Variations on a Theme by Allan Bloom

STYLE ONE
Since its beginning as a monastic house of learning, the university has sought to educate its students in the liberal arts: studies of history, rhetoric, the visual arts. But in the 1960s, that focus on the liberal arts began to change. A slow but drastic drift in focus has begun to take place in universities, shifting from the broad liberal arts education to the specified and career-oriented training. This shift, due in part to student's awareness of the greater competition in the business world, is causing many students to suffer from a lack of cultural awareness and intellectual stimulation.

STYLE TWO
As a high school student - and even earlier in my public education - we learned that the more education you were able to receive, the more money you would be able to earn in your career. As we grew older, it became more and more clear that the type of education our teachers and counselors were emphasizing was a career-oriented one. This specialization would allow us to jump into our careers at a younger age, thus giving us an edge on the competition. Rarely did a counselor tell us that we should seek after learning simply for the sake of learning. Unfortunately, this focus on specialization in education has led students to suffer from a lack of cultural awareness and intellectual stimulation.