Liberal Arts Education

With the economy the way it is today, there is much more pressure for students to get a good education and be able to have a successful career. Students across the country have a few different types of high schools that they can choose to attend, including vocational and liberal arts. A vocational school focuses on training for a specific job, while liberal arts schools teach general information about many different subjects. Both liberal arts schools and vocational schools are a better fit for different types of people, but a high school that emphasizes liberal arts would better prepare students for a global economy because it teaches skills that are valuable in any career; it makes graduates more desirable to some employers and helps students to find a career that would suit them best. A liberal arts high school teaches skills that are valuable in any career, instead of just one. Newsweek magazine found that the average American changes careers eleven times before they reach age forty. People have to change careers more than ever because the job market is becoming increasingly competitive. A liberal arts education would allow students to change careers more easily because they wouldn’t have been trained in only one profession. Liberal arts not only teach students general information, but they also teach them how to think and learn. In A Talk to Teachers, James Baldwin says, “The purpose of education, finally is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not.” In liberal arts schools students are taught to think critically and to think for themselves. The career fields are changing very quickly and some students will hold jobs in the future that don’t even exist today. It