Liberal education

What is liberal education?

Liberal education is not a theory of education but a tradition. It is a conversation which tends towards one end - freedom. It gives ultimate freedom to the pupil because it opens up the possibility of thought! Not merely free thought, but thought which is free to explore and discover. It opens the mind, but not for the sake of open mindness, but so that it can, as with the open mouth, shut again, on truth. A liberal education is precisely the opposite of the liberal education system. It seeks to propagate the "best of that which has been thought", rather than propaganda seeking to debunk, undermine and straight jacket the minds achievements.

What does liberal education look like?

On a practical level liberal education does offer a set of guidelines and to some extent paradoxes for educating freely, but at its core it is an inherently practical occupation. It was summarised, by Anthony O'Hear, as the three "C's": Curriculum, Canon and Character.

Curriculum:

The curriculum is vital to the liberal education programme, but unlike the modern obsession with merely reading, writing and numeracy and with 'practical' skills and relevancy, the liberal curriculum pays the compliment to the pupil of providing the whole universe of knowledge. The seven liberal arts (as opposed to the servile arts) were defined as grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. Today, we might substitute astronomy (having less practical use today) with the 3 principle sciences (physics, chemistry and biology), and add history (for context), economics, politics (the final ends of human social activity) and physical geography. The curriculum is delivered whole and complete to the pupil who is initiated into the whole enterprise of human thought. It does not condescend to the pupil deciding what they might be intelligent enough to know, but rather opens up the possibility of free engagement with the material. Very little, if any, of the cirriculum is peripheral, even music, so often relegated in modern curriculum's to the edge.

Canon:

The canon of books is relatively simple. It simply picks the best that has been thought and written. Great books form a common language, a common dialogue, a continual conversation. To renew the best in every generation is the goal of great books. Far better to read Caeser's Gallic Wars, or Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War then a textbook on ancient Roman or Greek history. My own attempt at reading the great classics and thinking about them can be found here. Great books progammes have sprung in the United States and been successfully intergreted into the Classical Homeschool movement. What Great Books do ulitimately is record the best of human thought be it literary, religious, cultural, scientific, philosophical, historical and so on. We are not all destined to be great writers or thinkers, but we can stand on the shoulders of the gaints and see just a little further. We can see ourselves, the world and ulitimate reality, that Truth which simply Is.

Character:

The final pillar of liberal education is character. Here we find the strange paradox of classical education. For, the child is to be subject to displine and habits so that he might find himself in control of his passions, desires and so forth. For virtue is simply this a good habit. We learn good habits by first conciously choosing a path that is good (say looking left and right before crossing the road) and then allowing that to become a virtual habit for us. Simply put the classical educator seeks to free the pupil from the vices he may be tempted towards (which we are all tempted towards) by forming good habits. Otherwise, we may be in the young pupil may have all the knowledge of the good and have none of the capicity to follow it (as we see with the Underground Man!). It frees the pupil in the best way, by making of him a good person free to pursue the good and his own flourishing. This is achieved by displine. A useful analogy is with musical scales, in order to play music one must subject oneself to reciting the scales, otherwise one is not free to then play melodies and harmonies! Likewise, the liberal educator is not seeking to indoctrinate but to bring the pupil into that rational discourse of the ages, to understand who they are and what they should, and are now enabled, to do.

Much more can be said on this topic. Herein, I hope to develop more of these themes and flesh out the details.