Being liberated by a truly liberal education

Rollin A. Lasseter, general editor of the Catholic Schools Textbook Project and retired English prof of University of Dallas, writes for This Rock (Jan 2008) about how true education is truly liberating:

The word "education" comes from the Latin educare, to draw out. Genuine Catholic education draws us from ignorance, isolation, and self toward humanity, knowledge, and God. Our schools should be dedicated to drawing out students’ souls by imparting to them the arts of learning. ...

Those arts of learning are the liberal arts. Although we use the term frequently and many of us have liberal arts degrees, most of us have only a vague understanding of what they are. The liberal arts are those skills (techniques, tools), necessary to being a free man or woman, homo liberalis. They free us from the slavery of ignorance and especially from the slavery of appetite—the whims, urges and desires which make us listen to the latest advertisements and buy the latest fashion. The liberal arts are those skills that set men and women free before God.

The liberal arts are not so much about teaching things as teaching the skills for learning things. They are not so much the teaching of cultural literacy as teaching the ability to acquire that cultural literacy. Clearly, schools should demand mastery of a body of information from their pupils, but "facts are stupid things unless brought into contact with an organizing principle," as the 19th-century naturalist Louis Agassiz impressed on his students (qtd. in David McCullough, Brave Companions, 26). The real goal is to impart skill at acquiring even more information outside the classroom.

Read the entire article. And here is a brief history of compulsory public education in the U.S.

In the same issue, a helpful article about the Pope Joan myth.

Textbooks available from the Catholic Schools Textbook Project:

• From Sea To Shining Sea - Grade 5 History Textbook
• From Sea To Shining Sea - Teacher's Manual
• All Ye Lands - Grade 6 History Textbook
• All Ye Lands - Teacher's Manual
• A Light to the Nations: The Development of Christian Civilization

Comments

[Salome]

Very good, except that 'educare' is the verb for bringing up or rearing a child. The verb to draw out is educere.