The Meaning of A Liberal Education
9781465509406
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The evidence is unmistakable that there is an important change in the attitude of the public toward education. There is an increasingly general demand for it in some form or other. Everywhere and in all classes of society the interest in acquiring better knowledge is apparent. In England and on the continent of Europe there are thousands of classes and groups patiently pursuing long and serious courses of study. American colleges and universities are crowded and many students are each year turned away. Vast and increasing numbers register annually for correspondence and university extension courses. The demand for more education is shown also in the increasing number of lecture courses, people’s colleges, and other centers of public discussion. While people do not always know just what it is they demand and frequently the thing which they receive is not education, nevertheless there is a new and very wide-spread interest. This new interest shows itself not only in the increasing number of persons engaged in some kind of educational activity but also in the fact that people are beginning to see that education properly may be extended into adult life. Until recently, people have thought of education as something for children, something which a man either got or missed in his early years, something which he generally forgot in his mature years. To the average person, education was a matter of fond memories or of unpleasant associations with teachers, school houses and experiences of childhood. The “highly” educated person was the exceptional person in the community, discussions of the philosophy of education did not appeal to a wide public interest. Now higher branches of learning are being pursued by numbers of people outside regular educational institutions. Something very significant is happening. Perhaps at no time since the thirteenth century has the desire for knowledge so nearly approached a mass movement. Certain qualifications must however be made. While much of the demand for education is genuine and spontaneous, much of it is spurious, irrelevant, inconsequential. The increased attendance at school or university does not necessarily mean that more education is going on. It is frequently said that our colleges are crowded with inferior students. Athletics, fraternities, schools of business and the automobile tend to displace science and the classics. American youth has acquired its ideal of college life from the motion pictures. We should not infer from the large numbers engaged in adult education that democracy has suddenly decided to rid itself of intellectual shoddiness. If the advertisements of correspondence courses in self-improvement which regularly appear in the popular magazines are an indication of the instruction offered for sale, people might better spend their money for patent medicine or in having their fortunes told. At best adult education consists largely of brief courses of a vocational nature. Even worker’s education, a movement which has inspired hope in many liberals, may easily be over estimated. Much of it is little more than a recrudescence of antiquated radical propaganda, designed to enable the proletariat to “emancipate itself from the slavery of capitalism,” and to get it “ready for a millennial industrial democracy.” The initiative often comes not from studious minded workers, but from enthusiastic intellectuals and idealistic uplifters. The cultural gesture is often pathetic or comic. It is not uncommon for those who have completed the courses of study in a “workers” college to find themselves more unadjusted than they were before.
