I think anyone in the current LAS vs. engineering discussion would benefit from reading this.

Nazi Regretted Missing a Liberal Education. By, Sydney J. Harris

One of the best testimonials I have ever heard for a liberal arts education came from a 70 year old man recently released from 20 years of imprisonment in Germany. The man is Albert Speer, architect and nazi politician who became Minister of Munitions and Armaments under Hitler, and head of the group that controlled much of the slave labor used by Nazi Germany.

Speer said he regretted most that he grew up with a technical education only, in architecture and engineering. He learned little of the liberal arts and humanities, and nothing of philosophy.

“It was this lopsided education that made it so easy for many of us to fall under the spell of Nazism,” he said. “We were technical barbarians, who did a fine job, but never inquired about the purpose, or the ultimate results.

“If we had been given a proper education as to the probable moral and social consequences of Nazism,” he said (and I paraphrase), “many of us might have taken steps to abort the movement before it took full power.”

People who ask what “practical” purpose there is in studying such subjects as history and philosophy need to be reminded that they are the only subjects that ask fundamental questions — what is the nature of man? What is the good society? What are the proper ends of civilization? and so on.

The Germans were the most educated nation in the world, in the narrow sense of scholarship and technical skills, but this was not translated by their academic system into ethical or philosophic terms.

Chris Mannes

Senior

Performing arts

Mary Willard

Junior

Elementary education