I was glad to hear Fareed Zakaria defend the importance of the liberal arts and sciences on his CNN interview today with Anderson Cooper. Zakaria is the author of a forthcoming book, In Defense of a Liberal Education.
He mentioned Mark Zuckerberg, who mastered languages, including Latin and Greek, then studied psychology along with computer science at Harvard (before dropping out). The young Facebook mega-billionaire agrees with Jeff Bezos of Amazon that a grounding in the basics--thinking, writing, understanding behavior--along with technical skills is essential for young people going to college.
Bezos requires his Amazon employees to have strong verbal skills. They must, according to Zakaria, write a polished six-page memo to indicate their ability to handle critical thinking and language. He doesn't want just computer nerds.
The liberal arts are not a waste of time, Cooper added. Often high school graduates, having had required math, history and English courses for 12 years, understandably want to pursue something practical, something they believe will produce income. But that is not the purpose of a college education, as I have said many times in print and in person over the years.
It is good to see that highly successful people today concur in defending the liberal arts tradition, which does not train the student to do something but educates the whole person. I often quoted Justice John Paul Stevens of the Supreme Court, one of many English majors to pursue the law, who recommended the study of poetry as the best preparation for law school. Why? Because of the close reading of texts, the analysis and interpretation of a piece of work, resulting in a carefully crafted essay.
There is still an important place for the English or history and certainly the psychology major in college. Don't major in marketing, Zakaria said on his show, just because it sounds business-like; rather, learn to think. Read widely. Combine technical subjects with the classic liberal arts curriculum--writing, philosophy, language, mathematics, science, psychology, etc.--to become a thinking adult who can communicate: that is what most employers want.
So if you're a high school student heading for college, or know one, you might mention the new book by Zakaria along with the advice not to dismiss the core liberal arts tradition in higher education.
P.S. Since writing this, I came across a website listing prominent people, many in business, who majored in English. They include Conan O'Brien, Sting, Mitt Romney, ex-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Michael Eisner, ex-Disney CEO, Steven Spielberg, Barbara Walters and Diana Sawyer and Andrea Mitchell and John Dickerson (network journalists), Garrison Keillor, Bob Woodward, Mario Cuomo, Paul Simon, Emma Watson, Sally Ride, Dr. Benjamin Spock, Rollo May and B. F. Skinner, as well as Supreme Court Justices Stevens and Thomas. Not to mention ex-CEOs of Xerox, NBC, Avon, MTV and Xerox.
Showing posts with label Fareed Zakaria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fareed Zakaria. Show all posts
Sunday, March 29, 2015
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Fear of Change and Public Policy
Speaking of the Tea Party extremists who succeeded in shutting down the government and threatening the world economy recently, Fareed Zakaria today (on his CNN program) made a striking statement: One cannot love the idea of America while also hating America.
Yet that is what those on the far right have long done: they love the idea of America as it was while hating the America of the past fifty years, the country of diversity in which minorities have become more and more powerful. Zakaria is a clear-eyed realist, not an ideologue.
The latest ideologue to cause havoc in the cause of self-promotion is Ted Cruz of Texas, who warns of disaster and the coming of American "oblivion" unless the federal government becomes less "socialistic."
This is the argument to fear that Ronald Reagan used in 1961 to warn of the coming horror of Medicare, something that most Republicans today who honor Reagan's memory greatly value, even though he warned that it would take away our freedom. Whose freedom is lost by the Medicare program?
The same argument is made today about Obamacare, with ominous warning glances at European nations that have chosen social welfare programs, which to the right-wing extremists, mean the coming of "socialism," a term GOP ideologues seldom define or understand.
The rhetoric based on people's fear of change is clear, from Reagan to Cruz, with each decade seeing more extreme and shrill scare tactics being used in the public policy debate. These pessimists give true conservatism a bad name by seeing the inevitable changes in demographics and world economy as a loss of freedom, with America becoming second rate. They rarely take in the prosperity, creativity, and innovation that still make the U.S. the envy of the world, much of it due to immigrants like Fareed Zakaria.
Like many astute outsiders, he can see the bigger picture than what the daily news presents to us. He can appreciate the positive side of America as it is today, not as it was in the 1950s; he has also become a leading critic of our fear-based policies and the dangerous polarization that will again threaten the federal government.
The very thing the Tea Party types like Cruz say they want to prevent is what they are achieving by their extremist tactics: the decline of America.
Yet that is what those on the far right have long done: they love the idea of America as it was while hating the America of the past fifty years, the country of diversity in which minorities have become more and more powerful. Zakaria is a clear-eyed realist, not an ideologue.
The latest ideologue to cause havoc in the cause of self-promotion is Ted Cruz of Texas, who warns of disaster and the coming of American "oblivion" unless the federal government becomes less "socialistic."
This is the argument to fear that Ronald Reagan used in 1961 to warn of the coming horror of Medicare, something that most Republicans today who honor Reagan's memory greatly value, even though he warned that it would take away our freedom. Whose freedom is lost by the Medicare program?
The same argument is made today about Obamacare, with ominous warning glances at European nations that have chosen social welfare programs, which to the right-wing extremists, mean the coming of "socialism," a term GOP ideologues seldom define or understand.
The rhetoric based on people's fear of change is clear, from Reagan to Cruz, with each decade seeing more extreme and shrill scare tactics being used in the public policy debate. These pessimists give true conservatism a bad name by seeing the inevitable changes in demographics and world economy as a loss of freedom, with America becoming second rate. They rarely take in the prosperity, creativity, and innovation that still make the U.S. the envy of the world, much of it due to immigrants like Fareed Zakaria.
Like many astute outsiders, he can see the bigger picture than what the daily news presents to us. He can appreciate the positive side of America as it is today, not as it was in the 1950s; he has also become a leading critic of our fear-based policies and the dangerous polarization that will again threaten the federal government.
The very thing the Tea Party types like Cruz say they want to prevent is what they are achieving by their extremist tactics: the decline of America.
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