Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 10-22-2015 12:00 AM Defending Liberal Education: Implications for Educational Policy Christopher W. Lyons The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Dr. Margaret McNay The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in Education A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © Christopher W. Lyons 2015 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Ancient History, Greek and Roman through Late Antiquity Commons, Higher Education Commons, Intellectual History Commons, Liberal Studies Commons, and the Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Lyons, Christopher W., "Defending Liberal Education: Implications for Educational Policy" (2015). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 3313. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/3313 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. DEFENDING LIBERAL EDUCATION: IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATIONAL POLICY (Thesis format: Monograph) by Christopher W. Lyons Graduate Program in Education A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada © Christopher W. Lyons, 2015 ABSTRACT This thesis advocates for the inclusion of liberal education in discussions of college and university missions and mandates in North America. It is conceived with the purpose of influencing policy thinking and generating the theory and ideas required for sound education policy decision making. Research into liberal education is a special and atypical kind of inquiry and requires innovative theoretical approaches. Liberal education is foremost a philosophical problem and requires philosophical approaches; the method used is, therefore, conceptual in nature and drawn from analytical philosophy. My research approaches liberal education conceptually in three ways: historically, philosophically, and politically. Historically, all explanations of liberal education remain partial, debatable, and fragmentary. Philosophically, liberal education brings into focus fundamental questions and problems with a universal significance. Liberal education is perhaps best characterized as an ongoing argument, discussion, and debate. Politically, liberal education is relevant to many of the challenges facing North American society. Liberal education is civic in nature, aimed at producing responsible citizens able to contribute to democracy and the continuation of democratic institutions. The contribution to knowledge made by this research is the development of liberal education towards idealism and universality. Universality provides the meta-principle needed to ground the inclusion of liberal education in the missions and mandates of North American colleges and universities. The synthesis of the three conceptual approaches (i.e., historical, philosophical, and political) produces a new justification for liberal education, one based in objectivity and rationality as universal values. My argument is that the values of objectivity and rationality are the best explanation of the universalist understanding of liberal education and its processes and goals. ii KEYWORDS Liberal Education, Policy, Relativism, Idealism, Universality, Objectivity, and Rationality.. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... ii KEYWORDS ................................................................................................................................. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS .............................................................................................................. iv CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ..............................................................................................1 1.1 INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................1 1.2 LIBERAL EDUCATION: INITIAL DEFINITIONS ................................................1 1.3 RATIONALE FOR THEORY OF LIBERAL EDUCATION ...................................7 1.4 FOCUS, QUESTIONS, AND CHAPTER OVERVIEW.........................................11 1.5 THEORY OF LIBERAL EDUCATION .................................................................12 1.6 METHODOLOGY ...................................................................................................13 1.7 LIBERAL EDUCATION AND POLICY ...............................................................18 1.8 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................21 CHAPTER TWO: HISTORICAL ANALYSIS ............................................................................22 2.1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................22 2.2 THE GREEK FRAMEWORK .................................................................................23 2.3 THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD (500 - 1500 CE) ..........................................................25 2.4 RENAISSANCE HUMANISM AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT ..........................26 2.5 UNIVERSALITY AND IDEALISM .......................................................................28 2.6 THE AMERICAN CONTEXT ................................................................................33 2.7 CONTEMPORARY ARGUMENTS .......................................................................39 2.8 FROM HISTORICAL TO PHILOSOPHICAL AND POLITICAL .......................43 iv 2.9 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................47 CHAPTER THREE: PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS .................................................................48 3.1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................48 3.2 THE PETERS-HIRST LIBERAL EDUCATION PARADIGM .............................48 3.3 RELATIVITY AND UNIVERSALITY ..................................................................60 3.4 THE POST-MODERN CHALLENGE ....................................................................67 3.5 RELATIVISM AND SCIENCE ..............................................................................72 3.6 FROM SPECULATION TO SCIENCE ..................................................................77 3.7 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................81 CHAPTER FOUR: POLITICAL ANALYSIS ..............................................................................82 4.1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................82 4.2 THE POLITICS AND ECONOMICS OF LIBERAL EDUCATION .....................82 4.3 LIBERAL EDUCATION AND CORPORATE GOVERNANCE ..........................86 4.4 ATTACKS ON UNIVERSALITY ..........................................................................89 4.5 LIBERAL EDUCATION AS CIVIC EDUCATION ..............................................92 4.6 LIBERAL EDUCATION AS DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION ...............................95 4.7 CIVIC EDUCATION AND IDEALISM .................................................................99 4.8 LIBERAL AND PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION ...............................................102 4.9 CONCLUSION .....................................................................................................105 CHAPTER FIVE: A THEORY OF LIBERAL EDUCATION ...................................................107 APPENDIX A ..............................................................................................................................123 LINGERING CONFUSIONS AROUND CRITICAL THINKING ............................123 APPENDIX B ..............................................................................................................................128 v LIBERAL EDUCATION AND POLITICAL LIBERALISM ....................................128 APPENDIX C ..............................................................................................................................131 STATEMENT OF PHILOSOPHY ..............................................................................131 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................134 CURRICULUM VITAE ..............................................................................................................152 vi CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1.1 INTRODUCTION In the modern world, education is a given; in the Western world, even post-secondary education is considered a fundamentally important basis for a democratic way of life. But the world, and education, continues to change, never more rapidly than in our own times. In this new world, the time-honored notion of a liberal education seems to fit less and less comfortably. Liberal education has a long history that can be traced back to ancient times and to the founding of the university as an institution. Liberal education is (or, at least, has been) part of the soul of the university, the product of a vast intellectual