Liberal Education: An Old Idea With New Importance

1. Liberal Education: An Old Idea With New Importance UI100 – Fall 2010 McAllister

2. Historical view of education • Training of the ruling/religious class • Not available to everyone • Was more exclusive than inclusive • Training of the skilled labor force • Often involved father-to-son transfer of knowledge of a particular field • On the job training • Underclass was generally not educated.

3. Purposes of liberal education • Training citizens for public life • Originally as rulers or leaders (meant the skills needed by the citizen elite or ruling class) • Now as voters

4. Some ideas of what a ‘liberal education’ means • General Education • Specific subject matters – such as the humanities or liberal arts classes • Reading the classics – the great books of the past

5. They are all partly right • Liberal education does consist of those elements and more • Traditionally included training in rhetoric and logic and study of languages (needed to study the classical works in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew) • What might be included in a modern definition of liberal education?

6. What are the humanities? • Roman citizens studied subjects that developed the human faculties of the mind and character – as opposed to the work/survival skills needed by the peasants and craftsmen • There was definitely an elitist sentiment in the goals of a liberal education

7. Origins of liberal education curriculums • In the Middle Ages: Seven liberal arts – trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy) • Updated in the Renaissance: grammar, rhetoric, politics, history, ethics, and mathematics.

8. Liberal Education in modern times • Study of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew exchanged for study of ‘modern’ languages • Study of ‘classical’ works of Greeks, exchanged for study of great books of last 2-3 centuries • Study of fine arts, philosophy, social sciences added

9. At Southeast we actualize liberal education as a set of skills • These skills are learned and practiced in all coursework, but explicitly in our University Studies Program • These skills are formalized as the University Studies Objectives • The University Studies program can be considered a ‘second major’.