{"id":77,"date":"2015-08-27T20:15:21","date_gmt":"2015-08-27T20:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/keyssell\/?p=77"},"modified":"2015-08-27T20:15:21","modified_gmt":"2015-08-27T20:15:21","slug":"first-day-of-school-the-liberal-arts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/keyssell\/2015\/08\/27\/first-day-of-school-the-liberal-arts\/","title":{"rendered":"First Day of School: the Liberal Arts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/keyssell\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/348\/2015\/08\/Liberal-Arts.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-78\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/keyssell\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/348\/2015\/08\/Liberal-Arts.jpg\" alt=\"Liberal-Arts\" width=\"439\" height=\"241\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Yesterday was the first day of classes at my University. \u00a0While we waited for the tech from IT to show up to figure out why the computer wouldn&#8217;t turn on (it was unplugged; I was embarrassed) I waxed on (and on) about why taking a course in the history of Psychology was worthwhile. \u00a0I might have gotten a little misty-eyed when I spoke about the importance of the ideas of dead white guys (and a few gals and even fewer people of color). \u00a0Why institutions of higher learning want to educate the whole person for his or her whole life. \u00a0Otherwise, I remarked, &#8220;you can just go to a technical school&#8221; and avoid all this general education\/interdisciplinary\/irrelevant-to-the-major nonsense we subject you\u00a0to.<\/p>\n<p>I also might have gone a bit overboard on why understanding the history of their field of study is essential. \u00a0I once remarked, to a colleague who asked why\u00a0I thought \u00a0discussing the history of Psychology was important in an Introductory class, that &#8220;it is important for students to know that the questions that guide our research didn&#8217;t just fly out of our asses&#8221; (I really did say that, exactly as quoted).<\/p>\n<p>People, all kinds of people, have been thinking about central questions related to\u00a0the human condition, probably since people began thinking. \u00a0Institutes of higher learning HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY to make thinking and talking about these topics central to their mission. \u00a0It is all about the ideas, people, all about the ideas!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday was the first day of classes at my University. \u00a0While we waited for the tech from IT to show up to figure out why the computer wouldn&#8217;t turn on (it was unplugged; I was embarrassed) I waxed on (and on) about why taking a course in the history of Psychology was worthwhile. \u00a0I might [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":501,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/keyssell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/keyssell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/keyssell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/keyssell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/501"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/keyssell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/keyssell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/keyssell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions\/80"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/keyssell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/keyssell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/keyssell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}