Copyright
© 2014 Bruce W. Hauptli
A liberal education should transform the student. As Brand Blanshard said, “to educate a human
mind is not merely to add something to it.
It is to transform it at a vital point, the point where its secret ends
reside.”2
What is central to such an education is not that the student comes to
acquire specific bits of information (certain basic units of cultural literacy,
for example), but rather that a habit of reasonableness and critical thinking
becomes inculcated. According to Harvey
Siegel, a critical thinker is someone who is “appropriately motivated by
reasons: she has a propensity or disposition to believe and act in accordance
with reasons; and she has the ability properly to assess the force of reasons
in the many contexts in which reasons play a role.”3 Critical thinkers must
not simply understand how to critically assess a position, they must be moved
by reason and, as Siegel notes, “when we take it upon ourselves to educate
students so as to foster critical thinking, we are committing ourselves to
nothing less than the development of a certain sort of person.”4
Of course, a liberal
education is directed toward individuals’ intellectual powers. The sort of transformation which Blanshard
alluded to is the transformation of an individual into a critical thinker who
employs her intellectual powers to their fullest extent. As the Lawrence University Catalog
states: “open and free inquiry, a devotion to excellence, the development of
character, the mastery of competencies, the ability to think critically, the
excitement and rewards of learning—these are the aims and principles of a
liberal arts education.”5 This sort of education does not promise to
produce happiness; indeed both Plato and J.S. Mill contend that even were it to
produce dissatisfaction, the sort of life it engenders is preferable to the
life of a contented pig which does not pursue these ends. As Blanshard says:
...Socrates’ life was better because, whether more pleasant
or not, it involved a completer fulfillment of powers. Grant the pig as generous a gastronomic
capacity as one wishes, still one must admit that its intellectual, moral, and
aesthetic horizons are limited, while those of Socrates are all but
unlimited. What gave Socrates’ life its
value was the free play of a magnificent mind, the fulfillment in thought, feeling,
and practice of a great intellect and a great heart.6
While Socrates, Mill, and perhaps Blanshard believed that
there is a single “human excellence” which we should all seek to approximate,
one need not hold this in embracing the ideals embodied in a liberal
education. Indeed, if questions of ends
are not clear-cut, and if there are either a variety of ends or a variety of
contenders for the exalted status of “the” end, then the critical and
reasonable capacities become all the more important—it is only by critically
and reasonably examining the contenders that one may make an informed
choice. Thus whether or not she agrees
with the particular sort of life recommended by Socrates, Mill, and Blanshard,
the critical thinker engendered by a liberal education will emulate Socrates
and seek a life firmly rooted in those values, beliefs, and theories which pass
critical scrutiny.
Critical thinkers
may arise without attending a college or university—indeed both Socrates and J.S.
Mill leap to mind as examples here.
Moreover (and unfortunately) colleges and universities do not always
foster either reasonableness or critical thinking. Indeed, all too frequently American colleges
and universities praise the ideal of a liberal education but go about their
business without any serious efforts to instantiate that ideal. It is the ideal of a research university
which really dominates the American higher educational scene. Such institutions claim that they dedicate
themselves to research, teaching, and service, but they truly devote themselves
to transmitting, extending, and publishing specialized domains of human
knowledge, values, and culture. In such educational institutions undergraduate
education is seen as preparatory—its aim to produce individuals who are capable
of pursuing graduate work in one of the specialized scientific, scholarly, or
professional fields. This is a noble
goal, but it should not be the central goal of undergraduate education. Students can become skilled in the
methodologies, doctrines, and values of a particular field or profession
without becoming critical thinkers or reasonable individuals.
Of course extensive
training in a particular science, scholarly field, or profession may generate
individuals who are excellent critical thinkers—indeed John Dewey thought that
critical thinking could be best fostered while pursuing particular scientific,
professional, or practical problems. The
hallmark of a liberal education is not training for a particular science,
scholarly field, or profession however.
A liberal education trains one for life. Individuals frequently find that they need or
want to change professions or fields as their lives progress, and even where
one is lucky enough to find a fulfilling life path and pursue it from the
start, there is more to life than one’s professional endeavors.
