Liberal Arts Education

The following article considers the missions of public Black colleges and universities, asking whether or not these missions are focused on liberal arts or professional education, or perhaps a hybrid of these foci. More importantly, we will explore the long term impact of these institutional missions on African Americans. Our discussion and examination will be contextualized using historic arguments put forth by African American leaders Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois. These arguments, although often simplified, are highly complex and can offer insight into the purpose of education at public Black colleges and universities in the current day.

I. Introduction: Plato's dialogues in relation to Plato's cultural context This paper will briefly explain some aspects of how Plato's dialogues arose from the cultural and historical situation into which he was born. Plato responded to his intellectual forefathers and contemporaries, showing what he liked about his cultural tradition, what he thought needed to be completely rejected and what he thought needed to be modified. I will focus on Plato's response to the tradition of tragedy and epic poetry. I will argue that Plato's dialogues must have been the curriculum he used at the Academy. Republic VII claims that the power of mind (nous) is the highest power of the human soul and that the purpose of education, his form of education, is to educate this power. The dialogues together are Plato's curriculum for educating this intellectual power.

This paper discusses the background and status of liberal arts education in Canada. First, it explains the place of liberal arts education in Canadian universities and outlines an example of required liberal arts coursework at a typical university. Following this, the author shares his personal experiences as an undergraduate student in a liberal arts program before discussing the skills associated with liberal arts education. Lastly, the paper focuses on humanities and social science education in Canada, looking at the current enrollment figures and research concerning the career prospects and earnings of liberal arts graduates.

Our creative arts help to define our societies and our civilisation. Digital developments are democratising enjoyment of the arts and participation in the arts. The creative arts can address social issues, reach excluded groups, open-up creative, financial, entrepreneurial, active involvement, sustainability and other opportunities, break down barriers, widen perspectives, change expectations, bridge urban-rural divides and stimulate creative thinking, imagination and innovation. They can expose people to various physical/tangible expressions of individuals, movements and prevailing views from different ages, arenas and societies and encourage them to think, question and challenge. They can also enable people to produce designs, artefacts and other works that express their responses and views in a richer variety of ways than just the written or spoken word. An education in the creative arts can enhance, enable, enrich and empower. It can help to stimulate the exploration and commitment that can lead to responsible and fulfilling lifestyles and successful invention and entrepreneurship.

The Jesuit Ratio studiorum of 1599, deeply rooted in Ignatius's life and spirituality, is not only an indispensable source for the concept of Jesuit education but an essential part of the Society's foundation. It highlights the importance of an ordered curriculum.

This article describes liberal education as it
comes to light not historically but philosophically, taking
the word liber (free) as its chief distinguishing feature. It
considers what liberal education presupposes of those who
pursue it, and it enumerates several outcomes or “ends” that
are likely to ensue. Through liberal education, I argue, the
mind is liberated from the here and now, freed by exposure
to diverse kinds of character, released from the tyranny of the
practical mode of thought, and, at the same time, freed by
certain careful habits of reflection that take years to acquire.

Description "History of Liberal Arts Education" is a survey seminar course in which students take up and discuss short selections of texts about liberal arts education from antiquity to the present. Co-lead by Professors Peterson & Sosa, each two-hour class session will consist of a short introduction to the reading selections by one or both professors, identifying questions which he or they propose for discussion for the rest of the class. They will then enter into conversation, inviting students to participate. As this summer's iteration of the course will be online, students must have a viable Internet connection and a computer with a webcam and microphone. This is a very reading-heavy courseabout 40 pages per classthat relies on student preparation and participation. Because of the condensed summer schedule, preparation before the course and over the weekends is essential. Students should come prepared to each class with some thoughts and questions about the readings. Questions of the Course What is the model for liberal arts education-philosophy, the highest art of which is dialectic-or rhetoric? What is the difference between these? What makes arts "liberal"? What is the "orator" and what is his relation to society? What is the role of faith, culture, and tradition in education? How has liberal arts education changed, and what were the reasons for those changes? Has Christianity changed our understanding of the liberal arts, and if so, how? What is the proper course of study? Does that curriculum change based on regime or circumstance? What has Renaissance humanism meant for our understanding of the liberal arts? How have the liberal arts come to be understood today? What challenges has liberal arts education faced throughout history? What are the perennial obstacles to liberal arts education? What is the relation between the liberal arts and civic education, character education, and advanced study?

