The Liberal Arts and the Future of American Democracy

John Agresto

• Publisher: Encounter Books
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781641772693
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Liberal education, if it does not discover how to speak to society in ways our culture understands, and if it cannot make its virtues apparent to the democracy in which we live, will make itself smaller and smaller, lose the audience it wishes to hold, and die by diminishment.The liberal arts are dying because most Americans don't see the point of them. They don't get why anyone would study literature or history or the classics—or, more contemporarily, feminist criticism, whiteness studies, or the literature of postcolonial states—when they can get an engineering or a business degree.Americans have two serious concerns regarding the value of a liberal arts education: first, the personal good of a liberal education, its value to the future life of the student, which is no longer as evident as it once was; and second, that except for academic ideologues on the left who passionately believe the liberal arts can be used to bludgeon students to become "social justice" activists, we more old-fashioned instructors are so frightened of speaking the language of usefulness and relevance that we come across less as citizens helping to promote the wider good and more as cloistered, inward-looking intellectuals. If we have the capacity and the will to be of real use to society, we have hidden it under a bushel.My point is that the liberal arts are, at their best, not only of immense value—let's even say of "use"—to each of us as individuals, but also to America at large. Part of the greatness of the Founders was that they were much more hesitant than we are to believe that liberal education could not be useful or that other forms of education could not be liberal.If Jefferson could think of a fully educated man as one who understands farming and philosophy, if he had no trouble moving from classical studies to writing a tract upon which a nation would be built, why are we Americans today so rigid in our separation of the theoretical from the practical, the scholarly from the civic?

PART 1Toward an American Liberal Education

(1)The Liberal Arts and American Higher Education

What in the World Are We Talking About?

A simple question: What are the liberal arts?

Well, perhaps it’s not so simple. Like the blind men holding on to different parts of the proverbial elephant, most people— from parents and students to professors and university presidents—have their own views of the matter. But (again like those with the elephant) even partial views often have some truth behind them. Perhaps at the furthest end, if you ask an average undergraduate what the “liberal arts” might be, you risk being told that they are those courses the university forces all freshmen to take before they’re allowed to take what actually interests them. No doubt an honest but clearly not a terribly helpful answer.

Others try to be more exact: “We had to take things like history and literature in high school, but no one paid much attention because we thought they were boring. So now they make us study them in college. I guess they hope this time something will stick.”

Now, in mentioning fields such as literature and history, perhaps we’re getting closer. It certainly is true that the liberal arts cover subjects that are more “academic,” subjects that range from history and literature to calculus and philosophy. That is, subjects that are not in themselves clearly vocational or pre-professional. (Or, as an audacious few might be quick to say, the liberal arts are those subjects that are both boring and useless.)

Beyond what students might think, parents and the public itself are often puzzled as well. Many wonder why they must spend so much money to support something “political”: “Why do our kids have to study these ‘liberal’ subjects? Why not ‘conservative’ subjects, too?” These days, with progressive and “woke” activism entrenched in so many campuses, this question is more pressing than ever. But, for now, let’s simply say that while a decent and thorough liberal education will surely make us wiser about politics and the great political alternatives, the liberal arts are not in themselves—or, more pointedly, should not be—in the service of any political or partisan stance, whether Tory or Whig, liberal, conservative, Marxist, left-wing, or libertarian.

So, if the liberal arts are hard to define, if they come across as “political” rather than as educational, if too many students think of them as boring, and others see them as merely bookish and with no clear practical value—is it any wonder that the liberal arts have fallen on hard times?

Now, aspects of this predicament aren’t new. There has been throughout our history a tension in America’s approach to education. To many if not most Americans, schooling means training: the learning of a variety of very practical skills, perhaps as the gateway to a profession. Other Americans think that education should involve something “higher” than training, something intellectual, scholarly, cultural. That historical tension—between the practical and productive and the intellectual and academic—resides at the core of America’s escalating ambivalence toward, and rejection of, liberal education.

Traditionally, liberal education has always seen itself in the camp of the cultural and intellectual, in the realm of thought more than action. If we insist on making a distinction between “education” and “training,” then clearly the liberal arts traditionally fall within the camp of studies that are more “academic” than practical, an education rooted in thinking rather than doing. It is true—non-liberal education clearly has more practical effects than liberal education. But it would be liberal arts pomposity squared to say that the more “practical” arts are devoid of serious thought or that they involve thinking of a lower order. If you forget this observation, rest assured that we will come back to it later.

