Liberal Arts thrive with curators of the past, creators of the new, and critics of the status quo.
By Robert A. Scott, Ph.D., President, 茄子视频
The most prestigious colleges are called 鈥渓iberal arts鈥� institutions. Many universities call themselves 鈥渓iberal arts鈥� institutions at the core. Many futurists agree that a liberal arts education is the best preparation for work, citizenship, and family life. They agree that training is about answers – – how to – – and that liberal education is about questions and imagination. In ancient times, the liberal arts were known as the trivium and quadrivium, the seven useful arts, including rhetoric, logic, and quantitative reasoning.
So, what is a 鈥渓iberal鈥� education? Is it a political leaning? Or is it an approach to life鈥檚 questions and professional challenges that continuously leads to new questions and understanding? I think of the liberal arts (and sciences) as liberating – – freeing us from the provincial origins of time, place, and a single culture. The goal of liberal education is to teach the ordinary student to become a cultured person and to appreciate other cultures; to develop in students the capacity to assess assumptions and understand the value-laden choices that await them as citizens, consumers, decision-makers, and arbiters of ethical alternatives; to inspire students to contemplate the meaning of life and the role of religion, politics, and economics; to help students develop in their capacity to build a civilization compatible with the aspirations of human beings and the limitations of the natural environment; to apply theory to practical problems.
Liberal education helps students gain the confidence to formulate ideas, take initiative, and solve problems; develop skills in language, learning, and leadership; and increase their abilities for reasoning in different modes. It helps students to appreciate the pursuits of pure science and the difference between science and technology. It helps them fulfill their responsibilities as a citizen in a nation of immigrants. More than any other form, the liberal arts help us understand nature, the world we meet; culture, the world we make; and ethics, the systems of thought by which we mediate between the two.
With liberal learning as I have defined it, students can improve in clear and graceful expression in written, oral, and visual communication; organizational ability; tolerance and flexibility; creativity; sensitivity to the concerns of others; and aesthetic values. Liberal study in this way prepares students to weigh competing arguments and distinguish between and among fact, faith, and fear as ways of knowing; it frees them and us from ignorance and apathy. Liberal education fosters imagination, which Albert Einstein said is even more important than knowledge1 – – although I would add that knowledge of history, or context, is essential to imagination. Alfred North Whitehead听said, 鈥淚magination is not to be divorced from facts: It is a way of illuminating the facts.鈥�2听A focus on imagination or 鈥渨onder鈥� underscores the importance of the student and not听just the canon.
Liberal learning is the best preparation for what author Daniel Pink calls the听鈥淐onceptual Age鈥� – – the time beyond the Information Age. To succeed in this age, he听says, we 鈥渨ill have to develop鈥ur right-brain creative aptitudes to supplement鈥ur听left-brain logical skills.3 Pink identifies six aptitudes needed: aesthetic design, story or听narrative, symphony or synthesis, empathy, play, and meaning or purpose.4 These听aptitudes, I submit, are perfectly aligned with the liberal arts.
To fulfill its potential, a liberal education must also involve experience, in听internships, voluntarism, and study abroad. Only then can the useful elements of the听liberal arts be realized to their fullest before graduation, by using what is learned in one听setting to define and solve problems in another.
This emphasis on liberal education should not suggest a lessening of importance听on professional education. Indeed, Adelphi began preparing teachers at the beginning – –听by building professional preparation on a firm foundation of liberal study. That same听philosophy continued with the addition of nursing, social work, psychology, and听business, and the expansion of graduate education.
The connections between liberal learning and professional preparation are听revealed by the four key elements defining a profession: 鈥渁n accepted body of听knowledge, a system for certifying that individuals have mastered that body of听knowledge before they are allowed to practice, commitment to the public good, and an听enforceable code of ethics.鈥�5 These elements are formed through liberal learning, as here听defined, and the knowledge, skills, abilities, and values we gain from it.
Liberal education is fostered in institutions that serve as curator of the past,听creator of the new, and critic of the status quo. Therefore, it is both liberating and听conservative. It is about freedom but not of necessity about politics. It is the most useful听foundation for continued growth as an individual.
The Boulevard, April 2006
1听Friedman, Thomas L. The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005, p. 441.
2听Bennis, Warren G. and James O鈥橳oole. 鈥淗ow Business Schools Lost Their Way.鈥� 鈥淗arvard Business听Review,鈥� May 2005; p. 102.
3听Cornish, Edward. Finding Success in the 鈥淐onceptual Age,鈥� a review of A Whole New Mind, by Daniel听H. Pink. TheFuturist, September-October 2005, p. 47.
4听Cornish, op.cit.
5听Bennis and O’Toole, op.cit.
For further information, please contact:
Todd Wilson
Strategic Communications Director听
p 鈥� 516.237.8634
e 鈥� twilson@adelphi.edu