Globalization is a deeply ambivalent phenomenon, involving both widened horizons of understanding and the commodification of natural and human resources. The Catholic university's engagement with our new global situation needs to keep this ambivalence very much in mind. We should remember and renew our sense of ourselves as standing within an institution, the Catholic Church, that is one of the few truly multicultural global institutions on the planet, with a long history of both success and failure in global exchange. In this way, we may have resources to " think globally " in alternative ways that opt out of or resist the commodification of global interest. This essay will use Matteo Ricci as a model and attempt to distinguish analogically between those modes of global engagement that emerge from and then renew the deep roots of our own identity and those modes that deracinate. Our task for the last gathering of this " class " of the Boston College Roundtable is to reflect on, variously, " the role of the academy in the world " or " the global impact of Catholic higher education. " I want to take advantage of my ignorance here—I find it difficult to think in a programmatic way about our role in the midst of these complex, interlocking, and often conflicting forms of commerce and exchange that we group under the heading " globalization. " I'd like to use my own inadequacy to the task as an opportunity to do what I can—to name some of the threats and opportunities that we encounter as we are drawn, ever-more-inexorably, into these various networks of global Kevin L. Hughes is an associate professor of theology and religious studies and chair of both the Humanities department and Classical Studies program at Villanova University. His research specialties are in ancient and medieval Christian theology, spirituality, and history. Among his books are Augustine and Liberal Education; Constructing Antichrist; and Church History: Faith Handed On. His articles have appeared in journals such as Modern Theology; The Heythrop Journal; Theological Studies; and Franciscan Studies.

This paper is gleaned from years of learning through various styles and limited
experience as a design educator. A myth was broken in an effort to 'educate design
students'. 'Teaching' and 'Learning' are not equal experiences as both are driven by
entirely different motivations. In spite of a teacher's good intentions to inspire
students to learn, a chasm lies unattended. Plato's Allegory of the Cave, illustrates the
pains of learning first hand versus mere teaching or instructing. Within formal
conventions of curriculum, semester, contact hours, teaching and learning for
employability etc, Teaching is governed by fixed time, lesson plans and learning
outcomes. Push and Pull strategies tend to be used to 'enforce learning'. The paper,
however questions this approach with an intention to relook at Teaching and Learning
for this day and age. Why not shift focus away from Teaching towards Learning?
Why not go beyond instruction or sharing of past accumulated knowledge? What if
learning could become a joint expedition opening out learners to new and present
knowledge with or without the teacher? What is the essence of aesthetics required to
be learned? Must aesthetics be taught as a subject with a heavy theoretical
foundation? What could change if aesthetics became an act, practice and habit of
simple observation, appreciation, and creation in response to the former. Finally, can
expedition theory be used to nurture aesthetics as an essential trait for growth and
development? The theory also explores an evolved form of learning, that is 'Learning
by Teaching'.

In the critical words of political author Chris Hedges:
“We’ve bought into the idea that education is about training and ‘success’, defined monetarily rather than learning to think critically and to challenge.
“We should not forget that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers.
“A culture that does not grasp the vital interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management techniques for wisdom, which fails to understand that the measure of a civilization is its compassion, not its speed or ability to consume, condemns itself to death.”

A proposal for a Jesuit core reading list and the rationale behind it. Ideally there will be an autonomous or semi-autonomous college granting a two-year bachelor's degree (or certificate) in Letters. Such a program will provide the background that can crucially assist the next generation in confronting current issues at personal and societal levels. Latest version: April 2, 2022.

Now available in the paperback collection at https://www.amazon.com/Saving-Culture-Souls-Grace/dp/B0DN1MDK86/

Cicero was a central figure for the development of John Henry Newman‘s thought. After Aristotle, he is the main source of inspiration for Newman‘s idea of liberal education. This paper examines in detail how Newman made profit of his ethical and rhetorical thought vis-à-vis an analysis of the various passages from Cicero‘s works that Newman quotes, or refers to in his Dublin Writings. In the second section I discuss how Cicero symbolises the excellence of intellectual activity, but also the limits of the man educated outside the Christian faith. In Newman‘s view, Cicero represents the best specimen of the liberal, educated man.

