Timothy Buchanan: Why doesn’t MJC properly value poetry’s place in education?

Re “Big campus threat isn’t political correctness” (Page 9A, Dec. 6): The article about Robert George and Cornell West, both Princeton professors, who explained the purpose of a liberal arts education is making accessible the ideas posed by great thinkers throughout history, which “empowers students to live examined lives.” Without this examination, to quote Plato, “life is not worth living.”

I wonder, then, what rationale drives the administration at Modesto Junior College to curtail Sam Pierstorff’’s poetry wring class. Poets are a significant section of the “great thinkers” network. For 17 years this class has been continually full, and the turn out at Saturday night’s Ill List Slam Poetry at the State validates Sam’s success with creating an examined populous.

What can the cost of the class be? He has no assistant coaches, no equipment or uniform expenditures; the overhead is nil, the success is staggering. Self-expression is the cornerstone of a healthy society, not Ellwood Cubberley’s archaic concept that education is about training a competent workforce to maintain the corporate elite. Sam is one of the most genuinely outspoken supporters of Modesto and Stanislaus County. He is a community asset and the community college administration should recognize that.

This story was originally published December 12, 2016 at 6:30 PM with the headline "Timothy Buchanan: Why doesn’t MJC properly value poetry’s place in education?."