Now many who defend the liberal arts attempt to make a virtue out of what the liberal arts are not. True, a liberal arts education is not, in itself, knowledge of a trade or occupation. It is not training for a profession or for any particular career the way one studies accounting to become a CPA or the culinary arts to become a chef. Rather, we find our studies sometimes described as learning simply for the sake of knowing—though learning “for its own sake” is hardly a view that wins many converts to the cause of the liberal arts.*

What else should be noted beyond the contrast between a more “academic” and a more practical education? Our students are correct in saying that when we discuss the liberal arts we generally have in mind certain subjects such as history and literature. Indeed, an older view of the liberal arts (in a way that now sounds huffy and dogmatic) listed seven liberal arts, no more, no less.* While this overview of the liberal arts seems terribly narrow to us these days, one good aspect of it was the understanding that mathematics and science, and not simply what we know as the “humanities,” were also part of this fine thing historically known as the Liberal Arts. That is, the liberal arts comprise language, literature, history, politics, and philosophy as well as mathematics, the physical and biological sciences, and the study of the universe with all its complexity and wonder.

For now, let’s let this serve as a review: We understand that the liberal arts encompass certain academic subjects, though which ones and how many seems still up for grabs. We also recognize that a liberal education is not the whole of education, but one kind among many. Some argue that liberal education is the finest education. But in doing so we must acknowledge that often it is other species of education—vocational, professional, and many of the studies included in what is now called a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) curriculum—that many of our fellow Americans, including our students, see as most valuable. And, as we shall discuss, absolutely no good reason exists to dismiss or belittle this view.

But first, let’s talk about the word “liberal.”

Why Call It Liberal Education?

Why do we say liberal education or the liberal arts? Why not call it conservative education, since it is an education that “conserves” so much of the world’s knowledge? Or, better yet, why not just drop all politically freighted terminology?*

The truth is that the word “liberal,” properly understood, is essential to understanding what this type of education stands for and involves. “Liberal” has a connection to “liberty,” to being free. And, to be sure, there was a time when the subjects and fields included in “liberal arts” were studies pursued by free men, citizens who had the time and leisure to delve into rhetoric and philosophy or to examine the elegance of mathematics. People, in other words, who didn’t have to be too concerned about making ends meet. (Notice, again, the distinction separating the liberal arts from the world of work.)† We carry a vestige of this understanding today; when we think of education, most of us are referring to educating the young—those who don’t yet work.

Still, over the years, we’ve changed the emphasis when discussing the liberal arts in two important ways: first, by dropping the idea that only “men” might be liberally educated, and second (and crucially), by moving from saying that the liberal arts comprise those studies that are the domain of free men to saying that the liberal arts are those studies that help make men and women free.

Now, having said that the function of a liberal education is to increase our freedom, a myriad of new questions burst onto the scene. For example, if the liberal arts aim to make us free, how do they mean to do so? “Free” in what way? “Free” to do what?

Consider the liberation connected to the liberal arts. In a fundamental—perhaps even radically fundamental—way, the liberal arts are often referred to as a body of knowledge and skills that work to free our minds from being tied up with—or “enslaved to”—other people’s opinions. Not that the views of others might not be true. Of course they might. Sometimes “common wisdom” is actual wisdom. But the liberal arts hold out the possibility that we see the truth for ourselves and gain real knowledge about—real insight into—serious and important matters. In other words, the liberal arts hold out the promise of freeing each of us from the captivity of prejudice, of platitudes and superstition, or of whatever it is that “everyone” believes. In sum, we advance in our knowledge not simply through faith in what we are told, not by memorizing a catechism of dogmas or relying on what our peers or our culture believe, but through personal reason and reflection—in listening to all arguments and then deciding for ourselves.

Yet here we should be cautious. It’s not simply the opinions of others that we should try to think through; we must try to open the cage door of our own opinions—those unexamined notions we assume are true, those ideological and political beliefs and those un-thought-through notions we all hold and that often masquerade as truth. We must be open to all those books, stories, subjects, and arguments that stand willing to help us better understand so many marvelous things. We must be open to moving from opinion to knowledge. We must be open to having our minds grow, expand, and, yes, change. Indeed, this opening up of our minds is the foundation of what it means to become educated.

