A Question-Centered Approach to Liberal Education
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ANTHONY MANSUETO A Question-Centered Approach to Liberal Education THE PRESENT PERIOD is characterized by an un- underlying questions of meaning and value— precedented degree of global integration at is essential in a democratic public arena and a the economic, political, and cultural levels. complex global cultural landscape. And yet Economically, this has created a situation in most curricula seem poorly designed to foster which, as Robert Reich (1992) has argued, these abilities. A handful of extremely conser- PERSPECTIVES only creative problem solvers and innovators vative institutions insist that students master will be able to compete globally. Politically, it a canon that looks increasingly narrow in a has begun to break world in which China and India are fast be- down the nation-state coming great powers, while most other insti- and challenged us to rethink the meaning of tutions simply ask that undergraduates sample, How do colleges democracy in what has become a global public generally in watered-down form, the work of and universities arena dominated by powerful corporations, a humanistic and scientific disciplines that single superpower, and international organiza- have become focused on narrow, specialized provide an education tions. Culturally, the implications of global research. Only our most effective colleges and that is both rigorous integration remain uncertain. Some ob- universities are teaching students to analyze and accessible, and servers, such as Francis Fukuyama (1989), and solve problems in a way that draws on the that helps students have argued that we have, in effect, reached full range of humanity’s intellectual disciplines; the “end of history”: capitalism, democracy, almost none are cultivating the capacity to understand the and a modern secular worldview have won reflect on fundamental questions of meaning liberal arts tradition the day, and future global interactions are and value. and the larger likely to be dominated by technological and This essay will argue for an alternative, global context in economic issues rather than ideological and question-based approach to liberal education. cultural struggles. Others, such as Samuel Situating liberal education in historical con- which they will Huntington (1993), have argued that we face text, it will ask how we got where we are, and live and work? a “clash of civilizations” as irreconcilably dif- will show how the earliest organization of lib- ferent societies vie for global power. eral education—the medieval quaestio form— What does this mean for liberal education? remains the best. It will conclude with some There is, on the one hand, a broad consensus practical suggestions for restoring this approach. that liberal education is more important than ever. Strong quantitative and linguistic skills The liberal arts in historical perspective and the ability to analyze and solve problems Perhaps we should begin by defining the lib- are fundamental to economic competitive- eral arts. The term “art” translates the Latin ness; the ability to make and evaluate argu- ars, which in turn translates the Greek techne. ments about public policy—and about There are, generally speaking, three different sorts of art or techne. The instrumental arts ANTHONY MANSUETO is dean of communications involve making things that are useful—things and humanities at the Spring Creek Campus of that are a means to some other end. The fine Collin County Community College. arts involve making things that are ends in 48 L IBERAL E DUCATION F ALL 2006 Collin County Community College The liberal arts train us themselves—hence “fine,” to make arguments and to in classical and scriptural from the Latin fine or end. evaluate arguments made texts accelerated develop- The liberal arts are those by others, and thus put us ment of the hermeneutic that make a human being disciplines and focused at- free. The question is just in a position to make tention, in what came to be what one can make that, in decisions for ourselves called the humanities, on the course of the making the meaning of those texts, itself, sets one free. The as opposed to the fundamen- PERSPECTIVES answer is simple: an argument. The liberal arts tal questions of meaning and value that the train us to make arguments and to evaluate texts addressed. Second, the scientific revolu- arguments made by others, and thus put us in tion marked a profound change in the way we a position to make decisions for ourselves. do science. Where medieval science sought to In medieval Europe, the liberal arts were explain the physical universe teleologically based upon the trivium and the quadrivium. and thus terminated in metaphysics, modern The trivium included grammar, which teaches science describes the universe using rigorous us to use language correctly; rhetoric, which mathematical models. Third, philosophy was teaches us to make persuasive arguments; and reduced to the status of one discipline among logic, which teaches us to make arguments many and pushed to the margins of the acad- that are consistent and complete and in emy. By the middle of the twentieth century, which each term follows necessarily from the schools and departments of theology were the others. The quadrivium included pure and only places within the academy where a sig- applied mathematics: arithmetic, geometry, nificant number of professors still addressed harmonics, and astronomy. These disciplines fundamental questions. were regarded as preparatory to the study of This transformation of liberal arts educa- physics or natural philosophy (the term was tion had a rather paradoxical relationship to used to describe both the physical and the bi- the democratic revolutions. Classical caution ological sciences), and of metaphysics, ethics about extending participation in the public (including politics), theology, medicine, and arena was based on the conviction that unless the law, all of which depended on a finely one can make and evaluate arguments regard- tuned ability to make and evaluate arguments. ing fundamental questions of meaning and The Renaissance, the Reformation, and the value, and thus regarding the ends of human scientific revolution changed liberal arts edu- life, one cannot decide freely what ends to pur- cation in three ways. First, a revival of interest sue and will inevitably follow ends presented Collin County Community College 50 L IBERAL E DUCATION F ALL 2006 by others, whether coercively or by persuasive be traded globally are those that must be means. Nor will one be able to participate performed in person. freely and fully in debates regarding our com- The implication, Reich argues, is that in mon ends as a species and as a civilization. the future only highly creative innovators and Conversely, the idea that it might be possible problem solvers will be able to demand any- to extend participation in the public arena to thing above third-world wages. This means a wider circle of citizens was always bound up that people must be educated both to under- with the conviction that it must be accompa- stand existing ideas and techniques and to de- nied by an extension of education in the lib- velop new ones. Successful innovators thus PERSPECTIVES eral arts tradition. Those among the need not merely to master a certain structure, American founders who were most committed but also to be able to reason from a structure to broad democratic participation—such as to its purpose and back again—to develop Jefferson—were also most insistent that it be new structures that serve the purpose in ques- accompanied by a broad extension of educa- tion better, and, at the highest levels, to rea- tion. And yet as democracy advanced, the son regarding ends themselves. And that is academy evolved in a way that made it less what a traditional education in the liberal arts and less adequate to this task. trained people to do. Indeed, most expansions of higher educa- This said, it must be noted that today’s stu- tion and extensions of educational access in dents need much more such a traditional edu- the modern era have been driven by eco- cation in the liberal arts. It is no longer nomic considerations. This was true of the es- enough for students to be able to make and tablishment of the land-grant universities in evaluate arguments in their own language, the nineteenth century, which provided the across disciplines but within a single civiliza- research and development that was necessary tional tradition. Nor is it sufficient for them to an advanced industrial economy. It was to be humanists with a general knowledge of also true of the enormous expansion of educa- the sciences, or scientists with a bit of broad- tional access after the Second World War, ening humanistic perspective. They must, which met the country’s economic need for rather, be able to analyze problems using a people who could carry out the complex but complex combination of disciplines, and be subaltern and not especially creative work in- able to do so in as many different languages volved in applying existing scientific and and with respect to as many different civiliza- technological innovations and administering tional traditions as possible. state and corporate bureaucracies. In neither case was there a real effort to provide those A question-centered approach granted access to colleges and universities an How do colleges and universities provide an education that would transform them into education that is both rigorous and accessible, real innovators—much less the kind of educa- and that helps students understand the liberal tion that might allow them to engage funda- arts tradition and the larger global context in mental questions, or to question existing which they will live and work? I would like to social structures. suggest an approach that is actually quite an- The current expansion of higher education cient—it was the approach used in the me- is also economically driven, but with a differ- dieval universities of Europe, but it is uniquely ence.