Annie Abrams and Roosevelt Montás, writing today in The Atlantic on “The Putative Defenders of Liberal Education Are Destroying It”:

At many institutions, liberal education—the kind of education that students pursue for its own sake rather than for its practical or professional value—is in the process of extinction. Instead of a deliberate grounding in the historical, political, and ethical questions that shape our society, much of what passes for liberal education consists of “distribution requirements”—that is, topical courses in academic disciplines taught by specialists in those fields. Even when those courses are in “liberal arts” disciplines, they can fall far short of the ideal of liberal education.

Alas, in seeing the problem as an argument over what constitutes “the canon,” and why liberal education shouldn’t be seen as an elites-only education, Abrams and Montas aren’t anywhere close to understanding the roots of the morbidity of the liberal arts. But as every 12-Step program will tell you, admitting you have a problem is the first step toward recovery.