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Chapter I.Introduction: An American Obsession Martha Nussbaum traces the phrase "liberal education" back to the stoic philosopher Seneca. From him derives support for the injunction ascribed to Socrates that the mark of a complete human being is the "examined life" (Nussbaum 2002). As the following reflections indicate, the examined life is one of many interpretations of the meaning of a liberal education, albeit a most attractive commitment, relating closely to its outcome, that of being humanly complete. Nevertheless, the attractions of any commitment also depend upon the historical circumstances that always affect the employment of ideas and beliefs, strengthening but also twisting them into odd and uncomfortable shapes. And some beautiful thoughts are only alive as thoughts. Their reality is gone, and we hear only the ghost of lost traditions whimpering upon the grave thereof. Despite its antiquity, liberal education is often assumed to be unique to the American Republic-perhaps with roots in other traditions, but absorbed and transformed in light of American cultural development. Considerable truth abides in this assumption. Liberal education is tightly correlated with American democracy, with American ideas of citizenship and opportunity, and with American versions of Aristotle's view of a life well lived. When they become democratic, other nations also look to liberal education to provide the right formula for preserving some kind of balance, however precarious, between traditions that appear to offer reassurance and innovations that are necessary but threatening. Liberal education is something of an educational industry in the United States as nowhere else. It is part of what Gerald Grant and David Riesman (1978) have called "the perpetual dream," a national emotional investment in the small college idea with which liberal education is particularly associated. That idea lives on quite successfully in corners of American higher education. The two St. John's colleges famously adhere to their notable reforms of 1937.1 The curriculum is strictly defined, and the purposes clearly laid out. The mode of instruction takes place in tutorials, preceptorials, seminars, and laboratories. Providing for the last, however, is an educational challenge to a curriculum soundly based on great texts, "books of superlative worth by the best thinkers and about central questions [rather] than second- or third-rate books by lesser thinkers" (Smith 1983). The vast majority of undergraduates, most of them in attendance at large state institutions, will never experience the attractions associated with the collegiate idea, nor will they be exposed to the hoary belief that some authors are absolutely indispensable to the very notion of a cultivated person. Few higher education institutions today are very confident about a great books tradition. Historical and cultural changes referred to in the course of the following narrative have rendered faith in a canon of superior thought less popular; but the belief that a college structure is best suited to providing liberal education still animates educational reformers. Some readers may remember the spell cast by Black Mountain College located in the foothills of North Carolina, established for a short time by a renegade from Rollins College in Florida. Joseph Tussman, thoroughly dismayed by what passed for liberal education at the University of California-Berkeley in the 1960s, created a two-year (also short-lived) program for the intensive study of political systems still referred to by his name (Tussman 1997). At the same time, Clark Kerr, then president of the entire University of California, dreamt of a collegiate style university in the mountains of Santa Cruz, a "Swarthmore in the redwoods" as he called it in happy recollection of his own beloved college. The object was to provide a state research university with the advantages of small college environments, somewhat akin, perhaps, to Cambridge University. He never imagined that Santa Cruz would be caught up in the counter-culture movements of the 1960s and plunge on to destinations far removed from the Quaker principles of his Pennsylvania inspiration. Santa Cruz today, to Kerr's disappointment, conforms more closely to the research university pattern of its sister campuses, but the natural beauty of its collegiate setting is undeniable. Collegiate beauty is in fact a cornerstone of American liberal education, and it is one aspect of the history of liberal education that has been successfully transferred to the large university. Campus planning is an American innovation, incorporating ideas from the history of landscaping and collegiate architecture typical of Oxford and Cambridge. The grounds and buildings of countless American institutions express an attachment to romantic environments that promote surprise, self-reflection, and personal discovery, elements often included in one set of liberal education beliefs (Rothblatt 1997). Newer campuses in Europe located on the edges of cities, but several within them, reveal how well American practice has traveled abroad. American commitments to liberal education are also strongly represented in the mission of national organizations, such as the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and the Academy for Liberal Education. They exist to disseminate and support ideas and practices that fall