Why ‘Nano-Degrees’ Can Never Replace Liberal Arts Colleges
Education should aim to enhance our capacities, Dewey argued, so that we are not reduced to being somebody else’s tool. “The kind of vocational education in which I am interested is not one which will ‘adapt’ workers to the existing industrial regime; I am not sufficiently in love with the regime for that.”
.. A century ago, pragmatists like Dewey argued that given the pace of change, we should not fool ourselves by trying to educate people only for the tasks of the moment. Once we develop habits that just allow us to conform to the world around us, to fit into existing conditions, we stop learning. Instead, he wrote, we should instill habits of thought and action that will give students a better chance to shape their own future.