Joseph Epstein Argues the Liberal Arts Have Been Destroyed

Retrieve when activeness heroes could be archaeology professors?

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The liberal arts have gotten a bad rap lately—or, if you believe the comprehend line on the September 17 issue of The Weekly Standard, are dead. A mere month and a half before a presidential election, the bourgeois publication took time out of voicing back up for Mitt Romney's business organization-minded ticket to have writer and retired lecturer Joseph Epstein lay out a paean to Epstein's own days first as a student and and then every bit a instructor of liberal arts. In praising Andrew Delbanco'southward book College: What It Was, Is, and Should Exist, Epstein spends thousands of words arguing that a liberal arts education isn't what it used to exist—though he provides little hard data to back up this claim—before last that professors' willingness to politicize and expand core curricula is to blame. Whether or non you agree with the arguments presented, the tone is decidedly bleak.

What's fascinating, though, is the way that pop civilisation seems to exist just as surly on the liberal arts every bit The Weekly Standard is. 2 new films offer their own slightly negative accept on this academic field and the people who are fatigued to it. Those movies, along with a slew of other works, contribute to the impression that the entertainment manufacture'due south on a professionalism boot, glorifying start-up CEOs and humanizing otherwise villainous corporate types while leaving its portrayals of the humanities decidedly one-dimensional.

The most recent offender is Liberal Arts, which was written and directed by television star Josh Radnor and opened on September 14. The master character Jesse (also played by Radnor) is a former liberal-arts educatee whose life is a mess. He works a wearisome, dead-end job as a college admissions counselor. His girlfriend has just left him. He doesn't even have the wherewithal to stop a random stranger from stealing his clothes at a public Laundromat. With zilch else to do, Jesse travels to his alma mater to attend the retirement dinner of his mentor Prof. Peter Hoberg (Richard Jenkins) only to observe that the man that he has long admired is in bad shape every bit well. Hoberg is lost; he makes a large fuss about retiring before realizing that education is all he has and unsuccessfully begs to get his onetime job back. Jesse does detect some solace in the company of undergraduate liberal arts major Zibby (Elizabeth Olsen), who makes her romantic feelings towards the much older Jesse quite obvious early. The audience then gets to witness the travails of 3 characters whose stunted social skills and immature inclinations leave them sick-equipped to deal with life's issues. The moving picture strongly implies that their common fascination with the subjects they study—their love of music, books, and intellectual thought—is partly to arraign for their predicaments.

Hello I Must Be Going, a romantic dramedy starring Melanie Lynskey and Christopher Abbott, also opened this calendar month. While the motion picture is not overtly about the field of liberal arts, it nevertheless hints that this track of report is not acceptable preparation for the real world. The protagonist Amy (Lynskey) is a former aspiring photographer who neglected completing her master's degree in guild to marry a hot-shot New York entertainment lawyer. After her husband cheats on her and then asks for a divorce—at one betoken he tells her that he wanted to be with someone who was successful—Lynskey finds herself living with her parents in the same community she grew up in, too depressed to leave the firm and lacking any sort of prospects. She bides the time past having an affair with 19-year-old actor Jeremy (Abbott) who secretly hates acting and aspires to write a novel. The backdrop of their romance is a rich Connecticut suburb filled with lawyers and investment bankers, making the misfit lovers' lack of regard for their time to come all the more than pronounced. The pair has no interest in facing the question of what comes side by side until a turn of events forces them to confront what the rest of their lives volition hold.

What gives? Why are so many works perpetuating the stereotype that liberal arts programs cater to Peter Pan boys and girls and sad-sack professors, none of whom have the emotional intelligence to bargain with life'due south problems? Part of it could be recession-era scapegoating. And part of it is that the cultural heroes of the moment are largely start-upwardly kings like Mark Zuckerbergs and Steve Jobses who dropped out of college to pursue fortune. You tin see like strains of thought in Scott Gerber'due south contempo Atlantic piece critiquing the liberal arts curriculum for inadequately preparing entrepreneurs.

It, of class, wasn't e'er this way. Think Indiana Jones? The title graphic symbol, played by Harrison Ford in the prime of his alpha-male A-star days, is a professor of archeology. He got his love of academics from his begetter Henry Jones, a professor of medieval literature. Information technology is these 2 men's fluency in liberal arts—that and the younger's proficiency with a bull-whip, a revolver, and his fists—that qualify them to travel the globe and boxing Nazis while searching for long-lost archeological treasures. If those films were released today, I wonder if some Hollywood producer would insist that the Jones boys be changed from professors to executives at a private treasure-salvaging company. The idea that liberal-arts lovers can be heroes seems even more antiquated than the artifacts the Jones' are subsequently.

It looked for a while, though, like there might be hope for this generation to get its peachy liberal-arts pop champions—from, of all places, The Office. While this mockumentary about the white-collar employees of a newspaper company in Scranton, Penn., has seen amend days, I've always harbored a surreptitious wish that the prove would conclude with Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) and Pam Beasley (Jenna Fishcer) leaving the Dunder Mifflin paper visitor to pursue more creative endeavors.

Bear with me here. During the class of its nine-season run, The Function has had several central storylines: the incompetence of corporate direction, the awkwardness bred by forced socialization in workplaces, the growing irrelevance of paper. But the about poignant storyline of all has been the plight of Jim and Pam, two intelligent individuals who every twenty-four hours are faced with the dreary realities of working in a corporate office. Watching these characters struggle with the soul-crushing ennui induced by nine-to-five workdays in jobs that are not intellectually challenging is what I'll retrieve about about The Office. Their frustrations accept been equal parts humorous and heartfelt. Neither seems capable of escaping from the estrus of Dunder Mifflin, though the audience knows that they each have the potential to practise so much more with their lives.

And both characters have, yes, shown an interest in liberal arts. Pam is an artist, but fifty-fifty though she briefly flirts with becoming a graphic designer—the corporate world's thought of art—she ends up becoming a newspaper salesman like virtually every other employee in the office. Jim is also a salesman—I don't think it's ever mentioned what he studied in college—only at that place take been moments in the show where Jim has shown an affinity for books and less-corporate pursuits. He certainly never expresses the business ambitions that Ryan Howard (B.J. Novak) or Michael Scott (Steve Carell) have demonstrated during the course of the show. Jim seems like he'd be more at ease in a loftier-school English classroom than an role.

Just last week'south premiere of The Office's final season quashed my hopes. The episode implies that Jim plans to get out Dunder Mifflin to start a sports-marketing business organisation with a friend from higher. Pam doesn't seem to have any thou future plans and is more content to focus on raising the two children she and Jim take had. It'due south a sad plow of events. The world does not need another fictional hero like Jim venturing downward the path of entrepreneurship. In some sense that path is consistent with the show'south overall storyline, which has long implied that the modern office crushes entrepreneurial spirit, but I can't help but call up that the show's creators would have been taking more of a creative risk—and making a bigger statement—if they opted to have their protagonists leave the business world entirely. Jim and Pam are this generation'south Ross and Rachel, and because so many people can identify with the challenges of working in an office, I can't think of a more fitting ending to the testify than to have them walk into the sunset to pursue passions that are about more than just the bottom line.

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Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/09/pop-culture-has-turned-against-the-liberal-arts/262955/

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