The Barr-Buchanan Center/Woodward Hall at St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD
To the Editors:
Liberal education is always in crisis. Its aims are too extraordinary for it not to be. In his recent valedictory address “Ave atque vale” (June 2013), Donald Kagan has accurately portrayed the current crisis of liberal education. His list of the four benefits ascribed to liberal education is certainly also correct: that it engenders knowledge for its own sake, that it assists in career training, that it provides practice in the arts of freedom, and that it builds character. “At some places and some times,” Kagan says, “all the benefits are claimed at the same time.”
One of those places is St. John’s College, with campuses in Annapolis, Maryland and Santa Fe, New Mexico. We believe that knowledge for its own sake is both desirable and gratifying. But knowledge has inescapable practical consequences, which lead to the other three benefits of liberal education. Practice in gaining knowledge helps learners uncover deeply held but unrecognized prejudices about the world and about others. This is the foundation for personal freedom, which in turn is the prerequisite for political freedom. Practice in imagining the lives, thoughts, and feelings of others does more to develop character than ten thousand ethics classes. And practice in teaching oneself makes one invaluable in any field, where such people are always in short supply.
For more than seventy-five years, St. John’s has held fast to Kagan’s suggestions.