I don’t take a utilitarian view of education, even though it is undeniably useful. Since my own college years back in the 1960s and 1970s, I have believed that you get your education for your life and not for a job. The idea that a degree would guarantee you a better job was always a bit of smoke, and more so now than ever, when no one is guaranteed a job and no one who has a job can consider it secure. But you still have your life to lead.
Here is what it means to me to get an education for your life, especially an education in the humanities:
— It gives you a framework for interpreting experience.
— It puts the human condition into perspective.
— It enriches your inner life by giving you things to think about and ways to think about them.
— It enables you to talk intelligently on a variety of subjects and opens you up to acquiring more learning from books, from the world, and from others around you.
— It makes you more interesting to yourself. You bore yourself less.
— It stretches you. You grow new muscles. You’re stronger.
— It’s entertaining.
I’ve retired from the cubicle life, and I get a senior discount when I go to the movies, yet I am back in school now for the fun of it.