Oftentimes people
contend that a liberal education is not “useful”—it requires that one study
fields, acquire information, and understand methodologies which one will never
employ in one’s later life. This
criticism is very wide of the mark however.
Reasonable individuals will be most able to lead the sort of life which
is genuinely fulfilling. As Blanshard
says, “the case for being reasonable is not that it will make one successful,
still less that it will make one spectacular, but that without it everything
else is apt to turn to ashes in one’s mouth.”7
A liberal education
is both a challenge and a privilege. It
is a challenge because the student must make considered choices if she is to
acquire the traits noted above. One can
not “learn how to learn” without acting and critically observing the
consequences of these actions—one must learn by doing, and such learning is a
function of choice and self-discipline.
A liberally educated individual asks “Why” rather than “What,” and
proceeds to critically consider the various proposed responses. Such critical abilities are not easily
developed and the challenge posed by a liberal education is that of choosing to
become a critical thinker—of choosing to accept the responsibility, discipline,
and effort which this involves.
While an individual
may impose such a responsibility upon herself without ever attending a college
or university, the enterprise of becoming such an individual is sufficiently
difficult that most are aided by becoming part of a community which can foster
and instantiate such a life. The college
or university which would educate reasonable individuals who are critical
thinkers must foster diversity, skepticism, and debate. This is not important because diversity,
skepticism, and debate are themselves worthwhile—a diverse society of skeptical
debaters might be a woefully uncritical community. These traits are important because a liberal
education requires an intellectual community wherein individuals can
cooperatively and collegially explore, debate, and consider the problems of
this and other ages (and of this and other cultures).
A college or
university seeking to promote reasonableness must seek to develop critical
thinkers who do not simply limit their critical activities to one specialized
problem or area of human concern. A
liberal education does this by promoting a skeptical community which values both
specialized and general knowledge. A
liberally educated individual thinks critically, writes clearly, and speaks
effectively whether considering mathematical problem, a scientific theory, a
political argument, or a musical composition.
By being exposed to a wide range of subject matters while also focusing
her attention on a single area of knowledge, the liberally educated individual
acquires the ability to respond to the unforeseen and unexpected—her education
enables her to make considered judgments, and to treat ideas (whether her own
or others’) critically, reflectively, and reasonably.
If such an education
is to be possible, the educational community itself must be committed to this
ideal and it must provide models of critical thinking which the undergraduate
student may observe and emulate. For
this reason, teaching in such a community takes time and effort. Such teachers must adopt Israel Scheffler’s
model of teaching which holds that:
to teach...is at some points at least to submit oneself to
the understanding and independent judgment of the pupil, to his demand for
reasons, to his sense of what constitutes an adequate explanation. To teach someone that such and such is the
case is not merely to try to get him to believe it: deception, for example, is
not a method or a mode of teaching.
Teaching involves further that, if we try to get the student to believe
that such and such is the case, we try also to get him to believe it for the
reasons that, within the limits of his capacity to gasp, are our
reasons.
Teaching, in this
way, requires us to reveal our reasons to the student and, by so doing, to
submit them to his evaluation and criticism....To teach is thus...to
acknowledge the “reason” of the pupil, i.e., his demand for and judgment of
reasons.8
The challenge of
becoming such an individual and the difficulty involved in providing such an
education certainly legitimate the demand that such an enterprise be justified
(although for one to call for such a justification, or for one to comprehend a
putative justification, one must already have traveled a good way down the road
with the critical thinker). One
justification has already been touched upon—the claim that individuals who
become such thinkers lead lives which are more worthwhile. While the satisfied pig will never accept
this justification, most of us will allow that the barnyard animal is incapable
of the intellectual pursuits and pleasures, the moral character, or the
aesthetic enjoyment which can characterize the life of the critical
thinker. Those individuals who have no
inkling of the possibility of the sort of life which Socrates lived will, of
course, not assign much credence to his claim that “the unexamined life is
unworth living for man,” but those who are exposed to these possibilities
generally allow that a life without such activities is relatively empty. Moreover, those who do not lead an examined
life often allow that there is an emptiness which, while they can not quite pin
it down, nonetheless undermines the satisfactions which they do
experience.
