Pre-Reading Thoughts:
I think that this article is going to be about how the liberal arts help to develop critical thinking skills in students and that it is important to introduce young students to different forms of living in order to help them expand their worldview. I believe that the term “liberal arts” applies to any curriculum that does not fall into the STEM category. Anything that teaches art, language, history, and any other expansion on the expression of humanity can be considered a “liberal art” because it introduces new and unique global concepts.
Section Descriptions with Quotes:
What Are the Liberal Arts?
This section goes into detail on what the author, Jeffery Scheuer, believes the liberal arts are. He gives three different conceptions of the term; the first one describes the liberal arts as “[embracing] the ideal of the integrated curriculum, encompassing virtually all nonprofessional higher learning, from the natural and social sciences to the humanities and the performing arts” (para. 9). The next two conceptions narrow the subject down further by “[excluding] the sciences” and then by “[focusing] mainly on the humanities” (para. 12). Given the three definitions of the term, I mostly agree with the first one. The liberal arts focus on subjects that can help expand a person’s worldview and allow them to develop opinions based on their own bias and experience. By including science and nonprofessional higher learning, this allows a person to have a larger understanding of the world around them.
Why Do We Need the Liberal Arts?
This section describes the relationship between critical thinking and citizenship and how they go hand-in-hand. Scheuer gives three dimensions of citizenship in this section: traditional civic citizenship, economic citizenship, and cultural citizenship. He goes into further detail on these topics, but ultimately concludes that the overall goal of citizenship is to “foster vibrant and prosperous communities with broad and deep participation in public conversations marked by fairness, inclusion, and (where critical thinking comes in) intellectual rigor” (para. 20). I highly agree with this statement because it describes the term citizenship as a positive contribution to humanity that keeps progressing and supports everyone’s rights.
What Is Critical Thinking?
This section gives us Scheuer’s concept of critical thinking and describes it as “the intellectual engine of a functional democracy: the set of mental practices that lends breadth, depth, clarity, and consistency to public discourse” (para. 22). In other words, critical thinking is an important part of higher learning today and demonstrates a level of intellect that is encouraged and almost required for incoming college students. Having critical inquiry shows that a person is able to take in the experiences and information that they have learned and develop an opinion on them and make connections to previously discovered topics.
The Importance of Critical Inquiry
This section describes how it is important to think critically in your everyday life. Scheuer believes that all forms of human knowledge are important to learn and develop a critical inquiry mindset. He elaborates this idea by stating that “the STEM disciplines are obviously important to economic productivity, but so is the entire rainbow of human knowledge and the ability to think critically” (para. 36). I agree with this statement because the importance of learning extends to every part of the world and every culture, and the ability to recognize the beauties of our differences through the appropriate means of learning can help us to positively develop as a species.
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