Following Judy Celine Ick’s suggestion that storytelling is the mode of pedagogy in a Humanities classroom, this study attempts to explore how an artwork becomes a myriad of possible stories and concepts related to the nature of art even if studied from a distance. By way of analyzing the narratives, myths, discourses, and constructs surrounding the UP Oblation among selected freshman students of ARTS 1 in First Semester 2020-2021, the study discovered the epistemic binaries that exist within the body of the statue. This proves that the Oblation is always already a historical construction of ritualization and profanity. It also delves into realizing a method by which students can read against the grain of the dominant story on the statue’s surface by adapting the dialogical or problem-posing method in Paulo Freire’s The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. It reveals how students can voice the story of art and thereby unearth and/or foreground the possibilities of critical reflection and personal action through digital archives, digital stories, and story threads. This study proposes that assessments on artistic and theoretical concepts in the Humanities can be done through personal narratives and thus resist the passivity promoted by a banker-educator/ depositor-student relationship that currently exists on online platforms. Also, it provides insight to the possibility of a future digital archive about UPLB which focuses on narratives, icons, art, history, places of memory, and people of the UPLB community.

Academic jobs remain difficult to attain. Over the last few years, several colleagues have sought advice from me on how to approach an interview of a job search. My experience, both as a job applicant and as a member of over six academic search committees, can offer a comprehensive take on the academic interview process that candidates undergo for tenure-track positions. The following represents the notes of a talk that I gave to the Graduate Student Caucus at Loyola University of Chicago on how PhDs and academic job-seekers should engage the application and interview process: · How to present your story and fit for the job and academic community; · How to establish a relationship with the search committee; · How to prepare and engage in the interview process.

This chapter makes the argument for both the practicality and impracticality of philosophy as it relates to liberal education. An exploration of the history of science in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries reveals that a study of philosophy cultivates a skill set of logic and critical thinking that are crucial for those who study science and mathematics. It also situates philosophy as a unifying discipline for liberal education and STEM studies (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). The study of philosophy also is impractical, as is liberal education, in that it does not prepare students for any specific profession. But it is this impracticality that makes philosophy, and liberal education, central to its identity and value: it creates an individual who is more empathic, open-minded, and self-aware that would not be possible if philosophy and liberal education were subordinated to some practical goal.

What does one do with Stanley Fish's argument that the humanities have no persuasive extrinsic justification because they are simply " for their own sake "?  This brief essay offers several answers and invites readers to quite a different understanding of the value of the humanistic enterprise.

Now available in the paperback collection at https://www.amazon.com/Saving-Culture-Souls-Grace/dp/B0DN1MDK86/ .

Dear colleagues and friends who value education,

Enclosed is a letter I have drafted and posted to Academe, Inside Higher Ed., and The Chronicle of Higher Education. I am very grateful to Norman Markowitz for posting the original here, and I have taken the liberty of adding a bibliography. I also made it clearer that my name has not yet been added to the Turning Point's McCarthyesque witch hunt, but I have been attacked by an organization that now also has a chapter on my campus, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. Id like to believe that I'm not formally on the list (yet) because I have stood up against Turning Point's assault--but I think it more likely that this is simply a matter of time. And it doesn't matter very much--the assassination of my character is just the same. I regard my university--and thousands like it--as particularly vulnerable to this assault on the academy because my students are not the children of the wealthy and the privileged; they are not necessarily the product of excellent public education. Bloomsburg and its region is rural, deeply conservative, and thus ready-made for exploitation by organizations like Turning Point USA. The following letter might thus be read as a cautionary tale of what can happen where we in the academy--at every level--are not vigilant, where we take for granted that we are free to teach what we think the very best of material, where we think none are likely to vilify us for our scholarship, our pedagogy, our value for the arts, humanities, and science. Let me also strongly recommend AAUP's Add My Name campaign. It's only when we stand together united that this assault on our professions, are freedom of thought and ideas--and on our student's futures as critically thinking citizens--will end.

