Why a Liberal Arts Education?

There is a crisis in America, brought to the forefront by the election and other issues facing our nation. It is not a crisis of economics or even politics necessarily, although those are horrific symptoms. The crisis is more fundamental than that, a crisis of uneducated people being bombarded for years by propaganda and succumbing.

Robert Hutchins addresses the core of this issue well:
"The reduction of the citizen to an object of propaganda, private and public, is one of the greatest dangers to democracy...The great mass of the people cannot understand and cannot form an independent judgment upon any matter...The great storm of propaganda that beats upon the citizen twenty-four hours a day all his life long means either that democracy must fall a prey to the loudest and most persistent propagandists or that the people must save themselves by strengthening their minds so that they can appraise the issues for themselves".

People everywhere are looking for the "quick-fix" to their problems, problems that in most cases have been generated by their own willingness to be duped. They seek a more invasive government to reach into their lives and remove the consequences of poorly thought through actions, without considering the ramifications on the future.

What is the solution? Education, education, education. We must be steeped in the classics of humanity, classics that share the benefits of sacrifice and hardship, classics the demonstrate not only the resilience of the human spirit and mind, but the potential for human beings to rise above difficult situations and triumph.

We do not have a choice whether or not to be human beings. Our choice lies, rather, in what kind of human beings we will become: "Whether [we] will be an ignorant, undeveloped one or one who has sought to reach the highest point he is capable of attaining" (Great Books "The Great Conversation", pg 5) No matter where we are at, intellectually or physically, we must shake off the widespread fallacy that we may not gain an education outside of the four walls of an established institution for learning.

What type of education am I talking about? I am not talking about technical training specific to one field generally dished out by the local educational facility. I am talking about what is termed a "liberal education", the aim of which is human excellence, both private and public. Rousseau once stated:
"It matters little to me whether my pupil is intended for the army, the church, or the law. Before his parents chose a calling for him, nature called him to be a man...When he leaves me, he will be neither a magistrate, a soldier, nor a priest; he will be a man."
I am talking about an education that addresses the fundamental questions of society and life.

We must start where we are at and begin reading daily from some of the great books that have shaped the thought of Western Civilization. A "Great Conversation" has been going since the dawn of thought, a conversation regarding the meaning of life, the problem of the immortality of the soul, the problem of the best form of government. It is a discussion of many ofttimes opposing viewpoints regarding the issues of soul, state, God, beauty. It is a discussion regarding "the differences and connections between poetry and history, science and philosophy, theoretical and practical science." (ibid, Pg 4) We must have people in our society who can step outside the conundrums of issues as presented by modern media to see what is unseen in both the issues and the solutions proposed by those who would lead us.

We must realize the verity of Thomas Jefferson’s admonition:

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization,
it expects what never was and never will be."

We must start dedicating time each day to draw truths from the great books of our civilization,–the enduring, timeless classics– studying the lives and thoughts of others and by so doing, give us a broader basis for coming to our own conclusions in a time where mediocrity and conformity is celebrated. A great outline for this type of formative education may be found in The Great Books set, available at many libraries or even online. I have found another source in the recommended readings for graduate programs available at George Wythe University, also accessible online.

We must take the future into our hands and verse ourselves in the language of liberty, the language of freedom: for if we stand for nothing, we will truly fall for anything.