Quote:
Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald
Agree with a lot of what you say here. A classical education provides a foundation in the areas where leaders and visionaries need to excel. For some, that classical education starts much earlier in life than others. I've worked with people who went to prep schools whose classical education was much deeper and formative than people who went through grad school in specific humanities. That classical education just prepares you better for having a deeper appreciation for the human condition and making tough decisions that impact others. It also makes you appreciate more than just the bottom line thinking that comes out of business school.
I can hire a hundred people who can twist a widget or tell me our profit motive, but our organization struggles to find people who are true visionaries or can be effective evangelists for our message. That is where that classical education comes into play. Being in touch with our humanity, understanding the larger human condition, and being able to appreciate, interpret, and communicate those conditions in relation to the goals and objectives of our interest, and qualities that are priceless. As I said, education is for everyone, but a classical education is not for everyone. Most people would be fine with a tech school education.
|
I'm not sure if I would draw a direct correlation between a classical education and the ability to make strategic or visionary decisions or the ability to suddenly become a convincing orator. At best, it would give you some exposure to forming rhetoric and some debate practice. At worst, it's a waste of tuition money and time for a youth whose objective is to get a job in the real world.
I see the classical education as providing the common language and framework which our laws, art, and culture (from a western perspective) were built on but I can't think of a single visionary entrepreneur who would say that his ability see the big picture or sell a product was based on his knowledge of the classics and philosophers. The more I work in the cosmopolitan world, the more I realize how narrow that line of western tradition is as well.
I can't think of the last time I tapped into a 2500 year old Greek philosopher to present something to management or argued against scraping instituted systems in a project because of Burke's rebuttal of the French Revolution. You can teach vision and selling in a marketing course which has far more direct utility and value on a resume than wasting a student's tuition on spending a semester reading thousand year old translated philosophy.
I will agree with you on a point that I personally appreciate my liberal arts background in the sense that I feel it made me more observant and critically minded of world events in the view of the overall human condition and the parallel lessons of history that most people have no idea about. That's purely on a personal basis though and has nothing to do with my professions both entrepreneurial (I sucked horribly) and in corporate (which I attribute to trade school after the BA proved as useful as nipples on a breastplate on the resume).