What is liberal education mean?
Liberal education is understood as an education in the fundamentals. It implies a sufficiently complete approach to our cultural, intellectual, and moral heritage. It includes the development of broad frames of reference, respect for facts, skills to organize and use knowledge, of the spirit.
Liberal education is related to culture. The finished product of a liberal education is a cultivated human being. “Culture” comes from Latin. It means primarily agriculture. It is cultivating the soil and its products, caring for the soil, improving the soil according to its nature. “Culture” means, in a derivative form, nowadays mainly the cultivation of the mind. The care and improvement of the native powers of the mind by the nature of the mind.
Just as the soil needs those who cultivate it. Similarly, the mind needs teachers. But finding teachers is not as easy as finding farmers. The teachers themselves are disciples. But there cannot be a return to infinity: there must finally be teachers who are not themselves disciples.
Those teachers who are not themselves disciples are great talents. Also to avoid any ambiguity in such an important matter, the greatest talents. Such people are extremely rare. It is not likely that we will meet any of them in any classroom. It is very lucky if there is one of them alive at the same time as us.
In practice, disciples, whatever their degree of knowledge. They have access to teachers who are not themselves disciples. It is to the greatest talents, only through the most important books, the fundamental works.
Liberal education will consist, then, of studying with due care the fundamental works that the greatest talents have left behind. A study in which the more experienced disciples help the less experienced, even those just starting.
This is not an easy task, as we can see if we consider the formula I just mentioned. That formula requires a long comment. Many lives have been invested in writing such comments, and many more could still be invested.
For example, what does the statement that fundamental works should be studied “with due care” mean? At present, I will mention only one difficulty, obvious to all of you. The greatest talents do not tell us the same things concerning the most important subjects. The community of great talents is divided by discord, and even by various kinds of discord.
“Liberal education is education in culture.”
Apart from other consequences that this implies, it certainly follows that liberal education cannot be simply just information. I will mention yet another difficulty. “Liberal education is education in culture.” In what culture? Our answer is the culture in the sense of western tradition.
However, Western culture is only one among many cultures. By limiting ourselves to Western culture, are we not condemning liberal education to a certain small-town narrowness? And isn’t the village spirit incompatible with the liberalism, generosity, and broad-mindedness of liberal education?
Our notion of liberal education does not seem to fit an age conscious of the fact that there is no culture of the human mind. But a variety of cultures. If “culture” is capable of being used in the plural, it is not the same thing as “culture”. This can only be used in the singular. Today culture is no longer, as people say, absolute, but has become relative.
It is not easy to say what “culture” means insofar as it can be used in the plural. As a consequence of this obscurity, some have suggested, explicitly or implicitly too. That culture is any pattern of behavior common to any human group. Hence, we do not hesitate to talk about the culture of growths or the cultures of youth groups, both criminals and non-criminals. In other words, every human being who is not in a madhouse is a cultivated human being. Because he participates in a culture.
Why liberal education important?
Due to the different events in which legal professionals have been involved and, even more so, those who exercise a public function, such as the administration of justice. The country has questioned who is responsible for the lack of ethics with which lawyers govern their professional actions.
For one sector, the question centers on the education received by lawyers in university classrooms. For others, it is a slightly more complex issue that involves principles and values that extend to the family. To primary and secondary schools and to society as a whole in which the individual perceives practices from their environment and, with the time. He apprehends them and becomes part of them.
It simply implies a sufficiently complete approach to our cultural, intellectual, and moral heritage. The development of broad frames of reference, respect for facts, skills to organize and use knowledge, critical spirit, and clear thinking. So, the answer to, what is Liberal Education?
According to the vision of Leo Strauss, liberal education is an education in culture or towards culture, while cultivating the intellect and improving its faculties.
In one way or another, liberal education aligns itself with a humanistic orientation. It is not simply – as some might interpret – an education focused on the humanities. But rather a broader approach to teaching than a purely instrumental one.
An approach that makes available to the new generations, to the subjects in training, that substantive and global vision. Plural and founded that provides the humanistic approach of the different basic knowledge and that allows the individual to be linked to a common cultural heritage. Also to a thought that facilitates even its criticism from the foundations contributed by that same tradition.
The social appropriation of liberal education is manifested in its appreciation and appreciation by society and that is translated into its political consideration. It constitutes the main fence that protects us against the threats of arrogant ignorance. It includes the weakening of the culture and the perverse effects of postmodernity.
However, in this as in other areas, the relationship between education and society is circular. So that society promotes and orders formal education and liberal education.
In turn, depending on how it has been modeled, conditions the social evolution that ends up operating on the orientation of education itself. This occurs in successive cycles, or iterations, that extend over different generations until collective behaviors are affected. Hence the decisive importance of success when it comes to influencing socially from education.
Conclusion:
Eventually, the conclusion to, what is liberal education, is, in short, the approach of liberal education is essential to link the individual in training to a tradition of thought and culture. It is one’s own, to give personal stability, own orientation, intellectual autonomy, and a moral capacity that allows one to function.
Along with some guarantees, in this new context. Therefore, so uncertain in which life will take place. Existence; to provide with a conceptual base capable of enhancing intellectual resources and cognitive abilities in the application of knowledge to diverse contexts. It is helpful in improving cognitive skills that will enable one to work and develop the society in a better way.
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