In addition to this
classic justification for accepting the challenge of becoming a critical
thinker and a reasonable person, it is also important to note that by
developing such a character one increases one’s moral autonomy and becomes a
more self-sufficient individual. A
liberal education empowers the student enabling her to take control of her
future and, as much as is possible, permitting her to create it rather than
merely follow a predetermined course of events.
True choice is facilitated by the independence which such an education
encourages and by the variety of alternative conceptions which it exposes the
individual to. This justification for
becoming a reasonable person is independent of the classical one mentioned
above—it does not rely upon the singular conception of human excellence which
lies at the heart of Plato’s, Mill’s, and, perhaps, Blanshard’s view of human
excellence.
It is also important
to note that such an education is essential for a democracy. Where the citizens are not critical thinkers,
it is all too easy for their thought, actions, and values to be manipulated by
others. A true democracy requires that
the citizens themselves critically assess both the means and the ends which
society is to foster and pursue. Plato
favors the rule of the state by philosopher kings because he believes that the
ship of state must be directed by a “navigator” who has a special kind of
knowledge. His ship of state metaphor
flounders, however, when it is recognized that navigators do not generally
choose this ship’s destination—the members of the crew of the ship of state are
not simply hired hands. They are the
state, and they are vitally interested in the choice of a destination.9 If
they are not critical thinkers, however, their preferences may result from
manipulation rather than rational contemplation, and their fate may not be
greatly different from that of satisfied pigs.
To attempt to
justify liberal education by appealing to our nature as rational animals, the
“higher pleasures,” the possibility of “moral self-sufficiency,” or the
prerequisites for “democracy” does not end the justificatory responsibility
which arises here. Someone may well ask
what justifies these ends—asking
“What assures you that humans are rational,” “What justifies the stated
preference for democracy,” or “Why should we seek to become moral, autonomous,
or self-sufficient?” Such questions lead
to lengthy philosophical debates, but I will not pursue these issues here.10 I
do not presume that everyone shares these ends—the fideist, the skeptic, the
egoist, and the fascist will certainly have reservations which I can not meet here
without going too far afield. I will,
however, appeal to Winston Churchill’s justification of democracy since it
offers a point worth noting in regard to such extended debates. Churchill notes
that:
many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried
in this world of sin and woe. No one
pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise.
Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government
except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time; but there
is the broad feeling in our country that the people should rule, continuously
rule, and that public opinion, expressed by constitutional means, should shape,
guide, and control the actions of Ministers who are their servants and not
their masters.11
Surely no one pretends that a liberal education (especially
as offered by past or current colleges and universities) is perfect. Indeed certain “deficiencies” are widely
discussed (as the current debates regarding “political correctness” and “the
canon” clearly illustrate). In fact, a
healthy community intent upon fostering a liberal education will necessarily
engage in regular debate as to the character of the end and the preferability
of various means toward that end.
It is not accidental
that much of the debate regarding the canon and political correctness arises at
research universities. Legislatures,
businesses, accrediting agencies, the public at large, and the students
themselves often articulate demands which point toward a full liberal
education. While the business and
engineering accrediting agencies do much to restrict the students’
undergraduate education, they also call for the core components of a liberal
education and lament that so few business and engineering majors have the
compositional, critical, cultural, humanistic, mathematical, and scientific
understanding which a liberal education provides. Like democracy, however, liberal education
takes work—neither is something which individuals may create merely by
coveting. Active endeavor is called for
if individuals are to have these traits (rather than simply having the capacity
to some day instantiate them in action).
Some might believe
that there is something particularly American in the hopes expressed by the
American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business or the Accreditation Board
for Engineering and Technology that a mere smattering of “core” courses will
produce liberally educated business or engineering professionals. It would be wise to note, however, that
Socrates had great trouble convincing the educated Athenians of his own era
that the sort of extended learning process which he recommended was
worthwhile. In both ancient Athens and
contemporary America the rhetoricians offer a more attractive educational model
on the face of it—students willingly pay for short-term classes to acquire the
ability to score higher on the SAT, GMAT, LSAT, and GRE tests where what is
really sought by those who require these tests is the ability to think
critically and reasonably. The student’s
efforts (and their parents’ money) would be better spent in redoubling their
exertions and expectations throughout the student’s education itself. After all, simply being able to score high on
tests ultimately nets one nothing—unless that
is the goal of life (and it should be clear that a life of successful
test-taking is not at all what Plato had in mind when claiming that "the
unexamined life is un worth living for man"). .
