Liberal Arts Colleges

Archive for December, 2009

Anemia is a blood disorder that is attributed to the deficiency of iron, folic acid and Vitamin B12. Iron-deficient anemia is the most common type, and occurs when your body does not have the required iron content to produce hemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen to all parts of your body and provides energy for you to carry out your daily activities.

Anemia causes dizziness and makes you feel tired even during non-strenuous activities. Iron is of two types – heme which is easily absorbed by the human body and non heme which is not. While non-vegetarian foods like red meat and eggs are a rich source of the former, vegetarians have to augment their intake of iron from foods like beetroot, blackstrap molasses and green leafy vegetables with foods rich in Vitamin C. Citrus fruits and other food laden with Vitamin C help in the absorption of non-heme iron.

I’ve included two recipes – one vegetarian and the other non-vegetarian – for dishes that are rich in iron.

Beetroot Fruit Cocktail

Serves 2

Ingredients:

• 1 beetroot of medium size
• 2 ripe pears
• 1 small lime
• ½ a red bell pepper
• 1 handful of basil leaves

1. Wash the beetroot and the pears
2. Peel and chop them into small pieces
3. Squeeze the juice from the lime
4. Wash, deseed and chop the bell pepper
5. Wash and chop basil leaves
6. Add all ingredients to a blender and juice

This juice must be consumed within an hour or so after preparation. It’s a good recipe for those prone to anemia because it contains beetroot juice which is rich in both iron and folic acid, and lime which is rich in Vitamin C, the catalyst that helps the body absorb iron from non-heme sources.

Ham and Beans

Serves 6

Ingredients:

• 3 lbs smoked ham
• 2 lbs Great Northern beans
• 2 dried peppers
• 2 onions
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1 tsp black pepper
• ½ cup blackstrap molasses
• ½ cup brown sugar
• ½ cup mustard

1. Rinse and dry beans
2. Fill Dutch oven with water and cook beans
3. Add the ham and all the other ingredients when the beans and half-cooked and cook till ready

This dish contains both red meat (ham) and blackstrap molasses, both of which are rich in iron and help enrich the hemoglobin content in your blood.

Besides these recipes, there are other concoctions that help in preventing and combating anemia:

• Eat a ripe banana combined with 1 tbsp of honey twice a day
• Drink a mixture of beetroot juice and apple juice with a tbsp of honey once a day
• Soak currants overnight, deseed and eat in the morning
• Drink a mixture of apple and tomato juice once a day.

Robotically, learning things being taught in school is not a bad thing at all. Following instructions, adopting a routine, and systematizing things are essential elements of skills acquisition, after all. But what is mostly lacking which is very alarming among most students and the general public as well is the interest or motivation to critically know, understand or comprehend, scrutinize, and even criticize established schools of thought. Being able to do just that is actually the end goal of education, and not just merely to give people a passport to the highest paying job there is. People are very susceptible to subscribe to this self defeating view that education is merely a tool. Hence, the need to further integrate liberal arts education.

To save current and future generations from falling prey to the capitalistic view on education, the role of liberal arts needs a lot of empowering, not just as a part of technical degree programs but as an independent field of knowledge. Its independence must also be made accessible for mass correspondence.

Although mostly hinged on classical learning, liberal arts is as progressive as technical courses. It continues to evolve and respond to the increasing complexities of modern day scholastic learning and practical applications. To better understand the importance of liberal arts education, one has to look at the benefits it can provide. Liberal arts boosts the vitality of our mind and intellect. Pretty much like the muscles in our body, our mind needs to be exercised to master a particular area to aid for faster and better acquisition and utility of skills. Liberal arts exercises the minds intellectual capacity by de routinizing a person from a rather methodical functioning. Liberal arts does this by exposing the mind to limitless possibilities, enabling a person to think out of the conventional box. Moreover, it equips a person with a mental grammar enabling the mind to function in the sound structure of thought, knowledge, and intellectual movement creating the habit of organized thinking and rational analysis. Liberal arts trains us to think on our own even before being prompted to merely respond to external stimuli. It leads us to forming our own understanding of the world and not just mere subscribers to others philosophies.

Also, liberal arts education enables us to see things as a whole. It ties up in good harmony the discrete, specialized skills from technical areas into a beautiful whole. It does this by being an impetus for our minds formation of a universal map giving us a panoramic view on how the world and the life works. This universal map organizes our thought processes, giving us the ability to discern things according to their relations, hierarchies, and systems.

