The Erosion of Humanitas

Worldview ◽  
1974 ◽  
Vol 17 (7) ◽  
pp. 34-39
Author(s):  
Clyde A. Holbrook
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Arts Education ◽  
Liberal Arts Education ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
Social Differences ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
The Ideal

The role of higher education is crucial in a world that seems torn apart by cultural, economic, political and social differences, and yet is, at the same time, ever more closely drawn together by technology, travel, social and economic needs. Higher education offers no panacea for the disunity of this complex and confusing world. It should, however, contribute to a kind of understanding that spans the differences among the people of the world, or at least those within one country. In this connection liberal arts education is today in jeopardy, unsure of its competence to serve the ideal of humanitas that at one time was conceded to be both the stable ground and the ever elusive goal of higher education.

A Historical and Global Perspective on Liberal Arts Education

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kara A. Godwin ◽  
Philip G. Altbach
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
United States ◽  
Future Development ◽  
Liberal Education ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Arts Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
General Knowledge ◽  
Liberal Arts Education

Debates about higher education’s purpose have long been polarized between specialized preparation for specific vocations and a broad, general knowledge foundation known as liberal education. Excluding the United States, specialized curricula have been the dominant global norm. Yet, quite surprisingly given this enduring trend, liberal education has new salience in higher education worldwide. This discussion presents liberal education’s non-Western, Western, and u.s. historical roots as a backdrop for discussing its contemporary global resurgence. Analysis from the Global Liberal Education Inventory provides an overview of liberal education’s renewed presence in each of the regions and speculation about its future development.

scholarly journals A Notion at Risk: Interrogating the Educational Role of Off-Campus Study in the Liberal Arts

2007 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Law ◽  
Susan Mennicke
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Arts Education ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Liberal Arts Education ◽  
Ethical Judgments ◽  
Educational Role ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Cultural Embeddedness

This article presents an argument that educators should challenge students to develop as individuals who can understand their own limitations, their own particular socio-political, economic, historical and cultural embeddedness, and who have tools of critical reflection to make moral/ethical judgments and choices that are the imperatives of a liberal arts education.

Spiritual and Religious Culture in Modern Education Context

10.12737/628 ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-51
Author(s):  
Шафажинская ◽  
Natalya Shafazhinskaya
Keyword(s):  
Moral Education ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Arts Education ◽  
Objective Assessment ◽  
Educational Process ◽  
Religious Culture ◽  
Liberal Arts Education ◽  
Modern Education ◽  
Pedagogical Competence

Justification related to integration of expanded spiritually and religious component in the system of higher school’s culturological and theological formation is given in this paper. This approach’s relevance is determined by need of carrying out a program related to the studying of bases of religious culture and spiritual ethics as necessary component of pupils’ encyclical liberal arts education, increase of cultural, philosophy and psychological-pedagogical competence of future teachers of humanitarian disciplines, and also optimization related to moral education of modern youth as a whole. As the chosen position argumentation the author offers the factual material promoting the best understanding of importance and more objective assessment related to a role of spiritual and theological component in educational process.

Education and Plato's Parable of the Cave

1996 ◽  
Vol 178 (3) ◽  
pp. 49-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Losin
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Development ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Arts Education ◽  
Early Education ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Liberal Arts Education ◽  
The World ◽  
The Human Condition

Plato's image of the cave in Republic Book VII is offered as “an analogy for the human condition—for our education or lack of it.” He tells us explicitly how to unpack some of its details: the cave is the region accessible to sight or perception; the world outside and above the cave is the intelligible region accessible not to perception but to reasoning; the upward journey out of the cave into daylight is the soul's ascent to the intelligible realm. The educator's task is a matter of turning souls around rather than introducing “knowledge into a soul which doesn't have it.” Such reorienting of souls has affective or desiderative dimensions as well as cognitive ones. Early education in mousikê and gymnastikê rechannels desire, wakes up the spirited part of the child's nature and enables it to work together with reason, imbuing the soul with that order and grace necessary for later cognitive development. Book VII outlines a curriculum to free the soul of the things that turn its sight downward and to reorient it towards the truth. Its outlines are Pythagorean, but it is Plato who most compellingly established the curriculum that still forms the basis for much liberal arts education.

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