The Demands of Liberal Education analyses and applies contemporary liberal political theory to certain key problems within the field of educational theory. Levinson examines problems centred around determining appropriate educational aims, content and institutional structure and argues that liberal governments should exercise a much greater control over education than they now do. Combining theoretical with empirical research, this book will interest and provoke scholars, policy makers, educators, parents, and all citizens interested in education politics.

This book defends Christian nurture and education against the frequently made charge of indoctrination. It argues that Christian education is fully compatible with a liberal education.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Western schooling has been dominated by some form of broad theoretical education since classical times; this sort of education has traditionally been termed a “liberal education.”1 Providing a coherent account of why a broad theoretical education is worthwhile is an important project given the pervasiveness of this model of education. One common account of the value of liberal education links a broad theoretical education with the intrinsic value of the knowledge transmitted. (...) In this paper, I offer a different, utility-based account of the value of liberal education. (shrink)

Anthony Appiah’s essay on liberal education in the United States begins by identifying a distinctive feature of classical liberalism – namely, that the state must respect substantial limits with respect to its authority to impose restrictions on individuals, even for their own good. Nevertheless, Appiah points out, the primary aim of liberal education is to ‘maximize autonomy not to minimize government involvement’. Most of the essays in this volume, including Appiah’s, are attempts to address the question (...) of what the liberal commitment to maximize personal autonomy means when it comes to the teaching of what Appiah refers to as ‘identity-related claims’. The aim of this chapter is to suggest how one might begin to think about some questions in the philosophy of education, guided by the liberal thought that education is a preparation for autonomy, and to show that this tradition is both powerful enough to help with this difficult question and rich enough to allow answers of some complexity. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

The paper deals with John Dewey’s aversion against liberal education and his concern about a ‘dual track’ educational system separating liberal education and vocational education. It investigates the reason why Dewey maintains that the philosophical ‘dualisms’ culminates in the question on vocation.

This volume looks at the thinking of educational theorist Carl Bereiter and how he tackled the problem of the liberal education canon. He proposed the way we view the main task of formal education as enculturation into world 3. World 3 is an idea adapted from Karl Popper.

Chapter 6 looks at efforts outside the PTEV to revitalize liberal learning by integrating the academic and social apprenticeships around themes of purpose, service, and community. The chapter examines programs at Harvard University, Wagner College, and Wake Forest University The chapter then proceeds to examines several efforts to spur similar endeavors by national organizations such as the Bringing Theory to Practice program of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, arguing that these developments take on fuller significance when they (...) are recognized as forms of humanistic education aiming at the cultivation of practical wisdom. It has been the mission of liberal learning to provide both training in detached, analytical thinking and yet also cultivate engagement with the world and a search for values. These capacities, at least as much as any specialized skills, are likely to prove key resources for confronting the challenges of the 21st century. (shrink)

Abstract:This essay discusses two ways in which an agent can make progress with respect to value: self-cultivation and aspiration. The self-cultivator becomes a more coherent version of the person she was before, acquiring beliefs or desires or habits or skills that serve her antecedent valuational condition. The aspirant, by contrast, acquires new values. The existence of aspiration is under pressure from those who would assimilate it either to self-cultivation, or to a change in value that is done to a person (...) rather than a change that is her own work. I show that those two options cannot be exhaustive by discussing liberal arts education; it is, I argue, paradigmatically aspirational. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to provide a clarification of how ‘education in a postliberal world’ differs from the concept of ‘postliberal education;’ and second, to contribute to an understanding of the backlash against liberalism and liberal education in recent years. The paper is primarily conceptual and only secondarily descriptive in that it prioritizes the importance of clarifying the conceptual haze surrounding the notion of postliberalism and related terms (i.e. illiberalism, anti-liberalism); it is (...) argued that this conceptualization is necessary as these concepts have different educational implications in different political contexts. The paper outlines a number of broad dimensions that are important to explore in future research on the entanglement between postliberalism and education; it also discusses how the concept of postliberalism could be used fruitfully to account for changes in education in ways that take into consideration the recent critiques against liberalism and liberal education. (shrink)

