Relation of Creative Design to an Education in the Humanities

Abstract

In The language of collegiate education there is a phrase that is usually accorded as much reverence as the blessed word Mesopotamia. The phrase is: the Liberal Arts. But what is intended by the phrase varies with who uses it. To most people the Liberal Arts are merely that phase of higher learning which has no immediate practical utility. In scholastic circles the Liberal Arts are a diverse number of academic subjects to be taught only through the written and the spoken word. Other matters, requiring the development of the imagination and the practice of the creative act, are not “academic.” They are not to be included in the Liberal Arts and are therefore no part of the humanities. When the visual arts appear in the traditional four-year Liberal Arts program, it is in courses on the history of art; and the medium of these courses is the written and spoken word, never the practice or application of the arts considered. In the average four-year Liberal Arts college the practice of Creative Design, for ins...