The Pursuit of Liberal Education

By W. J. Rock

The Pursuit of Liberal Education is a scholarly but accessible book on philosophy of education. It also involves a look at a philosophy of man, mind, conduct, government and progress. There is a discussion of the humanities and sciences, along with some social criticism, too. It calls for a revival of liberal education. It redefines liberal education as both a preservation of the best of the cultural heritage, and as a helpful guide for social reform. Thinking and learning about ideas and values across the spectrum of knowledge are considered. This is an indispensable book that puts everything in perspective.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465374721

W. J. Rock

W. J. Rock is an independent writer and scholar. He is a former teacher and holds a Doctorate in Philosophy of Education. His overall interests include History, Education, Philosophy, and the Humanities in general. His previous book was “The Mass Confusion of Values Clarification.”

Book preview

The Pursuit of

Liberal Education

W. J. Rock

Copyright © 2012 by W. J. Rock.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2011917629

ISBN:          Softcover                                 978-1-4653-7471-4

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4653-7472-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

106143

CONTENTS

Introduction

PART ONE

CONTEXT AND BACKGROUND

Chapter One  The Legacy Of Albert Speer

Chapter Two  The Culture Of Entertainment

Chapter Three  The Need For Liberal Education

Chapter Four  The Obstacles To Liberal Education

Chapter Five  A History Of Liberal Education

PART TWO

LIBERAL EDUCATION

Chapter Six  A Quick Overview

Chapter Seven  Liberal Education As Process

Chapter Eight  Liberal Education As Products

Chapter Nine  The Importance Of Philosophy

Chapter Ten  The Categories Of Philosophy

Chapter Eleven  Raising Questions—Raising Consciousness

Chapter Twelve  The Meaning Of Liberal Education

Chapter Thirteen  A Person Of Liberal Education

Chapter Fourteen  Liberal Education As Content And Substance

Chapter Fifteen  Holistic Knowledge And Specialization

PART THREE

A WIDER FRAMEWORK

Chapter Sixteen  The Human Being

Chapter Seventeen  Potential For Rationality

Chapter Eighteen  Potential For Morality

Chapter Nineteen  Potential For Democracy

Chapter Twenty  Potential For Reform

Chapter Twenty-One  Great Books And Classics

Chapter Twenty-Two  Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

The traditional and historical debate concerning liberal education has been couched in terms of a dichotomy. It has usually been placed in a false or inadequate, either-or dichotomy. Liberal education was good but not useful; idealistic but not realistic; for the cultured but not for the masses; for leisure but not for work; for the elite but not for the ordinary citizen; for intellectual training but not for vocational training. In other words, liberal education was described as general learning that wasn’t very practical.

All of these are false dichotomies that must be unified, synthesized and transcended for a humane, dignified, holistic world-view and philosophy of life. There should be no division between or among these terms, or sets of people. Liberal education as presented here abolishes such fissured categories and tries to interconnect them into one whole entity—The Personhood of the Human Being and The Human Being in the World. Liberal education is for everybody. It should be implanted into all aspects of everyday life to make it more holistic and humanistic. This redefinition of liberal education is presumed to be a guiding principle of the book.

Liberal education can be helpful in gaining fulfillment and wholeness. Wholeness is not seen in today’s culture. The dominant world-view breaks things down into fragmented parts, but ignores the context of the whole. This narrows our vision and we are paying the price for it. Today, one is hardly able to join all the parts together, or connect them into a whole picture that is recognizable and understandable. The sum of the parts may not equal the full and complete whole. So liberal education must be reexamined and revived.

It is not a panacea but it could at least help to understand more about humanity and the world. We could perhaps better comprehend other cultures, world-views, and philosophies of life. Maybe more common ground could be established, with communication and understanding enhanced. We are a diverse, pluralistic world. But we must not forget what all people everywhere have in common—a common humanity.

Unfortunately, over the years, liberal education has been associated with a kind of stuffy, arid, rote-learning, or superficially pretentious high-brow classical education. One was to learn and memorize Latin and Greek, for example. It was considered related to an elite aristocratic class, which the people have now rejected. Such education and aristocracy deserved to be rejected.