The academe has always been the most ardent believer on how important liberal arts is. Established institutions of higher learning have responded accordingly upon recognition of the widening commercialized view on education. As bastions of holistic education, they have made their liberal arts programs accessible in the internet. These liberal arts programs being offered as college course online attempt to equalize the domineering presence of technical courses in the web. Various liberal arts advocate colleges and universities have come to accept the extremely high dependence of people to the internet and saw this as a good opportunity to further their advocacy of better minds and soul for the people.

The University of Phoenix Online, Saint Leo University, The Art Institute Online, The Strayer University, and Penn State Online offer online liberal arts degree with focus on general studies. The University of Illinois Online offers three courses under their liberal arts program for undergraduate students. Bigger universities like Walden University, Capella University, University of Phoenix, Kennedy western University, Boston University Online and many others offer both undergraduate and graduate liberal arts degrees. The majors or areas of specialization are really as varied as humanistic interests. There is African Studies, Philosophy, American Studies, Asian Studies, French, Archeology, Hispanic Studies, German Studies, Political Science, Philosophy and Law, Theater Arts, Sociology, World Literature, Classical Literature, Ethics, English, Women Studies, and a lot more.

All these institutions are one in offering the greater public the chance to have a holistic education. They collectively and independently advocate the advancement and greater appreciation to the worth of liberal arts education amidst the increasingly technological and technical world.

The term liberal arts denotes a curriculum that teaches, improves general knowledge and helps in improving a student’s rational thought and intellectual capabilities, unlike the vocational or technical curricula that constantly emphasize on the specialization. The study in the liberal arts helps in reinforcing students’ abilities in critical analysis, figurative thinking and clear communication.

The liberal arts program is among the major distance learning online liberal arts degrees available in the United States. In fact, this liberal arts program has proved to be a decent transfer course as far as the students are concerned. These courses help the students receive some really good education as far as communications and culture are concerned. It even helps the students study information and conduct research in a sophisticated manner. The best benefit of this program is that being a graduate in liberal arts an individual can find a variety of careers, particularly in media, law, business and social work. Unlike very specialized pre-professional programs, liberal art programs are not focused on a specific vocation; rather it prepares students to think decisively, write convincingly and read between the lines.

It can be considered as one of the few subjects in the United States that prepares every student to perform meaningful, original work and move or upgrade their creative discipline forward. In recent times, this subject has garbed the attention of many students and as a result these days many online universities and colleges are providing different distance learning programs in liberal arts. So, if you are one of those who are looking to advance your career with a degree in liberal arts, here are some of the top programs you can consider and select:

Environmental Science Distance Learning Program- This distance learning program primarily focuses on the examination of the social aspects of environmental policies and regulations. In addition to this, the program focuses on other aspects like the natural biological, chemical and physical processes affecting the planet. Being a distance learning environmental science program, in most of the cases, it does not include laboratory or field work classes, and so students are required to complete internships to gain real-world environmental science experience. Nevertheless, graduates with online environmental science degree programs are qualified to earn positions and work in the government regulatory agencies, environmental and non-profit conservation organizations and environmental consulting firms.

Liberal Studies Distance Learning Program If you are one of those who have great inclination in culturally oriented subjects offered at universities or want to take liberal arts and humanities classes then this course could be ideal option. This course can help you provide the general cultural knowledge, like literature, languages, philosophy and history. Once you complete the program you can find jobs in the field of law or medicine that generally require general liberal arts and humanities undergraduate courses before admission into advance learning classes for those fields.

Political Science Distance Learning Program- This program introduces the history and the key techniques of political science, and primarily emphasize on key ideologies, different viewpoint and quantitative methods used in the discipline. It compares various governments and politics to illustrate political theory. The program also provides an overview of the evolution of political science and discusses recent developments in the United States political scene. As a graduates with a degree in political science, you can go on to law or graduate school or may even work in education, politics, journalism or for the government, research firms, non-profit organizations or interest groups.

The list is almost never-ending as with various distance learning programs you can go into with a liberal arts degree. In last few years the liberal art courses has gained enormous popularity and in next few years it is even expected to be one of the most favored distance learning courses. Undoubtedly, today an accredited distance learning liberal art degree holds much respect and offer diversity and flexibility in career that can is very rare to be found in any other degree.