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A new generation of teachers envisions a liberal arts education that is good for everyone.
Why would anyone study the liberal arts? It’s no secret that the liberal arts have fallen out of favor and are struggling to prove their relevance. The cost of college pushes students to majors and degrees with more obvious career outcomes.
A new cohort of educators isn’t taking this lying down. They realize they need to reimagine and rearticulate what a liberal arts education is for, and what it might look like in today’s world. In this book, they make an honest reckoning with the history and current state of the liberal arts.
You may have heard – or asked – some of these questions yourself:
In this book, educators mount a vigorous defense of the humanist tradition, but also chart a path forward, building on their tradition’s strengths and addressing its failures. In each chapter, dispatches from innovators describe concrete ways this is being put into practice, showing that the liberal arts are not only viable today, but vital to our future.
Contributors include Emily Auerbach, Nathan Beacom, Jeffrey Bilbro, Joseph Clair, Margarita Mooney Clayton, Lydia Dugdale, Brad East, Don Eben, Becky L. Eggimann, Rachel Griffis, David Henreckson, Zena Hitz, David Hsu, L. Gregory Jones, Brandon McCoy, Peter Mommsen, Angel Adams Parham, Steve Prince, John Mark Reynolds, Erin Shaw, Anne Snyder, Sean Sword, Noah Toly, Jonathan Tran, and Jessica Hooten Wilson.
View Table of ContentsIt seems fashionable these days for politicians and decision-makers to trash a college liberal arts education. They claim that studying the liberal arts is at best impractical (what does a liberal arts student say on the job? “Do you want fries with that?) to incendiary (college professors are all communists and the liberal arts silence conservative voices). This book is a result of a collaborative effort by academics to defend the study of liberal arts from a variety of viewpoints. It is organized as a series of essays around questions like “Aren’t the liberal arts in marketable?” And “Aren’t the liberal arts elitist?” The editors have also chosen to use the words “liberating arts” as a way to emphasize the original roots of the word “liberal” meaning “free.” Because the origins of this project were funded by the Christian Coalition of Colleges and Universities, it is no surprise that the bulk of the essays take a Christian worldview as their starting point. Although the editors take the position that the material is true and valid no matter that it is grounded in Christianity and encourage the reader to read the essays through their own lens, it’s hard for a non-Christian to move beyond this. Diversity is limited; one essay claims that since the ancient Greeks knew about African civilizations, these civilizations are represented in Western thought. Other essays discuss the conversion of enslaved blacks to Christianity and once in awhile a Jewish scholar is cited. Taking a western Christian worldview is not necessarily bad, but the editors should make it clearer that this is what the reader is getting. Which leaves, for me, the question of who this book is for. The Introduction states that it would be good reading for high school students and their parents preparing to choose a college. Perhaps, if they are contemplating a Christian college, but many of the essays are esoteric enough that they are not accessible to many beyond an academic inner circle. Certainly these thoughts should be shared with policymakers and politicians, especially Christian ones who have been vocal in their criticism of liberal arts education. I think the most likely readers will be other academics, to give them ammunition to use while defending their work. Many thanks to Plough Publishing House and NetGalley for the advance reader copy which was given in exchange for my honest review.
The Liberating Arts Why We Need Liberal Arts Education Are the liberal arts now “a waste of time, elitest, liberal, racist, out dated, out of touch, unmarketable, a luxury, or just for smart people?” Thirty writers respond to these questions, and in so doing raise many other complex issues. We live in a fragmented culture in which many voices take issue with received moral, ethical, and/or religious wisdom and doubt that discussion of the meaning of truth, beauty, and goodness is possible or relevant. While opinions differ, the essential message of all these writers is the need for communities to share and discuss the liberal arts to help heal “a tattered world.” What constitutes a community that the liberal arts call us to share? How does it differ from allies that share core ideology against all others? The collection cites voices of earlier experience that still speak to the importance of retaining wisdom of the past to integrate into a “Great Conversation.” C.S. Lewis reminds us that “chronological snobbery” is “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate of our own age,” and Santayana asserts that “a culture without memory will be easily tyrannized over.” One writer traces the lyceum movement, formed in 1826 to serve a young democracy. Ordinary working people had opportunity to hear educational lectures on a variety of subjects. I recall an illuminating lecture in which the professor described a farm family who traveled to a town hall to hear a lyceum speaker on a subject entirely new to them. On the slow wagon ride home, parents and children had time to discuss new knowledge. Another writer points to the need for personal leisure, not only to share what is learned in community but to expand one’s own thinking, thus “savoring the world.” Are the liberal arts inclusive? Angel Adams Parham, a professor of sociology, who wrote The Black Intellectual Tradition: Reading Freedom in Classical Literature, explores the inclusiveness of the liberal arts across race, from ancient times to the present. Brad East, a professor of theology, asks, “Are the liberal arts for the wretched of the earth?” Those with leisure to think about the liberal arts discussed in community enjoy a luxury not all others possess. Yet, past greatness from other times or places can be integrated into far different communities. Professor East recalls a question: “Who is the Shakespeare of the Texans?“ and answers for all of us, “Shakespeare is the Shakespeare of the Texans.” Other questions must join the conversation in this collection. Important discussion is needed regarding all types of communities. Growing scholarship explores how the legacy of inequality for the most vulnerable in society has spread with incredible speed from the physical world to the digital. In both physical and online spaces, access to the liberating arts in community is essential and challenging.
This was an excellent collection, and it’s an important read for anyone who is considering a higher education in the liberal arts. If you’re preparing to head to college, and need to convince your parents that a liberal arts education is worthwhile, then you could easily bookmark the sections that tackle their biggest concerns to help open a discussion (and hopefully change their minds).
I can see this book as an excellent title to use for a book-club read with my colleagues. I can also see it as a useful title with which to engage students in a philosophy or theory-of-knowledge class. This was a sophisticated and thorough overview of the importance of a liberal arts education in the modern world. A lot of food for thought!