Yet there is more to it than that. We have closed the books, and our minds, too soon on the idea of liberal education. For in spite of the rejection of power in the hands of kings, aristocrats and clergy, who were the former governing elites, liberal education is still needed. It is helpful, if not required, even today by the modern individual, or what might be called the mass man. In a sense, what is espoused here is liberal education for the masses, for everyone.

The new governing elite theoretically, is now the average citizen. Democratic citizens are citizens for life. That is their office. Citizens are allegedly the new rulers, or elites with power, even though they don’t always recognize that such is the case. Thus, liberal education is empowerment for the self-government of the modern person.

What is important is the raising of philosophical questions. For the current answers are not working for everybody. Liberal education can take traditional, perennial, and ultimate questions and turn them toward an objective reflection on modern culture. It is relevant and useful for the present day. It is simultaneously conservative and progressive, as will be explained. One is able to examine more carefully one’s own ideas, the ideas of others’, and the surrounding society’s presuppositions and assumptions. This might heighten self-awareness and maybe bring about peaceful change toward a more humane society. It is certainly to be hoped for. This can be done as an orderly educational process over the course of a lifetime. One realizes gradually that there are other ways to answer basic questions, perhaps differently from the dominant world-view of the present culture.

Liberal education allows the learner to see more than the present dominant world-view. There is more than one definition of ideas and values. One becomes more aware of the great conversation of history,—a conversation about ideas, values, ideals, and cultural priorities. This is the human heritage, needed for context and understanding by all. Liberal education values this human conversation.

Also, liberal education taps into the structure of knowledge, consisting of the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. What is the meaning, purpose, significance and value of each of these disciplines? Liberal education would be concerned with this too. Each field of the disciplines is a part of the whole of knowledge and each tells us something about life, reality, and the human condition. We should put it all together.

Thus liberal education can make the world and our lives more intelligible to us. We can get a sense of meaningful participation in life and empowerment to control as much of our destiny as possible. We as individuals, and human beings, need maps of meaning. We want and need to acquire meaning about life, reality, and the human condition. Only this acquisition of meaning can overcome the alienation, boredom, and bewilderment that come with having a life of meaningless consumption and amusement. There is no better way to acquire meaning than through liberal education.

H. G. Wells proclaimed that: History is becoming more and more, a race between education and catastrophe. The true education that Wells was referring to is liberal education. No other education can prevent catastrophe. To elaborate on Wells a bit, we can say that human history is a race between liberal education, and the catastrophe of tyranny. Tyranny is catastrophic.

Liberal education is necessary then, if not indispensable, for achieving the objectives of the democratic ideal. Liberal education protects and enhances human dignity, civility, and humaneness. It develops the person, enriches life, fosters rational and moral maturity, and helps in the pursuit of happiness. It ensures freedom from any kind of tyranny, in any aspect of life, or in any of our institutions.

Liberal education is needed for the success of the American Experiment. Will the American Experiment work? Can the people govern themselves? Are they capable of it? These are important questions. The experiment requires the overcoming of ignorance. The citizen must be informed, enlightened, rational, knowledgeable, and wise, so that democracy survives and moves in the proper direction. So liberal education is needed to deepen understanding, widen perspective, and broaden horizons. We the people must have such directional knowledge that democracy requires, and which liberal education can bring. Liberal education is education for freedom, equality, and justice.

There is a crisis in contemporary culture. Values are confused and thoughts are not coherent. Sometimes the thought patterns are downright bizarre. The pursuit of liberal education can address this crisis. A wider vision is needed to challenge the myopic mass culture. Thus, the revival of liberal education as holistic education is necessary.

Liberal education has been around a long time. It has acquired a bad reputation, some of it deserved, and some of it not so deserved. It lies dormant today but it is needed. Perhaps it can be reconstructed and its reputation restored. For the spirit of liberal education ought to be rekindled. Such a tool should not be wasted, when it can be so helpful.

