I was reading The Cave and the Light  by Arthur Herman given to me by my daughter. Herman was discussing Gerbert of Aurillac, later to become Pope Silvester II in 999, who he describes as "the greatest teacher and scholar of his generation." In the context of this, he notes the study of grammar, rhetoric, logic, astronomy, music, geometry and arithmetic as being a late-Roman invention called the liberal arts. They were so-called because they were education fit for free men (liberi) as opposed to slaves. See also The Seven Liberal Arts in the Middle Ages edited by David Wagner.

Our society does not consider these things as befitting free men today, rather as an education suited for people who ask "...and do you want fries with that?" Aside from the sciences, which have drifted in their purview from the late Roman era, our educational system places little value on music, and students consider the mathematical sciences as painful things to be endured, never to be used again unless you become an engineer or have a career involving numbers. I am not sure if grammar is studied much at all, and rhetoric is certainly not, just like logic but for the mathematical variety for a few studying probability or computer sciences. 

I believe this absence of value placed on a liberal education is why we are an inarticulate society moving from disaster to disaster. One assumes there is something to be said in the public forum (which may not be the case), and our language gives us the ability to communicate it in public debate. Instead, to paraphrase the language of Jose Ortega y Gasset, in our mass society we have a competing elite passing off the low-grade rhetoric of shipwrecked ideas as genuine thinking on the issues of the day. And we as a society are not discerning enough to recognize it for what it is and demand more or better leaders.

Have you ever noticed that our leadership, elected, aspiring or self-regarded, speak in what they consider the language of the people in catch-phrases of mass media or keywords of their constituencies? They are all thinkin' and workin' in our interests, and they have no idea what our interests are, or perhaps no genuine concern. As soon as you hear the "g" disappear from the public addresses of anyone, especially this elite of Rhodes scholars and Ivy League alums, products of the very best educations that can be had, then stop listening and hold you wallets tightly. They are trying to make you think they are like you and convince you to go along with things that are clearly not in your interests, obvious were a few moments of evaluation spent on what they are saying.

I would suggest you shake their hands some time. I went to a fund raising event for politicians when I was very young with my father, who was a union organizer. I shook hands with some local political luminary. I asked my father why his hand was so soft when I shook it, like a woman's hand, so very unlike my father's hand. He explained that it was because he had never worked a day in his life. And these are the leaders who try to convince us they are like us and have our interests in mind.

If we go back to the idea of a liberal education, we all being free men and women, we are equipped to discern the truth from the marketing. If we permit our children to be the uneducated products of failing educational systems that are being forced into models on a business paradigm, we are equipping them to be slaves. We can do better.