Some Morning Fun: Shakespaere takes on the Liberal Arts Curriculum

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;

I come to bury Roman education, not to praise it.

The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones;

So let it be with the Romans. The noble Romans

Hath invented the Liberal Arts:

If it were so, it was a grievous fault,

And grievously hath future generations answer’d it.

Here, under leave of Quintillian and the rest–

For the Roman educators were honourable men;

So are all educators honourable men–

Come I to speak in the Liberal Arts’ funeral.

They were well meant, faithful, and just to all students:

But they were meant to train the rich to be orators;

And Orators were honourable men.

They hath given great orations in the Forum  

And the Liberal Arts did the rich coffers fill:

Did this in the rich seem ambitious?

When that the poor were barred from the Ivy League, no one hath wept:

Education should be made of sterner stuff:

Ivy Leaguers are ambitious;

And Ivy Leaguers are honourable men.

You all did see that in our Presidents

Nearly all of whom were Ivy Leaguers

Who used their Liberal Arts education to declare war

And not to help their fellow man;

But, surely, they were honourable men.

I speak not to disprove of the Liberal Arts,

But here I am to speak what I do know.

We are no longer creating Orators:

What causes the Ivies to continue then, to teach what no longer matters?

O judgment! they have ruined the high schools,

And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;

My heart is in the schools with the children  

Who long to learn practical things