You can’t do that perfectly because to do so would require infinite resources and infinite attention. But to the extent to which it is possible, the central objective of the liberal arts should be what John Kay calls “obliquity”, the seeking of indirect paths to ultimate ends. Which requires a fastidiousness about what those ends might be, and it requires putting as much heterogeneity (pedagogically, topically, methodologically) on the table as possible.

But to make that case, you both have to demonstrate (as Kay does) that indirect routes are ultimately a better way to arrive at desired conclusions *and* that direct routes (which I would take to be expressly vocational or otherwise very instrumentally designed curricula in this case) often perversely arrive at ends other than what they sought.

There’s a kind of Zen dimension to all of this: to have what you want, you have to not try to go at it directly–and not going at it directly means being uncertain about what it is that you want.

I know there’s an aspect of quibbling here. (Forgive me.) But–how shall I put it? If the point of the liberal arts is to help students learn how to choose ends properly, they must initially be free to choose whether to enter a liberal arts curriculum in the first place. If that freedom is to be meaningful, there are very distinct limits to the “persuasions” you can impose upon them, or you have created a Clockwork Orange liberal arts.

I presume your argument is that the liberal arts can make stronger arguments, especially on the soft underbelly of utility, without crossing that line–handling that delicate issue of interest in a way that eschews the tipping over from traditionalism to authoritarianism. But I think this argument also presumes that your predecessors haven’t been making the best possible arguments in favor of the liberal arts for the last several generations. (Which seems, implicitly, a little condescending to your immediate predecessors.) What if they have been? And what if those arguments simply haven’t persuaded sufficiently on the ground of utility?–or, indeed, any other grounds? Then you cannot go further without crossing that deadly line.

All of which, doubtless, is the counsel of despair.

But do consider again the issue of determining one’s own interests, and also the question of whether your predecessors in these lists have already made the best possible arguments. I think your essay (when published) would be strengthened by addressing these topics.

In the case of the first, you’re trying to create the conditions for informed choices among 18-year olds who haven’t yet arrived in college–that’s something that has to happen at the level of the overall public debate, and something that the supply of types of programs, among other factors, may influence.

The second is the really interesting case in terms of faculty behavior and practice–it’s where the student has to decide and they decide to go for the pre-professional program. That’s where I’d agree with you: liberal arts faculty who hold themselves too refined or distant from explaining why what they teach matters or is virtuous or is useful will lose out in that choice and they ought to, even if they’re potentially a better choice.

However, as far as the cutting goes, there is always the point that another of academia’s missions is to look out for the things that matter even in times where the popular view is that they don’t. The value of tradition, you might say…

Sec word: Luke Tionaly, the hero of a short-lived Canadian drama about the medicos of the Mounties.