"What Life Asks of Us": In Defense of a Liberal Education

In a recent New York Times opinion piece, David Brooks laments what he sees as the degradation of traditional, vocational codes for behavior (and in Brooks's perspective, identity).

In his words:

A few years ago, a faculty committee at Harvard produced a report on the purpose of education. “The aim of a liberal education” the report declared, “is to unsettle presumptions, to defamiliarize the familiar, to reveal what is going on beneath and behind appearances, to disorient young people and to help them to find ways to reorient themselves.”

The report implied an entire way of living. Individuals should learn to think for themselves. They should be skeptical of pre-existing arrangements. They should break free from the way they were raised, examine life from the outside and discover their own values.

In short, according to Brooks, the results of a liberal education - thinking for yourself, questioning social and behavioral scripts, "breaking free" from "the way you were raised," examining life, discovering your own values - are bad. Very bad. "The rules of a profession or an institution are not like traffic regulations," he says. "They are deeply woven into the identity of the people who practice them." Question these rules and, apparently, your identity will crumble.

Brooks concedes that "institutional thinking is eroding" and that "Faith in all institutions, including charities, has declined." Furthermore, he notes that the popular perception is that "Institutions do all the things that are supposed to be bad. They impede personal exploration. They enforce conformity."

Brooks, however, apparently eschews personal exploration and embraces institutional conformity. As he puts it, institutionalized rules for behavior, scripts for identity, "often save us from our weaknesses and give meaning to life."

I'm speechless. How can there still be room in the Twenty-First Century, in the post-Bush era, in Urban America for the fear of a liberal education?