Ashley Ladyman

May 6, 2006

PORTfolio 122 Final

Dr. Wansink

Operation Liberal Arts Freedom

A liberal arts education is one that cannot be matched. It is an education that truly seeks to educate its students, rather than to just teach them. Instead of just regurgitating information for professors, students educated liberally learn “many different ways of thinking and knowing” (Stancil 253) and are able to “articulate that knowledge correctly, with precision, forcefully, and even with eloquence” (Stancil 252). A liberal arts education seeks to free students from “social and academic complacency,” (Shedd 10) as well as from “ignorance, provincialism, and limited perspectives” (Stancil 251) in order for them to “follow truth wherever it may lead [them]” (Stancil 251).

Plato stated in The Republic, that “the free man ought not to learn any study slavishly. Forced labors performed by the body don’t make the body any worse, but no forced study abides in the soul” (Stancil 1). Slavish study would include things like the 3 R’s, reading, writing, and arithmetic, things that students have been forced to learn for years. This sort of study doesn’t hurt a student at all, however it would be safe to say that these studies are not students favorites and that a majority of students do not choose to stay home on a Friday night to practice long division or pull out a copy of War and Peace. These are things that students study out of habit, not because they are truly interested and passionate about them.

What the liberal arts seeks to do is permit students to stray from “the practicality or utility of knowledge and the importance of linking academic learning with professional practice” (Lucas 144) and lets them study something that they are truly passionate about. Rather than focus on what is required and what is seen to be practical, a liberal arts education allows for students to pick and choose from classes in order to develop a schedule that they absolutely love. It would not be uncommon for a student in a liberal arts institution to, in the same day, take a Spanish Culture class, followed by a Feminist Political Thought class, with a World Religions class immediately following.

Liberal arts students have the freedom to choose what they want to study and are freed from academic restrictions of everyday university learning because one of the functions of the liberal arts education is “the opening of the mind to the great departments of human interest” (Lucas 182). For example, a nursing student at the University of Virginia is locked into his required nursing classes and cannot stray from the set guidelines. He is not permitted to take classes outside of the actual nursing school. No religious studies courses or philosophy courses or art, strictly classes pertaining to nursing. This is the difference between these types of education, in the liberal arts education, it is not only permissible to take classes outside of your focus, but also encouraged because “liberal education supplies us with experience in things beautiful” (Schaub 5).

The knowledge that a student gains from a liberal arts education is not there so that they can “do anything with it.” For these students, simply knowing “something is in itself a pleasure” (Stancil 5). Through a liberal arts education, students are no longer “slaves” to their studies, but rather a fascinated and captivated audience who is eager to learn and truly “know” the subject. And through this knowledge of the subject, students “experience the proper pleasure due to knowing” (Stancil 9)

A student attending a liberal arts institution will receive an education that helps them to “develop the faculties of the human mind, those powers of intelligence and imagination without which no intellectual work could be accomplished” (Stancil 8). Through this development, the true purpose of a liberal arts education can be known, that
”the liberal arts can prepare us for a lifetime of learning, not simply for a job” (Stancil 254).

So many times, when students talk to people about college, the immediate reaction from the listener is, “What are you going to do?” With liberal arts, students are able to discuss the journey, rather than the final destination. They can eloquently discuss their studies with others and not have to focus on what they are going to do with it, but rather how passionate about their studies they are. The truth is, that with a liberal arts education, it is not guaranteed that a student will know exactly how to “use the knowledge and skills that result” (Stancil 251), however, they will have “developed the critical skills to know the difference between the necessary and the unnecessary, [and] the foolish and the wise” (Stancil 252).

Simply put, the goal of a liberal arts education is “not simply to know, but to live wisely the truths about God, humanity, and the world around us; the truths both discovered by us and also given to us as a gift of grace” (Stancil 254). A liberal arts education will free students from the humdrum of the routine education. Instead of learning for the sake of getting a job after college, they are learning so that they may never stop learning. That they can live their day-to-day life with a constant desire to learn more, they want to “live everything,” (Stancil 254) so that they may truly discover truth in their lives.

Works Cited:

Lucas, Christopher J. American Higher Education: A History. New York City: St. Martin’s Griffen, 1994.

Schaub, Diane. Can Liberal Education Survive Liberal Democracy?. 2002. The National Affairs, Inc.. 20 Apr. 2006. <http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0377/is_2002_Spring/ai_84557328>.

Shedd, Sally H. “The Future of VWC: Apathy or Activism?.” PORT 122 01: Liberal Arts Seminar 1 Feb. 2006: 10.

Stancil, Wilburn T. ed. A Student’s Guide to The Liberal Arts. Kansas City: Rockhurst University Press, 2003.