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Liberal Arts: Yes or No?
Topic Started: Oct 2 2011, 03:51 PM (73 Views)
Stonewall

I can agree with your second point. I've read that most liberal arts students were near the top in their high school classes. I suppose that those students would be more likely to know about the uses of the liberal arts degrees.
But, I still think that society is headed towards a decline. I think that the trends of laziness and greed are heading us towards a society not unlike the one shown in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake. I don't know if you're familiar with the book, but it presents a dystopian world in which the arts have no value. There are no liberal arts colleges anymore. The closest thing that the protagonist, Jimmy, can get to an English degree is problematics, English for advertising. The school he attends features rampant plagiarism, as laziness and a lack of intellectual curiosity many of the students to copy their papers and avoid learning anything.
Throughout this society, corporations are the ruling bodies. They war with each other, trying their hardest to make more money. Their tactics are deeply unethical. Helth-Wyzer, for example, creates diseases so they can sell the antidotes. And, no one in this society seems to analyze any of this, except for a few dissenters, God's Gardeners, and Crake's father. They are hunted down and killed. All of the trends towards this exist in our society.
Edited by Stonewall, Oct 2 2011, 04:01 PM.
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Chromodynamics

I've read the book, and I don't think it's anything that will realistically happen any time soon. Yes, we have laziness and greed, but we will not end up in Oryx and Crake quite yet. In our world, there are laws in place to prevent corporations from using unethical tactics. I don't think they'll go away without a fight. Also, there are elements of art still present in Oryx and Crake. Jimmy self-studies the liberal arts by reading books in the library, and Shakespeare is taught in his compu-drama class, read by Ana K, and performed by students at the University he attends. Art is still alive. Jimmy's girlfriend creates guerrilla art by creating a word out of materials and lighting it on fire.
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Stonewall

Yes, there are references to art, but the art in his society no longer has inherent value—the idea of “art for art's sake.” Shakespeare is read by an exhibitionist, edited to be nude, or poorly performed by drama students. That's it. There's no value shown to it other than that, and that is a true downfall. I hope that society never reaches that point.
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Chromodynamics

Me too.
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Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake. Anchor Books, 2004. 

Ferral, Victor. Liberal Arts at the Brink. Harvard University Press, 2011. ix - 23, 40 - 63. Print.

Nadler, Burt. Liberal Arts Jobs. Peterson's, 1998. 9-22. Print.

Pepitone, Juliane. "Most Lucrative College Degrees." CNN Money. Cable News Network, 24 Jul 2009. Web. 2 Oct 2011.

<http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/24/news/economy/highest_starting_salaries/index.htm>.

Roche, Mark William. Why Choose The Liberal Arts?. Univ of Notre Dame Pr, 2010. 15 -51. Print.

"Best Undergrad College Degrees by Salary." Payscale. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Oct 2011. <http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/degrees.asp>.

"Season 3, Episode Four." Screenwipe. BBC4, 26 Feb 2007. Television.
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