War On The Liberal Arts In Florida, Texas, North Carolina: The Promotion Of Dumbness!

The right wing Republican Governors of Florida, Texas, and North Carolina have declared war on public funding of the liberal arts at the state university level in their states!

Considering that poverty is very high in these states, and educational attainment is lower than in the Northeast, Midwest, and Western states, it is clear that the Republican Party in these Southern states wants to keep people dumb, and prevent the promotion of skills that are essential for a good productive life–like reading, writing, analyzing, and simply THINKING!

A person who gains a college education with little or no exposure to the liberal arts is a person denied basic knowledge and appreciation of the great contributions of mankind over the millenniums!

To say that no one needs to major in anthropology, or literature, or history, or classics, etc is to declare war on intellectual pursuits, and it is clear that we have many people coming out of college ready for the technical and business worlds who have no basic communicative skills, but are simply robots who cannot read, write, analyze or think clearly!

And to say that different fields of knowledge are unworthy is to declare war on the whole point of education, to make people better human beings, not just train them for a field of work that might, very likely, disappear over the course of a work life!

To gain intellectual skills is to gain vision, gain a sense of humanity and compassion, and to have a quality life, not one only judged and based on materialism and greed!

These governors—Rick Scott, Rick Perry (and his likely successor, Greg Abbott), and Pat McCrory–prefer stupidity and ignorance, as that makes it easier for them to pursue their right wing goals to undermine the future of their states, among the lowest in achievement, and bound to get worse with this kind of damaging attack on the liberal arts! They are only out to promote the top one to two percent, and want a work force that is unable to compete in a way to advance and, actually, challenge the establishment elite!

Those who do not know the past are doomed to repeat it! We still need anthropologists, historians, poets, playwrights, artists, musicians, and others in the liberal arts, as part of a humane society, and no student should be denied the opportunity to major in any of these or other liberal arts fields, and they are often better educated than those who come out of colleges with no exposure to the liberal arts!

There is a need for a strong reaction to this detrimental attack on basic human knowledge by the scholarly community!

One comment on “War On The Liberal Arts In Florida, Texas, North Carolina: The Promotion Of Dumbness!

  1. Engineer Of Knowledge May 25, 2014 9:19 pm

    Hello Professor,
    I may have mentioned that I am a 32nd degreed Freemason in the Scottish Rite.

    When I was an instructor and mentor in the first 3 degrees of Freemasonry, one of the lessons in the 2nd degree was the value of the seven liberal arts and sciences.

    The Fellowcraft Degree commends Freemasons to study the Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences, which are grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.

    When we study the historical background for this list, one will uncover layers of many Masonic meanings in each of the seven areas of knowledge.

    I can understand why many today in the Republican Party do not want these valued lessons from these subjects to keep the LIV’s (Low Information Voters) from applying Critical Thinking.

    If people start understanding the valued lessons and disciplines gained from these subjects, the lies and misinformation passed on to voters by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and other Blowhards will be seen for what they really are. That’s when it would all fall apart.

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