Higher education has often been accused of its anti-social character, represented by the metaphor of the ‘ivory tower’. However, the idea of the pursuit of knowledge per se, which is associated with the ivory tower, has not been widely recognized as a public ideal of higher education. In this study, by drawing on the 20th-century British educational philosopher Paul H. Hirst’s theory of liberal education, I revisit and re-evaluate the Newmanian idea of pursuit of knowledge as (...) an end itself as a public ideal for higher education. I argue that the public criteria provided by discipline-rooted knowledge are among the criteria that are most able to define and legitimise higher education. These public criteria are compatible with the distinctive nature of higher education, which is essentially aimed at adult citizens and linked to research as the creation of knowledge, and can even serve to legitimise the cognitive structure of the society. (shrink)

Freedom and responsibility -- The two freedoms of speech in Plato -- Speech codes and the life of learning -- Liberal education and life -- First things first : history and the liberal arts -- Philosophy in the comics -- The one book course : an internship in the ivory tower -- Why I read such good books : Aeschylus, Sophocles, the moral majority, and secular humanism -- Plato and Nietzsche on death : an introduction to the (...) Phaedo -- The empire of poetry : on Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus -- Agreeing to agree : on beginning Rousseau's social contract -- Unraveling Ravelstein : Saul Bellow's comic tragedy -- The philosophy of Leo Strauss : an introduction -- On opening The closing of the American mind -- Richard Kennington : the true and the good -- Seth Benardete : the life of wonder -- A life of learning. (shrink)

Current debates about liberal education have distracted us from responding intelligently to the growth and dominance of professional preparation programs. In 1828, the Yale faculty, confronted with similar circumstances, developed what may be the last widely influential philosophy of liberal education. It gives us a starting point, as does Plato's Republic. Democracy and the knowledge-based economy require us to articulate a new philosophy of liberal education. Using Kantian terminology, I argue that, whereas the basic (...) purpose of professional preparation is to produce heteronomous behavior, the purpose of liberal education should be the development of autonomous individuals. (shrink)

This collection of essays by philosophers and educationalists of international reputation, all published here for the first time, celebrates Paul Hirst's professional career. The introductory essay by Robin Barrow and Patricia White outlines Paul Hirst's career and maps the shifts in his thought about education, showing how his views on teacher education, the curriculum and educational aims are interrelated. Contributions from leading names in British and American philosophy of education cover themes ranging from the nature of good (...) teaching to Wittgensteinian aesthetics. The collection concludes with a paper in which Paul Hirst sets out his latest views on the nature of education and its aims. The book also includes a complete bibliography of works by Hirst and a substantial set of references to his writing. (shrink)

I argue that hopes and claims about the liberating power of liberal education are typically exaggerated, naive and wrong. Reflecting upon and borrowing terms from Jim Shelton's essay on "The Subversive Nature of Liberal Education," I use the work of Ivan Illich, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron to argue that social education—training in efficient and productive consumeristic life—absorbs, muffles and domesticates any radical content liberal arts education may manage to provide. As (...) with virtually all education, liberal education conserves the society from which it emerges. (shrink)

In this article I attempt to find out the appropriate understanding of “liberal education”. Firstly, I distinguish the two most important meanings of the notion “freedom” which I call momentary and lifelong freedom. Momentary freedom is a type of negative freedom, and lifelong freedom a type of positive freedom. Secondly, I show the consequences, which these two meanings of “freedom” have on the practice of a “liberal education”. Finally, I analyse which type of liberal (...) class='Hi'>education is the best. (shrink)

Chapter 2 explores the PTEV’s response to the contemporary misalignment of higher education through the development of a metaphor, drawn from recent research on cognition, of learning as apprenticeship. The chapter divides undergraduate experience into three “apprenticeships.” The first, or academic apprenticeship describes the formal educational program of courses of study, organized by the faculty. The second, or social apprenticeship refers to the co-curricular programs of clubs, organizations, and activities by which, universities and colleges seek to promote the personal (...) and social development of students. The third apprenticeship concerns the institutions’ efforts to provide students with opportunity to discover and develop a larger direction and purpose for themselves during their collegiate experience and beyond graduation. One such “third apprenticeship” experience, the Senior Keystone for the Business major at Augsburg College in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is analyzed for its ability to integrate academic learning with career preparation around the vocation theme that the college’s PTEV program has infused widely in curricular and co-curricular areas of campus life. (shrink)

