Editor’s note: This commentary is by David Roth, of Burlington, who is an entrepreneur and the former chair of the California Student Aid Commission.
Historical precedent is societal preamble – but that is only evident to those who study history within the context of a liberal arts education. We are reliving the same painful experience that Vermonters did a century ago during the last pandemic, while our country is experiencing much of the same cultural tumult it did in the postbellum era of the late 1800s and again in the middle of the 1900s. But again, those facts are only known to those who have embraced the study of history within the context of a broad liberal arts education.
Our current times are not unprecedented at all when viewed historically, but our culture’s lack of focus on the lessons of the past do not allow us to understand the historicity of the present – and the curriculum cuts proposed today by the University of Vermont will further damage our ability to comprehend, analyze and ascertain how best to live and thrive today while preparing ourselves and our society for the challenges of tomorrow. A functioning society requires the existence of an education system that embraces (and requires!) a broad curriculum of study, inclusive of the liberal arts majors and courses of study that UVM seems intent on eliminating. This and future generations will pay a price far greater than the dollars that will be saved if the knowledge base offered by UVM is so drastically curtailed.
Our general lack of historical understanding is due to the fact that our educational systems have greatly limited the scope and depth of liberal arts courses that are required for and/or available to students at all levels of schooling. UVM took a dramatic step backward this week by proposing to cut 12 majors and 11 minors, all within the liberal arts. Anyone who runs a business (as I do) knows the veracity of the maxim that “you can’t cut your way to profitability,” nor can UVM cut its way to sustainability and continued educational relevance by filing for intellectual bankruptcy.
There is no question that our state’s (and our nation’s) systems of higher education are in jeopardy. The economic impact of the pandemic has been and will continue to be severe and debilitating, but the solution is not to be found in the elimination of majors and courses of study that teach us about the context of our lives and the contents of our characters (as does the study of religion, for example, which is proposed to be eliminated). A liberal arts education teaches us how to learn and how to be free and how to ask why. At a University of Chicago forum on the future of the liberal arts, professor Martha Nussbaum correctly noted that “Socratic questioning is unsettling, and people in power often prefer docile followers to independent citizens able to think for themselves. Furthermore, a lively imagination, alert to the situations, desires and sufferings of others, is a taxing achievement; (moral obtuseness is so much easier.) So we should not be surprised that the humanities are under assault, now as ever. The battle for responsible democracy and alert citizenship is always difficult and uncertain. But it is both urgent and winnable, and the humanities are a large part of winning it.”
We must find ways to increase our support for higher education generally and in Vermont specifically, not find ways to reduce it — and that is one of the greatest challenges posed to good government and good governance. We are clearly in a time of crises – and it is a combination of the scientists and the historians and the religion scholars and the classics majors who will help us emerge from the current crises and prepare for the next.
