After taking a required, online state assessment designed to select a career pathway for each student prior to entering high school, a rising ninth grade student asked me, “Mr. Payne, what does this mean?” I walked over to respond and saw the pathway assigned: Animal Production & Processing.
I paused for a moment as I realized that the mandatory assessment software was recommending that this 14-year-old student should abandon his dream of becoming an architect, a dream he and I routinely discussed over the three years we had known each other, to pursue a high school regimen designed to send him into meat processing.
“It says you should go into meat processing,” I said.
“Why doesn’t it say architecture? Do I have to do this?”
“No, you don’t,” I quickly replied, knowing that, as principal of this public school, I probably should have agreed with the assigned track.
Should career readiness govern a high school student’s coursework? Is that the primary goal that we, as educators and parents, should expect our children’s schools to focus upon?
There are many vocations for high school students to pursue, including those requiring college and graduate degrees. Indeed, high school graduates should possess the ability to either assume the responsibilities of full-time work or seek further education upon earning a diploma. Many of my former students have found success as welders, mechanics, and beauticians shortly out of high school, and many others have found success in fields requiring that they first earn a college degree. Yet, none received specialized instruction for their career while in high school; rather, all were enrolled in classical schools driven by a liberal arts curriculum
I am proud of all of these students, not because of their particular occupations, but because of their strength of character. I am convinced that their success is tied directly to their character, and I am proud of the part that the school played in their moral formation.
As a parent and school leader who challenges computer-generated assertions like the one presented above, I am often rebuked for suggesting that an education driven by skill acquisition cannot effectively instill civic virtue and moral character. Public school leaders like to cite the mission statements of public school districts and schools across the country that focus on character aligned with college and career readiness. My experience, however, is that the character elements of these mission statements rarely have much meaning in the curriculum and life of public schools.
Countless excellent educators are invested in helping their students grow in character. I do not doubt their sincerity. However, the majority of those teachers lack a curriculum and school environment that looks beyond skill acquisition and state tests to the cultivation of students’ character. Most schools, and certainly most school curriculum, care little for the study of the true, the good, the beautiful, and what it means to be human and a virtuous citizen. In contrast, the liberal arts program of classical education intends to develop skills as a means to a greater end, not as the end itself.
If the vision for a school is set upon truth, goodness, and beauty (pursuing virtue and understanding the ideal), then the study of excellent literature, the arts, and primary sources from history are essential. If the vision is focused on career readiness, then the aforementioned study becomes superfluous.
A liberal arts education is anathema to college and career readiness, for the liberal arts do not track us into vocation nor focus outcomes upon short-term assessment performance. Students of the liberal arts are not designed for a single trade, but have the capacity to learn any process or skill; they are not experts in a particular profession, but are well-versed in the complexity of the world. They are industrious, not automatons of industry. They are not predictable, they are free.
Thinking back on that 14-year-old student, I realize that my support for his budding interest in architecture — through conversations about the profession; reviewing monographs of Gwathmey, Wright, and van der Rohe during study hall; and lunches spent drawing in perspective — may or may not influence his professional future. What I do know is that the study of architecture and the liberal arts will have a positive impact on his life, the magnitude and direction of which is unknown but inevitable.
He may be an architect, or he may go into meat processing. Thanks to a liberal arts education, his eventual occupation will not define him, his character will.
Benjamin Payne is a founding member of the Anna Julia Cooper Public Charter School in D.C. and a project manager for Hillsdale College’s Barney Charter School Initiative.
