So how do we save the liberal arts? I have a humble suggestion. It isn’t the entire answer; it’s more journey than destination. And it isn’t ideal. Ideal is the traditional disciplined focused study of an area of learning under experienced scholars at a university. The major. But as more universities abandon the humanities, it […]

I haven’t blogged in a while because, well, I haven’t. Which is the perfect introduction to pretty much anything by Stanley Fish, including Fish’s recent piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Stop Trying to Sell the Humanities”. Fish once said that “The purpose of a good education is to show you that there are […]

I get it. I really do. Science is self-correcting. It’s based on rigorous methodology, and hard observable measurable data. Hypotheses are testable or not at all. Tests yield repeatable, verifiable results or the hypothesis gets junked. Therefore Science trumps all those fluff bunny humanities subjects that “anyone can study” because “they’re all opinion anyway” and […]

Recommended:  Scott Samuelson’s recent piece in The Atlantic, “Why I Teach Plato to Plumbers” (Thanks to fellow writer Matthew Graybosch for sending me the link.) The humanities do matter to real people.  Profoundly.  Samuelson writes about teaching philosophy to students experiencing personal tragedy: A mother who’d authorized for her crippled son a risky surgery that […]

I haven’t posted in a while, but the current hysteria in the New York Times about the loss of brick and mortar bookstores in Manhattan is so unintentionally comical and just plain awkward that I had to comment.  The article, “Literary City, Bookstore Desert,” by Julie Bosman, illustrates almost everything that has gone wrong with […]

But first, as to validation.  (See previous post.) I was stunned to see that there is at least one literary agent, Andrew Wylie, who gets it.  Mr. Wylie said in a recent interview for New Republic what I’ve been saying here in my quiet corner of the Internet for a long time.  That the publishing […]