On the eve of a global pandemic, Kathleen Gough, a theatre professor, becomes immersed in the lives of five artist-mystics, each of whom is a pioneer in her field: Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), the first known musical composer; Eleanora Duse (1858-1924), the first modern actor in the Western world; Simone Weil (1909-1943), philosopher, activist, and mystic, whom Albert Camus called “the only great spirit of our time”; Marina Abramovic (b. 1946), “the grandmother of performance art”; and Hilma af Klint (1862-1944), the first known (and belatedly acknowledged) abstract painter. Each time Gough crosses a threshold into their world, she is compelled to attend courses, seminars and workshops that are simultaneously about dying and healing.

Curious to learn more about the relationships between art practice, dying, and healing, Gough imagines the five artists as wisdom teachers in a mystery school. In a series of eight lectures, she turns to performance theory to provide a framework for engaging with the unknown world. In Theatre and the Threshold of Death, Gough makes a persuasive argument for the world-making power of relational thinking in our increasingly polarized age.

What can a liberal education and especially philosophy accomplish, either theoretically or practically? The question, or insinuation, is familiar to anyone in the liberal arts today. Precisely because it is familiar, we may too casually dismiss it. In his four essays on happiness—“The Epicurean,” “The Stoic,” “The Platonist,” and “The Sceptic”—Hume takes this charge most seriously, and in its most serious form: Can philosophy provide a theory of happiness that does justice to the diversity of human lives? And, if so, can knowing it make one happy, or happier? “The Sceptic” and of the four essays as whole are generally taken to answer with a resounding “no.” I propose, however, that we reconceive “The Sceptic” as a trial of philosophy’s presumption to provide a theoretically true and practically useful account of happiness. The Skeptic’s arguments against these presumptions lead him to conclude no. Yet, within “The Skeptic,” Hume identifies the error that produces this conclusion, and thereby Hume’s corrective to the argument. On Hume’s conception of philosophy, philosophy—and the essay itself—provides a theory of human life and happiness devoid of the usual errors and capable of producing practical benefit.

This study focuses on determining the current job market for potential faculty members in the field of educational leadership and educational administration. The researchers analyzed all the job advertisements (N=173) seeking faculty members in this field for the 2012-2013 academic year. Among other things, this article details materials needed, skills required, qualifications required, needed responsibilities and experiences, as well content areas required. The data herein indicates the current needs of the field. This analysis offers future faculty members guidance as they embark on potential careers in academia. Since this study describes experiences and skills needed, it also informs the professors in the field who mentor and prepare future faculty members.

The future of the arts in higher education--writ large--requires the examination, analysis, and synthesization of many central and peripheral issues if arts education is to be successfully sustained. Present-day and future leadership must not rely upon traditional and legacy-grounded knowledge in order to grow and improve our creative disciplines. This report is just the first of many that outlines certain issues in axiomatic and easily digestible form. Vol.1 focuses on the visual arts.

A review essay on recent writing in the United States about the introduction of new forms of learning assessment using "student learning outcomes" into college classrooms for the purpose of improving post-secondary education. The essay highlights both critics and proponents, and focuses on debates among historians. It calls attention to the importance of connecting these conversations to an understanding of the political contexts of university management (including class and race inequalities) and the fundamental values associated with liberal arts education. The essay also points to substantial new research on alumni experiences that suggest alternative means for the improvement of student's personal and professional lives.

Why does medieval art matter today? This beautifully illustrated book will examine this question through the lens of the magnificent objects in the Wyvern Collection of Medieval and Early Renaissance art, accompanying the collection’s first exhibition in the United States. Works include exquisite examples of metalwork, stone and wood sculpture, and illuminated manuscripts from across Europe, as well as the Christian community of Ethiopia. Offering new photography and an accessible text, this book will be an essential resource for one of the world’s most important private collections of medieval art, and a fascinating read for all interested in the Middle Ages and the role of art history in exploring our world.

