In defense of a liberal arts education................

 A little capacity for reflection might reveal that morality is not simply a matter of common sense or reading a sacred text, and that an understanding of other cultures — or simply an acknowledgment that there are other cultures — might have led to better outcomes in, for example, Iraq.

It is a mistake to focus basic education on job-specific skills that a changing world will render redundant in a few years. The objective should be to equip students to enjoy rewarding employment and fulfilling lives in a future environment whose demands we can neither anticipate nor predict. In 20 years, we will probably not be using the Black Scholes model, or referring to the case of Bloggs v Bloggs. But the capacities to think critically, judge numbers, compose prose and observe carefully — the capacities that education can and should develop — will be as useful then as they are today.

-John Kay, as excerpted from here

At the risk of repeating myself, allow me to share the teaching style of my favorite professor from Denison University, circa 1972, Dr. Robert Toplin.  Toplin taught, among others, a course he called "Latin America:  Evolution or Revolution."  With a great deal of 20-year-old sensitivity, we called it "Bullets or Bananas."  This semester long class was held for two hours, twice a week.  Actually, each class was comprised of two one-hour lectures.  During the first hour Toplin would take some topic, say the history of slavery in Brazil, and preach on it from the right-wing point of view.  His arguments would be thoughtful, powerful, coherent, and convincing.  At the end-of-the-hour break, we would all agree that the man was undoubtely right.  Then came the second hour.  He would then preach the same topic from the left-wing point of view.  His arguments would be thoughtful, powerful, coherent, and convincing.  By the end of the second hour, we would be thoroughly confused.  In the first weeks of the course, us students spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out what Toplin believed, so we would know how to write our "blue-book" exams when they came.  Gradually it dawned on us.  It didn't matter what he believed.  What mattered was what we thought.  All Toplin wanted from us was that we would to be able to process a significant amount of conflicting information and ideas and then make, in writing, our own thoughtful and coherent judgments about said conflicting information and ideas.  In other words, he expected us to learn how to think.  It was quite the semester.