These are the times that try men’s souls, Thomas Paine lamented in colonial times. Such descriptions are just as applicable today. The recovery and transformation of liberal education can offer hope for contemporary mass culture. This book will attempt some recovery of liberal education because mere adjustment to the mass culture tends to squelch one’s humanity.

Contemporary mass culture has no sense of context, purpose, meaning, history, justice, rationality, consciousness, and awareness. Liberal education can address this and take one to a higher level,—a more human and humane culture. For without such education, apathy, tyranny, and catastrophe may prevail.

PART ONE

CONTEXT AND BACKGROUND

CHAPTER ONE

The Legacy of Albert Speer

Albert Speer was the Nazi Minister for Armaments and War Production in Germany under Adolph Hitler from 1933-1945. With Germany’s defeat after World War II, Speer was tried at Nuremberg along with other top Nazis, and sentenced as a war criminal to 20 years in Spandau Prison for his crimes against humanity. He was the only one of the German leadership who admitted to any crimes or wrongdoings. He died in 1981 at age 76.

Speer knew in his heart that he was guilty. On the witness stand, he admitted that millions of deported people were brought to Germany against their will, and he felt generally responsible for the genocide that had been committed against Jews and others. He recognized that even though evil may be part of human nature, nevertheless, this does not relieve man of responsibility. Speer was never able to get over having served in a leadership capacity of a regime whose true energies were devoted to an extermination program. He claimed that he participated without any conviction in what he did, though to him that made his guilt even greater. He assumed the burden of guilt. (1)

His memoirs, Inside the Third Reich, are a testament to the importance of liberal education. Here was a brilliant architect and technician, who appeared to be the perfect example of a rational and successful manager. Yet it was only after 20 years in prison, during which he studied philosophy, poetry, and history that he emerged transformed, a liberally educated man. His book is a dialogue in memory between the older man, who has learned suffering and had time to question all things, and the young man, so full of energy, dreams, and certainty. (2)

There is still controversy around whether Speer knew about the final solution or not. He very well may have, since he was a technocrat in charge of the production of armaments. But he, as a technocrat, had been thinking as a specialist, not as a human being. This offers a lesson.

The lesson is that everyone is a potential Albert Speer. He was professional yet myopic. He had a narrow specialization, yet thought he knew it all. He went along to get along. He omitted and disregarded the whole picture, other human beings, and the direction that Nazi society was taking. It was a combination of ignorance and arrogance. Tunnel vision seen as the whole of reality.

Speer’s narrow filter of knowledge limited his perspective and skewed his understanding of reality. As mentioned, he was repentant and realized his wrongdoing. But for too long, he had refused to see anything wrong with Nazi values, ideas, actions, and behaviors. He and the Nazis forgot what it meant to be human. A catastrophe took place. It was horrendous.

Author Theodore Green proclaims that man cannot live as a human being by his vocation or profession alone; his vocational and professional activities will be humanly oriented only if he can pursue them with a pervading sense of human values. Many dislocations of society have been occasioned by specialists who have engaged in their specialized activities with technical competence but without adequate realization of the place which such activities should occupy in their own lives or in the society of which they are members. (3) Albert Speer was just such a specialist, in architecture and engineering.

He felt he was Hitler’s personal architect and that political events need not concern him. His job was merely to provide impressive backdrops for such events. Speer saw no need to take any political positions at all, only to confine himself to the job of building. He later realized this was an illusion, but he had been indoctrinated by Nazi education to engage in such separatist thinking.

In a memorandum to Hitler in late 1944, Speer reiterated: The task I have to fulfill is an unpolitical one. I have felt at ease in my work only so long as my person and my work were evaluated solely by the standard of practical accomplishments. He later realized that fundamentally the distinction between politics and his work was illusory and that he was trying to compartmentalize his mind. Speer rationalized that on the one hand, there was the vulgar business of carrying out a policy proclaimed in the Anti-Semitic slogans printed on streamers over the entrances to towns. On the other hand there was my idealized picture of Hitler. I wanted to keep these two apart. (4) The line got blurred between an unpolitical act and a practical accomplishment, what they meant, and where they can lead. His work could not really be separated from politics.

