Ladies and gentlemen, I am glad to be here this morning to answer your questions about liberal arts and why they are important and necessary in our work setting. The liberal arts are courses in general areas of study such as philosophy, mathematics, art, history, economics, and languages. The liberal arts subjects are drawn from the major branches of the liberal arts. These include the social sciences which cover such subjects as sociology, geography, economics, political science, and anthropology. Another branch of the liberal arts is known as the humanities which cover literature, languages, history, and philosophy. The third branch is the creative arts – theater, fine art, creative writing and others. All these broad subjects are what are known as the liberal arts and they are, as you can see, quite wide and varied. They are usually available to students at an undergraduate level right at the beginning and at more advanced levels as we move up the higher education chain (Sigurdson 14).
Why do I think these subjects are important? Liberal arts are not designed to equip you or enable you to specialize in a specific profession. Rather, they are there to prepare the students for life in the working world. Liberal arts equip you with the ability, first and foremost, to have lifelong learning. Learning does not just end in the classroom or after graduation. It is a process through which we acquire knowledge skills and expertise throughout our life.
[...] It is a process through which we acquire knowledge skills and expertise throughout our life. It is, therefore, necessary for one to have courses that equip you to do exactly that essentially be a student for life, learning and adapting to new knowledge, new aspects of life and learning how to adapt, live and even thrive with change. The liberal arts also give one the ability and capacity for free thinking. It teaches the student how to think, how to question and how to expand your horizons. [...]
[...] Today, the skills that are born out of liberal arts are in even more demand than ever. In the tough economic climate that the entire world finds itself in, jobs no longer have the permanence they used to have, and professionals all have to keep improving on their abilities and flexibility to be able to move on to new opportunities as well as to keep adapting to rapidly changing environment. And it is not just professionally but in all aspects of life. [...]
[...] It is an opportunity to learn about the evolution of human society, how it started out, how it came through civilization, what civilization is all about and what in the world has changed and how it has changed since this civilization came about. In liberal arts one learns what previous generations have learned, thought and experienced. What questions did they ask? What answers did the great philosophers seek? Liberal arts give you an opportunity to wrestle with abstract concepts and ideas. [...]
[...] If they had been students of the liberal arts, however, they would have had the ability to look at the parts of the animal they were touching in a different perspective and had a better chance of describing the elephant correctly. This is what liberal arts do. They free the student's mind to be able to see things from not just one but several different perspectives and thus have a more rounded appreciation of the world around us. The liberal arts have thus opened our eyes so we can see a more complete and more accurate picture of the world around us. [...]
[...] We gain an understanding of what acceptable and unacceptable social and societal norms are and more. Liberal arts courses let us see things such as gender rights, human rights and closer to our banking life, customer rights and why it is important to treat the bank customers, suppliers and co-workers in a certain way. All this serves to make us better human beings. Does that make us happier? Of course it does. The satisfaction of doing a job well even as a bank worker is one the arts will equip us for by making the habits that let us perform our tasks in a particular way. [...]
APA Style reference
For your bibliographyOnline reading
with our online readerContent validated
by our reading committee