Consider all it means to break the chains of ignorance or superstition and to think for ourselves. These liberating inquiries encourage us to study history and, hopefully, lead us to see what civilization has been able to accomplish, at what cost and toil, and all the mistakes the world has made and what led to making them. To understand better cause and effect. Or, at times more importantly, to see how a single cause, a single action, might often have more than one effect, and not always the most expected one.

Here’s where our various “subjects” come into play. Do I want to know for myself something about the material universe? Surely the study of science in all its fields—physics, chemistry, atomic theory—will assist me. Do I long to know more about life and all living things? I should study deeply in biology, botany, genetics, evolution, and perhaps psychology. Do I want to know better how to live and how to deal with others as well as with myself? Philosophy and ethics, politics and history will help shed light. Religious studies might raise the possibility of the Divine and our place in the universe, leading us to question our faith or strengthen it. It might also help us explore what seem to be common beliefs and practices across so many faiths, as well as what stands out as radically unique—and why. Philosophy should lay out what justice or mercy or friendship or hatred is made of, or what we might see as noble, or it could help us begin to understand for ourselves what might be base or disgraceful even in our own lives.

Literature provides examples of what a life well, or badly, lived might look like, and hopefully fosters a greater ability to choose wisely. Do I need to see models of courage, treachery, magnanimity, compassion, cruelty, wise prudence, and true ignorance? Here we have literature, classical studies, and history. In posing all this we have only begun to name the issues and the possibilities.

We need to go further. It’s not merely our minds that are liberated from rote thinking; it’s our imaginations as well. It was that faculty—the ability to see things not only more truly but also differently—that led us in Brooklyn to imagine new ways of play and adventure after reading even so simple a book as Penrod and Sam. Knowledge of the truth and insight into what actually is are crucial to the liberal arts. But so is knowledge, discovery, and insight into what is possible. To paraphrase Robert Kennedy, studying literature, history, science, and indeed any of the liberal arts helps us not only ask “why” but also “why not?”

I could go on, but for now I want to touch on something that becomes important later: These studies and subjects, while they help to liberate our minds and imaginations and help us to live our lives at least partly free from ignorance or mere opinion, also have effects beyond us. While we begin with the thought that a liberal education properly conceived and pursued is good for each of us, it might be just as true that the liberation of our individual minds is, even more importantly, a good more widely shared—with our neighbors, our country, and beyond.

Now, if it’s true that one cause often has multiple effects, it’s also true that one idea is the mother of many more ideas. For example, if the liberal arts are truly arts fit for free men and women, then I imagine it follows that our studies should not be on trivial or small matters. That is, our lives not being infinite, we should probably focus on subjects worthy of the time and effort we pour into them. Having been given the gift of thinking for ourselves, it seems strange that we should squander it by merely thinking about matters of little matter. Thus, the liberal arts seem to be the seeking of knowledge about important matters through reason and reflection. Not minor matters, not slight matters, but significant issues of human concern. And learning about them not through “training,” not through obedience, not through repeating the thoughts and views of others, but through our thinking, our imagining, and our serious reflection.

While we’re still on the subject of liberal education as an education for freedom, let me mention one thing to be careful about, one thing that might seem correct but rarely is: A liberal education is not the same as an education built on merely free choice or suffused with “electives.” Indeed, very often the least liberating education is the one where students get to pick and choose whatever suits their current fancy or confirms what they imagine their interests are, since it ratifies their currently held opinions and encourages them to run in place intellectually.

We’ve covered a good bit in this chapter, perhaps too much. And while I believe all of it was important, I hope we can keep in mind at least the following:

• First, the liberal arts aim to raise us up from the world of simple belief, of accepting things on faith or on the basis of authority, in the hope of freeing us to think for ourselves.
• Second, in working to free our minds and imaginations, the liberal arts challenge not only what “everybody” believes but also what we ourselves believe.
• Third, the liberal arts prepare us not to dwell on small matters but to spend time considering the most important issues of human life. At its...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: The Great Iliad Question
• Part 1: Toward an American Liberal Education
• Part 2: Redeeming and Reconstructing Liberal Education
• Appendix A: Lincoln, Statesmanship, and the Humanities
• Appendix B: Why Latin? Why Greek?
• Appendix C: Further Thoughts on Stanford and Diversity
• Appendix D: Freedom and Truth in Higher Education
• Appendix E: On Jefferson
• Appendix F: The Politics of Reading
• A Message to High School Teachers and Principals
• A Message to High School Seniors
• Acknowledgments
• Index