It seems to me that
Churchill’s justification of democracy may apply quite well to the
justification of a liberal education in the current context.
While such an education is not perfect, given the expectations we have,
it is not clear that there are any truly viable alternatives. While there are other educational models,
they do not facilitate the ends we actually wish to achieve. Unfortunately, a liberal education is
something one must actually work at—the challenge of accepting the responsibility
to become a critical thinker and a reasonable individual is a difficult
challenge to accept when one is a member of a passive consumer society.
I noted above that a
liberal education is both a challenge and a privilege. Let me switch from discussing the challenges
to discussing the privilege for a moment. Such an
education is a privilege because it is not the educational norm within the
larger community—relatively few citizens actually receive such an education
(although such an education is, truly speaking, something all citizens should
receive). Those who receive such an
education become not only personally empowered, but they also come to have a
civic responsibility. The American
“founding fathers” clearly believed, and acted, upon this—and Adams and Jefferson
did much to mandate and facilitate the liberal education of the populous. As their example shows, liberally educated
individuals have the ability to improve society and better the lot of all
citizens.
Liberally educated
individuals who do not direct at least some of their energies in an effort to
improve their society act irresponsibly and betray the fact that they have
acquired but the veneer of a liberal education.
Socrates and J.S. Mill were social activists—neither pursued the higher
pleasures simply to make himself exceedingly happy. Each believed that their happiness was
intimately tied to the happiness of others, and each worked selflessly to help
others improve their lot. While their examples
may be hard acts to follow, liberally educated individuals find that the
privilege of empowerment carries the responsibility of social commitment.
In the truest sense,
a liberal education is vocational—it prepares individuals for lives as
responsible and critical agents and citizens.
It equips them with the skills requisite to master new vocations rather
than limiting them to a single niche in a continuously evolving world. Those who receive an undergraduate degree
without becoming liberally educated have been trained and conditioned—and,
ultimately, they have been shortchanged.
Notes: (click on note number to return to the text for
the note)
1 A Wittgenstenian should be
suspicious when she is tempted to define the essence of anything, and a
naturalist should be wary of those times when she is tempted to speak about
intrinsic values, but there are centrally important aspects of a liberal
education which stand out if one pauses to reflect on such educational programs
and experiences. What I have to say on
this matter is by no means original, and I have borrowed particularly heavily
from the 1989-1990 Catalog of my alma mater, Lawrence
University. That description of a
liberal education is excellent.
2 Brand Blanshard, “The Uses of A
Liberal Education,” in his The Uses of A Liberal Education (La Salle:
Open Court, 1973), pp. 42-43.
3 Harvey Siegel, Educating
Reason (New York: Routledge, 1988), p. 23.
4 Ibid., p. 41.
5 Lawrence University’s Course Catalog,
op. cit., p. 13.
6 Brand Blanshard, “What Is Education For?,”
in his The Uses of A Liberal Education, op. cit., p. 98.
7 Ibid., p. 93.
8 Israel Scheffler, The Language of
Education (Springfield: Charles C. Thomas, 1960), p. 57.
9 Cf., Renford Bambrough, “Plato’s
Political Analogies,” in Philosophy, Politics, and Society, ed. P.
Lasslet (Oxford: Blackwell, 1956), p. 105.
10 My The Reasonableness of Reason:
Explaining Rationality Naturalistically (Chicago: Open Court, 1995)
develops an extended defense of the commitment to reason against the skeptical
and fideistic challenges which contend that such a commitment is arbitrary,
unjustified, or only justifiable in a question-begging manner.
11 W.S. Churchill, W.S., Churchill: His
Complete Speeches 1887-1963, R.R. James (ed.), v. 7 (New York: Chelsa
House, 1974), p. 7566.
Return to Hauptli’s
Home-page
Send me comments on this
Last revised: Revised: 04/30/2014.