The Value of the Liberal Arts Education

Steve Jobs lived at the intersection of Art and Technology. He earned billions of dollars, but his lifes real aim was simply to find satisfaction creating revolutionary tools that combined the best science with the highest esthetic.

Jobs did it without finishing college, but, for those of us who are not quite geniuses, a liberal arts education provides a way to reach, not just the corner of Art and Technology, but a virtual Arc de Triomphe where many roads convergeMusic and Math, Philosophy and Physics, History and Horticulture, Geology and Geography, Creative Writing and Chemistry, English and Economics.

For me, circling through that convergence was the best thing I could do to prepare for a career as an opinion journalist. But I did not enter the University of Washington knowing what my lifes work would be. And that raises a point missed by the many people who believe high school graduates should just be on a fast track to a job.

Most 18-year-olds have no more than an inkling about what they want to do with their lives. At that age, I knew I was pretty good at art, but also that I was fascinated by history and literature and politics. If I had gone off to some art institute to study graphic design, it would have been a disaster. I could draw pretty well, but I was no prodigy. My real talent is in reducing complex issues to their essence and then using words and visual metaphors to explain that essence.

I had only a small clue that I could do that when I arrived on campus. My immersion in the liberal arts revealed that capacity in me. During my years at the university, I drew from many disciplines to form a base of knowledge on which I have built a career.

Quite a few politicians and at least a few businessmen consider the liberal arts a waste of time and money. They think kids should be channeled down a narrow path to become productive cogs in Americas economic engine. Tell that to Steve Jobs. A quiet cubicle at IBM would never have contained him.

Quiet cubicles are not where our best and brightest should ever be stuck. This country has thrived through innovation. Creative people who can synthesize information from many sources and draw from many disciplines have always given us the edge. Show me a computer programmer who has read Cicero and admires Jackson Pollack and Ill show you someone who is going to be far more than a conventionally productive employee.

Occasionally someone will describe me as a Renaissance man and I take that as a high compliment. Ive had my art displayed in museums. Ive played horn in a symphony orchestra. On my MacBook Pro (thank you, Steve Jobs), Ive got a novel in revision and a photo book in the works. I can tell you why the War with Mexico started and how the Cold War ended. Ive lectured at a gathering of geneticists. Ive drawn caricatures for kindergartners. Ive taken a boat up the Mekong and a black diamond run down a Swiss mountainside. I can ride a good horse and write a decent column.

Someone else will have to judge if this makes me a productive member of society. What I know is this: my life feels rich and, without my unending education in the liberal arts, it would be far poorer.

David Horsey is a graduate of the University of Washington College of Arts and Sciences, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and columnist for the Los Angeles Times.