The Living Arts: Comparative and Historical Reflections on Liberal Education. The Academy in Transition.

Overview & Synopsis

This monograph deals with the dominant characteristics of liberal education as a number of historical typologies, models, or categories, and attempts, from time to time, to distinguish the claims made by defenders from reality. The typologies, chosen because of their frequent occurrence in discussions of liberal education, are: character formation, leadership, breadth, personality development, critical thinking, and general education. The discussion begins with an exploration of secondary education as a determinant of how liberal education is conceived and taught at higher levels. The monograph identifies strands of liberal education that have vanished, and it makes the case that the historical change from a university mission centered on the dissemination of knowledge to its transformation has created difficulties for inherited conceptions of liberal education. In fact, formal education may not be the only means of achieving some of the traditional ends of liberal education. Liberal education may need to be moved toward realizable objectives. Three large topics need to be considered: (1) the role of secondary education in furthering the ends of liberal education; (2) a review of the principal objectives of liberal education as historically defined; and (3) the reconsideration of what should be taught as liberal education and how it should be taught. Appendixes discuss new technologies and list participants in an international discussion of liberal education. (Contains 23 endnotes and 36 references.) (SLD)