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Many of us claim,
with good reason, that a liberal arts education
is the defining experience for our students becoming
productive citizens. But how good are we at defining
the liberal arts?
Yes, we mean liberal
arts—not that other, increasingly popular
expression “liberal education,” which
stands for so many things to so many people that
it no longer poins to anything at all.
When we say “liberal
arts,” we mean—well, there’s the
problem.
Sometimes we mean
a collection of disciplines.
Sometimes we mean
a way of thinking, but getting to an agreement on
what way of thinking that would be is beyond our
ability.
Sometimes when we
say “liberal arts” we mean any really
good education. But good for what, at what, in what
goes unanswered in the enthusiasm of our assertion.
Sometimes when we
say “liberal arts” we mean a transforming
experience on the way from youth to adulthood. But
all of us know people in their late teen years who
have been transformed in good and growing ways by
a love affair, an illness, a chance to travel, a
spiritual insight, a major achievement, or an unforeseen
defeat. Sometimes when we try to define “liberal
arts” in these ways we are taking the credit
for mere serendipity.
There must be a
better way.
At the Center of
Inquiry in the Liberal Arts, we are developing a
definition of “liberal arts” that has
its roots in the history and philosophy of American
liberal arts colleges, that we can test empirically,
and that we will revise based on our empirical results.
Our working definition has three necessary elements:
1. A tradition that
values most of all the development of a set of intellectual
arts, rather than professional or vocational skills;
2. A curriculum
that in its overall effect gives coherence and integrity
to each student’s learning;
3. An emphasis on
student-student and student-faculty interactions
in and out of the classroom.
We think that the
key phrase in our first element, the development
of a set of intellectual arts, is the true end of
a liberal arts education. We think that our second
and third elements are the ideal means to that end,
though not the only means…
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