An introduction to the history and ideals of Liberal Arts education, with an explanation of Benedictine College's core requirements deliver that education. Written for incoming students in Benedictine's "First Year Experience" course. (August, 2018)

This essay aims to raise awareness of small, scattered ethnographic collections and illustrate how a liberal arts model of open-ended, object-based inquiry can help breathe new life into old collections.
The term “dangling collection” is introduced to specifically describe college- and university-housed orphaned collections that lack museum stewardship and curricular inclusion. My example centers on a
small but important group of ethnographic objects from the North American Arctic that is now maintained at Oberlin College. Academic scholarship, university teaching practices, and Indigenous community
interests are all coalescing around object-centered inquiry, and I demonstrate how the Arctic Collection’s dangling status in this era of material-focused research has helped to spur a collaborative
approach to its curation. Oberlin’s Arctic Collection is now emerging as a point of meeting, dialogue, and knowledge exchange between various stakeholders, including Alaska Native culture bearers and
undergraduate student researchers.

This papers aims to contribute to the ongoing debate over the identity of the university, particularly in Europe. The first part reviews relevant bibliography about the tradition of liberal education in the United States in the past 20th century. The second part reviews some bibliography about the Christian identity of universities in the Catholic tradition. I try to show that the model of liberal education and that of the universities of Christian inspiration share most of the ends they seek to promote.

This article draws on some initial investigation into the relationship between liberal arts education in Asia and youth citizenship to examine the roles of the 'institution' and the 'student' in citizenship formation. The article begins with a discussion of how emerging liberal arts education institutes in the Asian cities incorporate notions of citizenship into their visions and curricular programs, using selected cases of Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore. This is followed by a focus on the liberal arts college in Singapore to preliminarily analyse the ways in which a particular brand of citizenship is being produced and negotiated in/through the campus space. The contention is that recent liberal arts initiatives in East Asia may be read as constitutive of higher education's ethico-political experiment of youth citizenship, but one that produces ambiguous contours of the 'liberal arts educated citizen'. The article contributes to wider scholarship on citizenship education and institutional geographies of (youth) citizenship.

For the last 50 years, a belief that building a robust and competitive state economy should predominate California's public higher education goals has become increasingly prevalent, and today it is taken as an unchallenged assumption. This White Paper emphatically rejects that assumption, and argues that broader cultural and social goals are of equal, if not greater importance for Californians' well-being than purely economic ones; and that to achieve these broader social goals we must place more emphasis on humanities and the classical model of liberal education.

The diversity of learning differences in today’s college classrooms raises an array of difficult questions that pedagogical theory and practice have yet to address. The trend toward more individualized instruction presents a puzzle when considered alongside this new diversity, particularly in the context of classical ideals of liberal education. Drawing on the surprisingly timely educational writings of John Dewey, this essay attempts to sketch a pedagogical vision for the 21st century that shifts the focus back toward the process of learning itself, and that grounds learning in the personal experience of the learner without compromising the larger goals of liberal education. Meeting the challenges presented by diverse learners may hold the key to reinvigorating higher education as a whole.

Liberal arts education is highly commodified, yet it also boasts to cultivate critical thinkers and progressive changemakers. What exactly is the kind of "critical mindedness" that liberal arts institutions produce? Drawing from Bourdieuan concepts and recent anthropological work on elite subject formation, I explain how undergraduate students in an elite, predominantly White institution refashion the notion of "critique" as part of their elite habitus. I argue that neoliberal educational institutions enable the new elites to speak about (and advocate for) structural change without ever having to scrutinize their own elite subject position. This depoliticized notion of "doing critique" promises little progressive social transformation and reinforces the hegemonic power of neoliberalism from the inside out. I conclude by highlighting the situatedness of "critique" and its pedagogical potential and limitations.

Some research aiming to improve problem-solving skills in physics by various learning models has been performed. So far, there is no comprehensive research that uses Inquiry-discovery learning model to improve problem solving skills (PSS) in physics with the aid of the PhET simulation in the material of kinetic theory of gases. This research aims to investigate the differences of PhET-aided Inquiry-discovery learning using a theoretical review on PSS in the material of kinetic theory of gases between the experimental class and control class. This research is a quasi-experimental study by a post-test only design. The data analysis was performed via a t-test. The analysis results showed students in the experimental get higher PSS class than those in the control class. Also, the students in the experimental class have the highest and lowest initial abilities which were still higher than the students in the control class. Hence, the inquiry-discovery learning model is recommended to enhance students' physics PSS. The implication of this research is to provide information that students can be empowered by inquairy-discovey learning model in improving PSS. Therefore, it is expected that the next researchers can explore students' PSS at each meeting in order to improve students' learning outcomes.