s Farewell Speech, "Ave Atque Vale"

Having little or no sense of the human experience through the ages, of what has been tried, of what has succeeded and what has failed, of what is the price of cherishing some values as opposed to others, or of how values relate to one another, they leap from acting as though anything is possible, without cost, to despairing that nothing is possible.

The Great White Conversation

The liberal arts have been known for their teaching of the "classics" - Plato, Socrates, Shakespeare. By appreciating the classics, we can learn from history... only with such a background can we create informative and innovative ideas that progress us into a "good life" and a more beneficial future. I experienced this firsthand through St. Olaf's Great Conversation program my first two years of college - or what we liked to call it: The Great White Conversation.

Liberal Arts and Cultural Disconect

Kagan in his farewell speech "Ave atque vale" evaluates the evolution of liberal arts education. He criticized the failure of modern liberal arts colleges:

Allegiance and Devotion

As students of the liberal arts, we are driven to enhance our understanding of the world, to seek truth, to foster discussion and productive criticism, to question what we have been taught is reality, to avoid taking things at face value, and to enrich our own education experience. We select majors, degrees, concentrations, focuses, and studies to prepare ourselves for a specific career or life path, and we expect that our liberal arts education will enable us to be effective, successful, fulfilled, and contributive individuals.

Free and Humble

Liberal arts education is supposed to make us free. Its also supposed to make us creative. Think of the most bizarre thing you can think of- an alien, say. Now go back to the figure you have on your mind and think about what constitutes the alien- I bet all the things you have used are the things that you have seen before.

Ave atque vale... et te contradic?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, what really sparked me into thinking about the liberal arts recently was a job posting I stumbled upon (or as a liberal arts professor might phrase it, a job posting upon which I stumbled).  The posting was for a government agency in Vermont, and it advertized an entry-level position for a student just completing either a graduate or an undergraduate degree in planning.

Education of Exploration

 I am someone who is passionate about music and the arts in general, but I feel somewhat unfulfilled by my music studies at Olaf.  I feel that my music major has only really prepared me to become a better musician… and nothing more. 

Life's "Important Questions"

In his essay "Ave Atque Vale," Donald Kagan laments the current state of liberal education in the U.S., comparing it to the education received by English gentlemen in the eighteenth century, which "prized sociability over the solitude of hard study." According to Kagan, liberal education has abandoned its quest of knowledge as an end in itself, failing to provide undergraduates with a common philosophical and historical foundation upon which to discuss life's important questions.

Natural sciences vs. social sciences

               As a non-natural science or mathematics major, I find a problem with Kagan’s assertion that, within a modern liberal arts education, only those majoring in the natural sciences or mathematics come to appreciate learning and “knowledge as a good in themselves.”

Perspectives on the Liberal Arts

Donald Kagan writes,  "Instead, I find a kind of cultural void, an ignorance of the past, a sense of rootlessness and aimlessness, as though not only the students but also the world was born yesterday, a feeling that they are attached to the society in which they live only incidentally and accidentally."

Knowing Something of Everything

Kagan says, of free men in ancient society, that they "must know something of everything and understand general principles without yielding to the narrowness of expertise."

Kagan, the Liberal Arts, and the Environment

In his writing, Kagan states very clearly that, "we must all think about our values, responsibilities, and our relationships with one another and with the society in which we live. This is the purpose of a liberal arts education. He goes on to include possible studies like history, philosophy  and the arts. He also importantly notes the importance of a moral and civic education. However, there is one key part missing from all of this: The environment.

Pride and Precedent

“Having little or no sense of the human experience through the ages, of what has been tried, of what has succeeded and what has failed, of what is the price of cherishing some values as opposed to others, or of how values relate to one another, they leap from acting as though anything is possible, without cost, to despairing that nothing is possible.”

Liberal Arts in a Financially-Driven World

"As Professor Kagan noted, we no longer live in a world driven by the inculcation of values, nor by the quest of pure knowledge. Rather, we, as a society, understand freedom in a financial sense. In that way, liberal arts institutions do indeed promote freedom for their students – in that its students are free to make money in whatever way they choose. At St. Olaf, evidence of this abounds."

For changing lives

In the Phillips neighborhood, there is a building on Park Avenue--newly built, bright, and modern. It was named the Center for Changing Lives--it houses a Somali-owned daycare, a Lutheran pentecostal church, an affordable cafe, Refugee Services of Lutheran Social Service (LSS), and other social services. I take my laptop over there from the main LSS administrative building in St. Paul every week or so to work in the space with Pastor Mary, one of my supervisors. We go there because, we say, we want to get our lives changed.

A Myth: Social Change without Personal Change

"Perhaps you are a better person than I am. I hope you are. But, if you’re like me, take this moment to remind yourself: we are parts of the problems in this world. We acknowledge that we are part of a broken society, yet we are participants in this brokenness, and we are fools if, even in our activism to change it, we separate ourselves from it."

"Sit down, shut up, and listen."

I can barely begin to think about all the theory and methodology that has gone into all of the lessons I've received from teachers since age 3. I had always assumed that teachers just had natural tendencies that enabled them to effectively communicate with even the most difficult child, break up fights between stubborn youth, and manage to have an entire room of squeamish and impatient elementary students focus politely on what they were saying.

One Banana Only, Please!

Banana is one of the cheapest fruits available in grocery stores nearby. It is our house-fruit, mainly because of two reasons: healthy and budget friendly. With approximately $135/weekly budget for dinner and shared food such as bread, milk, peanut butter and jelly, and banana (of course), we really need to be wise on deciding what to buy. Buying bananas is definitely a win-win solution so we do buy them every week. Here comes the problem though:  bananas are usually gone by Wednesday. Thus, we keep buying more, but seriously, how many bananas are too many? We can't just fill the whole shopping cart with bananas because then the other people will lose the opportunity to keep their budget low (not the actual reason).

Roots and Tops

Over the last few days, I have learned much about how my organization functions in the public sphere.  I met (well, encountered) two of its board members in the real world, learned about its role in transit legislative coalitions, and spent some less-than-captivating time with the online member database.