We Don't Need No Steenkin' History! Or do we? Who knows?

Nick over at Hit and Run has a few harsh words for those journalists and pop authors who worry that US students aren't learning enough history.

Should we spend more of available time and resources on, say, history, rather than English? Who the hell knows.... [I]s it so awful that kids know more about math, reading, and science than they do about history? Mebbe, mebbe not. The ability of [David] McCullough and other historians to sell tons of books suggest the nation can route around shitty grammar school teachers pretty well. Not that we should have to.

Which brings me to a larger point: If [critics] really want to see some sort of major shift in U.S. education, they should stop holding hearings on this or that subject and instead throw open the floodgates to vouchers, charters, and other changes that would allow for true innovation in education.

Well said!

Read it here.

Remember: those who are ignorant of history are condemned to repeat it in summer school.

AND IN REBUTTAL:

Warren Goldstein, Chair of the History Department at Hartford writes in the Yale Alumni Magazine:

He notes the decline in the liberal arts and asks what good they are. He then solicits answers from several successful business-persons. Some excerpts:

"A liberal arts education teaches you how to think: how to analyze, how to read, how to write, how to develop a persuasive argument. These skills are used every day in business." She goes further: "A liberal arts education also offers the ability to focus on large ideas. We live in a world where everyone is multitasking, often skimming the surface and reacting to sound bites. But as undergraduates, we had the opportunity to read great literature and history, to focus and to consider. This developed a standard of depth and care that calibrates our work for the rest of our lives."

Many of these businesspeople say that the liberal arts, humanities in particular, prepared them to interact with others as sophisticated adults. At the most basic level, this means making credible conversation at a cocktail party or giving a persuasive speech.
....
But at a more profound level..., liberal arts lay the groundwork for strategic management of people.
....
Almost all the people I interviewed spoke of learning, as undergraduates, a mode of analysis deeper and ultimately more reliable and more creative than what they learned in business school.

Etc., etc., etc.,

You know the drill. It hasn't changed since I was reading the same argument as a high school student half a century ago. People at the top of the business world and the professions extol the benefits of a liberal arts education. And, it's true..., at that level.

But here's the rub. There is very little in a liberal arts education that will facilitate an individual's rise to the level at which those humanistic concerns kick in. The skills and values that facilitate a rise through middle management, earn professional distinction, and bring about entrepreneurial success have almost nothing to do with anything learned in liberal arts courses. In fact, they are often hostile to humanistic practice.

It is not until success is earned and one is safely ensconced at the top that a liberal arts education comes into play in any meaningful way -- and then it does have significant rewards. The trick is getting there.