Ethics and values

We at the St. Paul House have often talked of the importance of enacting our values in all sectors of our lives. This integration is a key component of social change. For us, it is an enormous privilege to have internships that are meaningful often align with our values. There may be times where we will have to find a paycheck just to survive, but we will keep our values and our passions close, finding venues to express them. 

Things we have learned

In Japan, all there of us interned for an organization called Asian Rural Institute,. Although, we all interning at the same oIn Japan, all there of us interned for an organization called Asian Rural Institute,. Although, we all interning at the same organization, we wanted to explore difficult topics. 

What Have We Learned After All?

"Social advance depends as much upon the process through which it is secured as upon the result itself." --Jane Addams


As our LSC experience winds to a close, the Northfield house would like to digest further the following (in no particular order of importance):

The Art of Value

Paul Knutson is Rice County’s Assessor; his job is to go to each property in Rice County and declare how much value each property has. When asked what method he used to measure “value,” Paul responded, “What I do is not a science. It is an art. You might tell me that the house across the street from here is worth $100,000. But I’d tell you that it’s worth $150,000. Value is completely subjective.”

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:

Class room learning can be very theoretical. The books we read and topics we cover in our courses can be very abstract.

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.”