In discussing whether or not he should have known about the persecution and annihilation of the Jews and others, Speer suggested that as an influential governmental minister he was isolated. And that the habit of thinking within the limits of his own field provided him, both as architect and armaments minister, with many opportunities for evasion. Yet in the final analysis, he himself determined the degree of his isolation and the extent of his ignorance and evasions. He explained that whether I knew or did not know, or how much or how little I knew, is totally unimportant when I consider what horrors I ought to have known about and what conclusions would have been the natural ones to draw from the little I did know. Those who ask me are fundamentally expecting me to offer justifications. But I have none. No apologies are possible. (5)

Later on in his life, after having served his time, Speer admitted that he had been drawn to Hitler but that he was fooled. He warned that people should watch out for dictators, because they may appear humble and not necessarily be a shouter or a screamer. Hitler was mannerly at meals and at meetings and was able to gain a kind of idealized devotion from Speer and nearly everyone else in Germany. People were deceived by charm, said Speer, by what turned out to be the evil spirit of history. This is a further lesson about Hitler and Speer.

People were loyal to Hitler. But if one knows what is good and evil, noted Speer, then loyalty should go by the board. Time in prison freed him of some guilt, but the inner feeling of what happened and his responsibility in it remained so large that he would always feel the burden. In his diary, Speer wrote that there is only one valid kind of loyalty: toward morality. (6) Loyalty came from everyone’s lips, Speer lamented, but this covered over our immorality. We never learned what real loyalty ought to mean. Loyalty to morality is more important than loyalty to a personality, he acknowledged.

Thus people were deceived by appearances, by force of personality, and their own fears, prejudices, and hatreds. Everyone was supposed to be loyal to the nation-state and the person of the Fuhrer. There was a lack of critical scrutiny of Nazi ideas and world-view. No criticism of the regime was allowed. Overall directions of the philosophy of Nazism led to war, bloodshed, destruction and death. It turned out to be a philosophy of death.

In looking back, Speer recalled that Hitler had not seen the world and had not acquired knowledge or understanding of it. Most of the Nazi leadership had never been outside Germany. In fact, the average Nazi party politician lacked higher education. The majority of the leaders had not gone beyond secondary school and had no notable achievements in any fields. All of them displayed an astonishing intellectual dullness, offered Speer. Their educational standard certainly did not correspond to what might be expected of the top leadership of a nation with a traditionally high intellectual level. (7)

Significantly at this time, the German school system in both elementary and higher education emphasized the importance of technology and a technical education, at the expense of a liberal education. The system was meant to turn out a technically and ideologically trained elite. Yet the only thing that this elite would have been good for was a position in the bureaucratic Nazi party administration. Their education was isolated and specialized, said Speer, and they knew nothing about practical life. Yet their arrogance and conceit about their own abilities were boundless. Interestingly, some high party functionaries did not wish to send their children to these technical schools. (8)

Like other Nazi party politicians, Hitler exemplified intellectual dullness, a limited viewpoint, and the lack of a genuine education. Speer mentions that Hitler’s conversation at the table and elsewhere did not go beyond a very narrow range of subjects and a very non-comprehensive perspective. Yet like the other Nazi leaders there was at times a boundless arrogance and conceit about his own abilities.

The conversation remained the same. Hitler never extended it nor deepened it, so it was scarcely ever enriched by new approaches and insight. He did not even try to cover up the frequent repetitions which were so embarrassing to his listeners. Speer remarked that: I cannot say that I found his remarks impressive, even though I was still captivated by his personality. What he said rather sobered me, for I had expected opinions and judgments of higher quality. (9)

At the dinner monologues, Hitler frequently asserted that his political, artistic, and military ideas formed a unity, which had been developed in detail between the ages of 20 and 30. That was Hitler’s most fertile period intellectually, and the things that he planned and carried out were the execution of the ideas he had formed in that youthful period of his life. (10) This shows the importance of continuing to learn beyond the age of 30. Liberal education lasts a lifetime.

