Liberal Arts Links & Ideas

Liberal Arts, Liberating Arts: What does "freeing" mean in this context?

Claremont Statement	the liberal arts, the artes liberales, are literally arts of freedom	ultimately, an "end in themselves" -- like Newman
Liberal Education on the Ropes, Stanley Katz, Chronicle of Higher Education review article	the vitality of American democracy depends upon the kind of liberal education undergraduates receive	Great Books, or Diversity of Subjects, or the 'end-in-itself' -- or any of the above integrated into some Form, or Cognitive Growth without content -- with the end of some collective good
Roanoke Statement	"A liberal arts education frees us from a reliance upon received opinion into an achieved personal authority by training the skills of critical thought, sound research, and informed and reasoned debate."	Modern Abelard
Organization of Knowledge, Arthur Dirks	"septem artes liberales -- While there may be subjects of focus here, it is interesting to note a lack of what we would call inquiry. In fact, the classical curriculum is nearly as utilitarian in purpose as the professional studies."	Liberal Arts change, creating the need for a historical approach to the schools
The History and Philosophy of Art Education, Stuart MacDonald	"Giorgio Vasari, the son of a potter, who started his own career as a painter of stained glass, was able to declare: 'I have lived to see Art arise suddenly and liberate herself from knavery and bestiality."	a Medieval departure from classical leisured class
Qualities of the Liberally Educated Person, by William Cronon (Statement of the Association of American Colleges and Universities advocates freedom to be enslaved	If we speak of education for freedom, then one of the crucial insights of a liberal education must be that the freedom of the individual is only possible in a free community, and vice versa. It is the community that empowers the free individual just as it is free individuals who lead and empower the community.	hmmmm..... Think about this one
Acton Institute	A third meaning of the word liberal -- its most profound meaning -- has to do with knowing, that is, knowing things for their own sakes. The Scriptures say that it is the truth that will make us free, but we do not "make" truth. Rather, we acknowledge it, affirming of what is that it is, and of what is not, that it is not, as Plato said.	The goal or end of this is .... where? What does that mean?
Liberal Education and Mass Democracy by Leo Strauss	Liberal education is the ladder by which we try to ascend from mass democracy to democracy as originally meant. Liberal education is the necessary endeavor to found an aristocracy within democratic mass society.	Tories live!
Wabash College Statement	greater value on developing a set of intellectual arts, than professional or vocational skills.	Long-time view now breaking down as vocational ed claims the high ground too, and as the Wabashes of the world admit this compromise so openly
The Liberal Arts Education in the 21st Century, by W. R. O'Connor, President of the National Humanties Center	A "liberal education" means what a free person ought to know as opposed to what well-educated and trusted slave might know.	The received opinion of the 'Classical View'
What is Liberal Eduction? by Mortimer Adler	The aim of liberal education, however, is not to produce scientists. It seeks to develop free human beings who know how to use their minds and are able to think for themselves. Its primary aim is not the development of professional competence, although a liberal education is indispensable for any intellectual profession.	The end is within the student: freedom and authority through critical thinking; but also a 'handmaid to career' [cf. Augustine below]
Alan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind	The teacher, particularly the teacher dedicated to liberal education, must constantly try to look toward the goal of human completeness and back at the natures of his students here and now, ever seeking to understand the former and to assess the capacities of the latter to approach it..... Just as in politics the responsibility for the fate of freedom in the world has devolved upon our regime, so the fate of philosophy in the world has devolved upon our universities, and the two are related as they have never been before.	Individual and internal goal becomes collective and external in meaning and results
Augustine of Hippo, De doctrina 2:43 & City of God 8:2	Study of the Liberal Arts as the 'handmaid of theology'	2C Alexandrian Christian idea transmitted through Augustine to the Medieval Universities

C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (HarperSanFrancisco, 1961), p. 66.	All reality is iconoclastic. The earthly beloved, even in this life, incessantly triumphs over your mere idea of her. And you want her to; you want her with all her resistances, all her faults, all her unexpectedness. That is, in her foursquare and independent reality. And this, not any image or memory, is what we are to love sstill, after she is dead.

Ausonius, Roman poet, L4C; translated by Helen Waddell	One moment, all on fire and crimson glowing, All pallid now and bare and desolate. I marvelled at the flying rape of time; But now a rose was born: that rose is old. Even as I speak the crimson petals float Down drifiting, and the crimsoned earth is bright. So man lovely tings, so rare, so oung, A day begat them, and a day will end. O Earth, to give a flower so brief a grace! As long as a day is long, so long the life of a rose. The golden sun at morning sees her born, And late at eve returning finds her old. Yet wise is she that hath so soon to die, And lives her life in some succeeding rose. O maid, while youth is with the rose and thee, Pluck thou the rose: life is a swift for thee.