On the Decline of Arts and Liberal Arts in institutions other than the Elite Universities

​​As we encourage the closure of liberal arts colleges and reduce liberal arts programs in colleges and universities to first-year writing programs, we might want to keep in mind that we actually need more programs in the arts and liberal arts not fewer. (Yes, we encourage this behavior.) It is with developed aesthetic sensibilities that our culture saves itself from environmental disaster, a permanent police state, and mob psychology in the streets or in the voting booth.
 
Below is a mission statement for a program in which I would love to be involved.
 
The School for Aesthetic Sensibility
 
The School for Aesthetic Sensibility fosters the education of the imagination in an effort to bring an artist’s sensibility to all aspects of a student's life. Its goal is to educate a citizenry capable of resisting the illusions that the current society presents so that graduates are prepared to employ science and technology (techne = art, Greek) as not in the service of destruction and exploitation but as an opportunity for engaging the imagination to transform the world into a reality composed of the aesthetic sensibility of humans.

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