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What’s A Liberal Education?
by Celia Carson, The Oregonian, May 1, 2009
In east Multnomah County, Oregon, where Mt. Hood Community College instructor Celia Carlson lives, the rolling farmland has recently been replaced by big-box chain stores where the job opportunities generated are usually cashier, rather than owner, Carlson writes in a May 1 opinion column. A college cannot stop change, nor take away people’s fear of displacement, she writes. What a college can do is nurture certain habits of mind that help people respond to change, and a liberal education can be especially effective at this. “Liberal means open-minded. A liberal education is rooted in the basic beliefs that all minds have potential, that education is essential to freedom, and that a free mind conveys knowledge to others,” Carlson explains. “A liberal education helps people respond to change because it teaches tolerance for ambiguity.”
One of the most important outcomes of a liberal education—facility in using words to communicate—becomes even more central when considering the role words such as “taxes,” “rights,” and “mine” have in our society today, Carlson writes. An education that models good citizenship by recognizing the claims of others as valid has never been more valuable.
Read the entire opinion piece here.
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