Speer criticized the lop-sided education that he had received that made it so easy to fall under the spell of Nazism. Newspaper columnist Sidney J. Harris later remembers Speer saying that we were technical barbarians, who did a fine job, but never inquired about the purpose, or the ultimate results, of the job. Harris titled his column—Reformed Nazi Makes Plea for Liberal Arts, after seeing Albert Speer on a television talk show. Speer had come to see the importance of liberal education.

So it is important to realize that a merely technical education can be dangerous. Thus, Speer emphasized that if he and others in Germany had been given a proper education as to the probable moral and social consequences of the philosophy of Nazism, then maybe they would have taken steps to abort the movement before it took full power.

Yet Nazi education promoted conformist behavior. Virtues emphasized were cleanliness, discipline, comradeship, faithfulness, severity toward oneself, and readiness to serve. Comradeship was limited and did not mean cultivation of relations with one’s fellow humans. Politically submissive teachers engendered a retreat into unpolitical inwardness. Schools lost authority and reinforced a politically conformist ideology. Education was oriented toward proficiency.

Sidney Harris recalled that Speer was regretful about not reading enough history and philosophy. Instead he had grown up with a technical education, emphasizing architecture and engineering. He had learned little of the liberal arts and humanities, and nothing of philosophy at all. When people ask what practical purpose there is in studying such subjects, Speer explained that they should be reminded that these subjects are the only ones that raise fundamental questions such as what is the nature of man, what is the good society, and what are the proper ends of civilization?

Speer instructed that from these questions, we can at least collect non-answers. We can learn about wrongdoings and become aware of the dead-ends, the delusions, the fantasies and the hysterias that have driven people and cultures to self-defeating policies. Lessons and insights can be learned. He even speculated that Hitler’s success may be traced to the failure of Germany to participate in humanistic culture. Fundamentally, opined Speer, the Renaissance had by-passed Germany when it spread from Italy to France and to England. (11)

In his column, Sidney Harris concluded that any genuinely educated person could have seen where Hitlerism was going. It was ironic that the Germans, who were the most educated people in the world, in terms of scholarship and technical skills, were ignorant of ethical and philosophical terms. Speer grew up innocent of moral truths and social options, and it took him 20 years in prison to recognize them. It was then too late.

Thus Albert Speer has left a legacy of warnings about the dangers of a technical education, and the vulnerability of highly developed technological systems to dictatorship. We can discern that strictly technological pursuits need careful questioning of the values, principles, policies and directions involved. We must look at what happens to human beings in the process. We must learn the rules of humanity, and watch out for tyranny, because power can change a person and corrupt them. As Lord Acton proclaimed, Power corrupts and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.

Albert Speer acknowledged that the main purpose of the Nuremberg Trials following World War II, was to re-establish the rules of humanity. He regretted most that he had not learned the rules of humanity from the German culture at the time, nor from the system of formal education that he experienced at the time. Thus the importance of liberal education. Liberal education can teach us rules of humanity, in the culture, and in the schools.

Liberal education is the quality of being open to learning new things, the habit of questioning the society at large, and analyzing cultural directions. German society was closed off to meaningful types of questions. Their school system reflected that closed-mindedness. Everyone already seemed to know all the answers. The system turned out people with similar views and ideas, very narrow views, compatible with the Nazi culture and world-view. Unfortunately, with such narrowness and closed-mindedness came a supreme arrogance and conceit, as far as putting those views into practice. The directions of those views were ignored, and the lack of intrinsic morality was left unattended. Questions were disallowed.

There are significant lessons that can be drawn from the memoirs and reflections of Albert Speer. He was a man of tremendous power in Nazi Germany, who had forgotten what it meant to be human; who did not know the rules of humanity. His comments are a cogent legacy for us to consider in realizing the importance of liberal education, general education, and continued lifetime learning. The legacy warns everyone of the need to raise questions about ends, purposes, and goals. Thus ironically, Albert Speer, Hitler’s Minister of Armaments, became one of the most ardent advocates of liberal education.

