Alfred Romero
3/28/2023
Professor Frank
LIL 420
Journal #7
As a junior in my undergraduate career, I have yet to take UNE’s citizenship course as I would be taking that my next academic school year. But, from reading Nussbaum’s book, chapter two really stood out to me, specifically a passage from page fourteen. A common way of measuring a nation’s status among others would stem from the measurement of that nation’s gross national product per capita. This relates to the concept of economic growth but using that as the primary tool to measure a nation’s quality of life becomes questionable. It’s as if economic growth in and of itself becomes the primary measurement for a nation’s status, “never mind about distribution and social equality… never mind about the improvement of other aspects of a human being’s quality of life that are not well linked to economic growth” (Nussbaum 14). I agree with this implication in that education as a tool isn’t being utilized for its true purpose and that it’s rather being used as a bridge towards economic advances within a nation. I feel as if education, in general, should serve the purpose of broadening the individual’s perspective. There are many issues that arise within a nation that extend beyond just economic downfall and the path to solving these issues, or at least relieving them, would derive from individuals to understand the certain circumstance as a whole. Liberal education would teach you this through providing classes that initiate a critical thinking process, where one trains to think in a way they’ve never thought before. As a byproduct, this always makes the individual more open minded than before and with open mindedness comes the understanding of other perspectives. Understanding and respecting other perspectives would be the key for humanity within a nation to fully start a recovery process towards fixing certain societal issues. From my own experience, I started to understand other perspectives through classes such as Wisdom Literatures, War in Film and Literature, and Introduction to Literary Theory and Criticism. While it’s not as if I’ve made some significant change to a societal inequality, I’ve at least been exposed to other perspectives and how others may feel by sticking a toe in their shoes. Education should be an opening of the mind to help you adjust to the realities of the real cruel world. Education should be an experience that changes a person’s understanding of the world around them outside of any systemic boundaries. I’d say the humanities classes I’ve taken so far at UNE have supported this purpose well, especially considering that I’m just an English minor.