This essay consists of an examination of the work of three thinkers who conceive of liberal education primarily in teleological terms, and, implicitly if not explicitly, attempt to offer some answer to the question: what does it mean to be fully human? John Henry Newman, T. S. Eliot, and Josef Pieper developed their understanding of liberal education from their own intellectual and religious experience, which was informed by a specifically Christian conception of the place of (...) class='Hi'>education in a fully developed human life. I suggest that the strength of their understanding of liberal education derives from its connection to the various small cohesive religious communities to which they were connected. Nonetheless, this insularity was also the primary weakness because each writer ended universalising what was in fact a particular and unique cultural and religious experience instead of providing convincing proof of a single human nature with a single telos. I will contrast this teleological conception of liberal education with that of Michael Oakeshott and his student Kenneth Minogue, both of whom wrote about education in a post-religious era in which the earlier consensus had completely broken down. They both celebrated the variety of practices which human beings have invented for themselves over the past several centuries (and past several millennia), and did not appear to suffer from the lack of any unifying single human telos. I will suggest that their understanding of practice insulated them from the need for a single unifying telos. (shrink)

Examines four objections stemming from the clash of theory and intuition. It argues that the ‘detached school’ should, with minor modifications, continue to provide the basis for the liberal educational ideal. Section 3.1 addresses concerns about state tyranny, arguing that the detached school both counters the threat of parental tyranny and ensures a substantive pluralism among schools and within society. Section 3.2 shows that detached schools can promote effective parental involvement. Section 3.3 addresses the hidden curriculum of schools, while (...) Section 3.4 discusses the ability of the detached school to help children develop cultural coherence and a stable sense of identity as well as a capacity for choice. (shrink)

Paul Hirst’s defence of liberal education and his forms of knowledge thesis are likely to seem out of step with contemporary calls to decolonize knowledge by ‘delinking’ it from ‘Western’ Enlightenment traditions. In view of the decolonial challenge, and emphasizing too that Hirst’s work should be located in its time, we consider the extent to which his account of liberal education still has a place in the postcolonial era. We outline Hirst’s defence of liberal (...) class='Hi'>education and how it changed over time, and show how philosophy of education in the tradition in which he has been so influential departed from Hirst’s account of liberal education, with some of these trends anticipating postcolonial imperatives. While there is a pressing need for attention to the significance of colonialism in philosophy of education, the discipline has moved on and diversified considerably over the last half century, including by developing more expansive conceptions of liberal education with the potential to contribute to the postcolonial project. Some elements of Hirst’s defence of liberal education are compatible with the postcolonial project, but it would need adjustment to make it relevant to the postcolonial era. After addressing the postcolonial critique of liberal thought in general as complicit in colonialism, we conclude by assessing what contribution Hirst’s conception of liberal education could make to the postcolonial project, noting a degree of openness to aspects of the decolonial project. (shrink)

This paper aims to open up a problem for discussion and further research based on the three concepts of its title. It examines how these concepts are linked by a line of reasoning developed by the French philosopher, Louis Althusser. Althusser argues that liberal education is an ideological practice that serves to reproduce capitalist social formations. It directs people into preestablished, functional, class positions in society, yet it disguises this operation by keeping attention focused on the myth of (...) our essential subjectivity. This myth, which permeates the discourse of liberal education, is what constitutes humanism. In response to this skeptical view of liberal education and humanism, I start to develop Althusser’s formulations in a different direction. I argue that a humanism that takes fuller responsibility for theorizing the practice of liberal education may be able to revise that practice so that it serves socially transformative, rather than reproductive, ends. Such a humanism may be able to ground itself on an understanding of our subjectivity that emphasizes its reliance on a community of learning, one whose values intrinsically oppose those of capitalism. (shrink)

