Separation of Church & State, The Cost of College

Watching an Alabama Probate something or other say on TV last night that his Christian faith did not allow him to issue marriage certificates to gay couples, I was struck with the revelation that is exactly why the Founding Fathers insisted on separation of church and state.

A marriage license is a legal document.  If it is your job to issue legal documents on behalf of the state, you need to follow the law and do it in a legal manner.  You don't get to claim your faith in your church doesn't allow that.  The only thing your faith in this manner qualifies you for is resigning from your job because you are not performing the functions of employment.

Meanwhile, there is once again a a tussle over state funding of college and how should we measure the value that a university is putting forth for the monopoly pricing that is in place.  There is a focus on making sure students get an economic payback for their investment in this political statements.

I am sympathetic to the pressures of costs and subsidies but at the same time annoyed that the liberal arts is getting short shrift in these discussions.  Yes, I know people make poor choices and major in English or Art History and then wonder what they will do for a living.  But everybody makes their choices and has to live with the consequences of them.

Life is all about education on a continual basis and a base in liberal arts is a critical part of that.  Exploring what you are good and not good at is also part of the liberal arts tradition.  In college, I learned that I was good at economics, ok at political analysis, above average in math & statistics, had an interest in computer programming and was good at it (this was before I knew you could get filthy rich with a talent like that, it was 40 years ago), did not comprehend psychology and learned how to analyze how a picture was made.  Along the way, I also got a touch of philosophy, science, and English (another topic where the analysis was incomprehensible to me).  That was an education, and I still needed to go to grad school to be employable.  But I did all that and had a wonderful career.

The state can't control that. They have to encourage that within reason.  I also went to a great liberal arts college and had some brains.  Not everyone is smart.  That is what community college is for and that is what BOCES is for in high schools.  Teaching students trades when they are not capable of much more.  But even they deserve the opportunity to have exposure to English, psychology or philosophy if they are interested in trying.