Following the Liberal Arts

A Canadian philosophy professor in The Globe and Mail,

Liberal education is about citizenship, not job training or simple personal enrichment – though it may incidentally provide both. Postsecondary institutions should be in the business, primarily, of creating critical, engaged citizens. This is not the current dominant view; it is nevertheless the correct one.

Actually, historically, a liberal education was accorded not to citizens in general, much less women, slaves, business people or tradesmen, but to aristocratic leaders. In busness schools today we do teach Leadership, and we we are getting a new Aristocracy, so maybe we do have the liberal arts in disguise. I think so. Most of impact investing and the language of social ventures is cold ossified poetry. It is not good poetry, and it is not seen as poetry, but then no myth is, while it delivers the goods and the glory to those who promulgate it. I have tried critical thinking, and have decided that followership is a better path to leadership. If only I had started sooner.