It is well to remember that, technology is good, as a means for the human spirit and for human ends. But technocracy, that is to say, technology so understood and so worshipped as to exclude any superior wisdom and any other understanding than that of calculable phenomena, leaves in human life nothing but relationships of force, . . . and necessarily ends up in a philosophy of domination. . . . A technological society may be democratic, provided this society is quickened by an inspiration which is supra technological, . . . (12) Liberal education can provide this inspiration.

CHAPTER TWO

The Culture Of Entertainment

It has been conveyed that true culture requires a complete, unified, coherent system; a plan of life to lead us through the forest of existence. Culture is an indispensable element of life, a dimension of our existence. A life without culture is a life crippled, wrecked, false. A person who fails to live at the height of his times is swindling himself out of his own life. We are passing at present, despite certain appearances and presumptions, through an age of terrific unculture, claimed one commentator… . Never has the civilized world so abounded in falsified, cheated lives. Almost nobody recognizes his proper and authentic place in life. (1) Instead we are saturated with entertainment to divert our attention from significant issues. True culture is dying as a result.

Today it is a modern culture of bread and circuses; keep the people fed and entertained and they really won’t know what is going on around them. Nor will they care. Their attention is diverted from the affairs of state. It is an atmosphere of mass distraction. Yet too much consumption, imagery, and entertainment can lead ultimately to depersonalization and dehumanization. To prevent this from happening, liberal education needs to be revived.

We now work nine more hours a week than people did two decades ago. When we’re not working, we are plugged in and tuned out. The Family Research Council found that the average parent spends only 38.5 minutes a week in meaningful conversation with his or her children. In contrast, research from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that the average child (ages 8 to 18) spends 8.5 hours a day using electronic media. It was concluded that we are delegating the responsibility to engage with our kids to electronic devices. By age 18, children on average will have spent 18,000 hours watching television, and 11,000 hours in the classroom.

There has been extensive daily exposure to electronic media. Research suggests that this included television for approximately 3 hours 51 minutes, listening to music for 1 hour 44 minutes, using a computer for 1 hour 2 minutes, playing video games for 49 minutes, and watching movies for 25 minutes. The typical time devoted to reading was only 43 minutes. As a result, reading is losing out to the proliferation of electronic media. The more wealthy the family, the more likely the children’s bedroom will have a TV, computer and Game Boy.

The present day culture is a mass culture of continual amusement and entertainment. It is not conducive to liberal education. For we must not forget that the whole culture surrounds us and educates us beyond formal schooling. All other institutions, directly or indirectly, play an educational role. These include home, church, mass media (TV, radio, movies, newspapers, magazines, videos, the internet), libraries, museums, community centers, youth organizations, government, business, etc. All of this surrounds the formal school system. Influences are rampant and widespread.

Some entities have more influence than others. But liberal education would help recognize the present mass culture of entertainment as a culture of mis-education. For liberal education suggests that society has an obligation to create a social and cultural environment where each individual has an opportunity to achieve human personhood. That environment does not exist today. Instead, it is an environment of entertainment rather than liberal education. It is a toxic environment for reading books as a result.

Reading newspapers, magazines and web pages are useful to gain everyday information. It is a minimal requirement for literacy and citizenship. But books are even better in the sense of challenging the reader beyond digesting information to acquisition of knowledge, truth and wisdom. Serious books involve grappling with complex ideas in depth, over time. Concepts and ideas can be interpreted, evaluated, analyzed and synthesized.

Continual quality reading adds to the reader’s base of knowledge and develops creative and critical thinking skills. Such reading is at risk claims a recent report from the National Endowment for the Arts. There is a decline of buying and reading books, particularly among young people. Many students are weak readers or don’t read anything at all. America, as a result, is fast becoming an illiterate population. It is estimated that the illiterate numbers forty million. This is not good for democracy. Democracy needs alert, retentive readers. From too much television watching, children and students have short attention spans, impulse control problems and difficulty with higher-level thinking skills and reading skills.

It can be mentioned that the adult population is guilty too. Most don’t have time to read. Not enough parents and other influential adults read books of any kind, let alone