Article on Liberal Education

The Common Room posted an article about standards in liberal education. The author laments the lack of any common core of knowledge to teach in colleges. Instead, students can take a couple of courses of their choice in science, math, humanities, and get a degree - but two students with identical degrees from the same college might not have ever read the same book! (Tim says this won't be a problem for long, once the UN's world curriculum is adopted by more schools . . .)

Charlotte Mason had a lot to say about what should be learned in schools, and she was very much against vocational education that's narrowly focused on training students in job skills in lieu of a standard liberal education that passed on a body of knowledge and developed character. A quote two-thirds down in the article did a great job explaining that concept very concisely. Peter Berkowitz commenting on John Stuart Mills:

"Men are men before they are lawyers, or physicians, or merchants, or manufacturers; and if you make them capable and sensible men, they will make themselves capable and sensible lawyers or physicians." In other words, the cultivation that they bring to professional schools from their liberal education goes a long way to determining whether professionals practice their trade sensibly and decently.