In an address entitled "Democracy and Liberal Education" delivered in 1887, Edward Everett Hale attacked the then President of Princeton University, the distinguished Scottish philosopher James McCosh for his remarks in a lecture to the Exeter Academy. Hale argued, in effect, that McCosh was ultimately "un-American" in his pedagogical purposes. The issues which Hale goes on to address, and the arguments to which he gives vent, show clearly the battle lines as far as liberal education in (...) America was concerned. Hale says that McCosh "encourages the students...to supply our lack of a political body of noblemen by an aristocracy founded on letters and learning." In doing so, Hale explains, McCosh is drawing on analogies "as old as Plato." "They are analogies which come most naturally to a man trained among well-defined classes in social order. But they ought not to be long sustained among people who have been trained in the social order of a democratic republic." For Hale the idea liberal education has no "elitist" or exclusivist overtones. Liberal education does not seek "to make any class of scholars." Indeed, "a true republic expects, in the end, to give a liberal education to all its people...the republic regards a liberal education not as the good fortune of a governing class, but as the privilege, if you please, the necessity of all." When we turn to the man who was the springboard of some of Hale's remarks on education we see that McCosh's concern is whether "America has arrived at a stage at which there is a body of men and women who have leisure and taste to cultivate the liberal arts and advance the higher forms of civilization." But it should be observed that, despite their basic differences of concern and approach, both Hale and McCosh believed that there was such a thing as the truth, that God or the Divine was the ultimate phenomenon for human beings, and that belief in these things helped sustain the good that was liberal society. By recalling the arguments of such men we are provided with a picture which contrasts with the debate between "town and gown" in our own day. If there is still some of Hale's moral seriousness about citizenship in "town" it seems hard to allow there is much of McCosh's moral seriousness about the task of philosophy in the realm of the "gown." To say the least, both civic and intellectual seriousness has declined since Hale and McCosh's time. That is why the kind of discussion in which they engaged should be interesting to us today. It allows us to track both the origins of our condition and the path we have come. The study of American educators such as these can be great value as we face the crisis of education and liberal society of our time. (shrink)

In this paper, I forge a strong educational bond between opera and the humanities: opera as liberal education, not just additional to or exemplary of. After rehearsing the well-known present-day criticisms of liberal education, I first make the diagnosis that the trouble with liberal education as teaching and learning the humanities is not so much its theoretical justification as its practical implementation. To neutralize the criticisms and to solve the problem of how to practically (...) realize a theoretically defensible goal, my proposal is, next, to exploit opera as the vehicle of liberal education. Finally, I detail my proposal, offering suggestions about the way opera as liberal education can function on the curriculum. (shrink)

Since 1961, there is a tradition at the University of Chicago to give an annual address to the incoming undergraduates on the Aims of Education. Three of these are available on the internet -- the addresses of John Mearsheimer, a political scientist (1997); Robert Pippin, a philosopher (2000); and Andrew Abbott, a sociologist (2002). My judgment is that none of them understands what liberal education is ultimately about. They all emphasize the usefulness of a University of Chicago (...) education in the market-place, and they all think of liberal education -- explicitly so by Mearsheimer -- as amoral. Putting together these two ideas of success and amorality, it is very hard to resist the thought that these professors are pushing and defending an education in sophistry (as understood by Plato). (shrink)

ZAKARIA, F.. Obrana liberálního vzdělání. Praha: Academia. 127 s. ISBN 978-80-200-2717-7. Z anglického originálu In defence of a liberal education přeložil Jaroslav Veis.

Liberal education used to command wide political support. Radicals disagreed with conservatives on whether the best culture could be appreciated by everyone, and they disagreed, too, on whether the barriers to understanding it were mainly social and economic, but there was no dispute that any worthwhile education ought to hand on the best that has been thought and said. That consensus has vanished since the 1960s. The book examines why social radicals supported liberal education, why (...) they have moved away from it, and what the implications are for the future of an intellectually stimulating and culturally literate education. (shrink)