within their understanding of liberal education. Numerous books, articles, magazines, conferences, and philanthropic projects are devoted to the explication and definition of liberal education. While Europe and America share many cultural and political traits, the contrasts between European and American types of higher education remain significant. Yet, while there are fine histories of liberal education that trace aspects of its evolution from ancient times to the present, actual comparisons between countries and opportunities for one country to learn from the experience of another are in short supply. They almost never figure in the numerous discussions and conferences that take place in the United States, except in passing. Much of what is ordinarily discussed in the literature on liberal education or in panels is parochial and culture-bound. Overlooked as well are the systems and structures in which liberal education is embedded, or even engulfed. How liberal education is actually delivered, how it is incorporated into distinct organizations, is as much a part of its narrative as its ideas and purposes. If, as everyone acknowledges, liberal education encourages generous reflection, then assuredly a comparative, international, and historical perspective offers additional ways of seeing old problems. The times are especially propitious for comparative educational analysis. Nations are looking to one another for general enlightenment. Sharp national differences notwithstanding, common problems are emerging as developed societies embrace the democratic objective of higher education for all. This "all" now includes immigrants and new citizens, different ethnic and religious groups from countries outside the customary western European penumbra, and the families of manual workers-the most underrepresented in higher education of all social groups in any country. As in America, the profile of an undergraduate is changing. Many students are older or non-traditional, employed part-time, supporting families, or from social backgrounds where higher education is not common. Continuing education has become a major and lucrative enterprise, as education fitted for specific phases of the life cycle loses its importance. Where life itself is nasty, brutish, and short, the stages of the life cycle have a special intensity and significance. They are truly rites of passage, and the advent of maturity is a critical moment. Where, however, the stages are drawn out and collapse into one another, adulthood cannot be regarded as a fundamental transformation. It is instead a continuous process of growth and adjustment (Kegan 1994). In a volatile world of shifting economic priorities and qualifications, keeping abreast of new knowledge is important. Lifelong learning programs have also found eager audiences as the years of learning extend far into a lifetime. Historically, liberal education was reserved for the privileged young and, if we go back far enough, the very young. Now, in profoundly transformed historical circumstances, the coming of age that liberal education was intended to assist is not itself as seminal a task. Students are more active socially before entering higher education. Undergraduates travel; they are international; and they are not as callow as they were a century ago. In Europe, they cross national borders as a matter of course, a liberal education of sorts that acquaints them, if casually, with neighboring languages and cultures. Few professors today regard the maturing of the student as one of their primary responsibilities, and few undergraduates are ready to tolerate the professor who assumes the place of a parent. Colleges and universities actually welcome and encourage this attitude, for it alleviates an otherwise bothersome moral, emotional, and financial burden. At present no dimension of modern life is untouched by universities, no social or economic arena is discounted, and no aspect of social or personal development is unaffected. Professors, lecturers, and other academics now comprise the "key profession" because they educate all the others says the historian Harold Perkin (1969). Government and academic leaders, as well as leaders of cultural and professional organizations, assure us that the social conditions of the present are leading colleges and universities toward revolutionary outcomes. Society demands massive involvement, and higher education itself wants this to be so. Whether or not they were ever ivory towers, colleges and universities certainly had fewer constituencies and dependencies in the past. Academic life was simpler, and a clear orientation was easier. Historians, sensitive to the accidents and contingencies that affect human affairs, are normally wary of predicting futures. A trend is not necessarily an outcome. Yet probably it is reasonable to suppose that transformations currently under way will and in fact are bringing us more and different learning alternatives. Predictably, the costs of educating huge numbers have risen despite all efforts to achieve what are euphemistically called "efficiency gains." In the public sector of most countries, where higher education competes with other and growing social needs, the expenses of education have reached a crisis stage. Mass higher education has increased student indebtedness, and colleges and universities are being asked to place more emphasis on vocational instruction and employable skills (rather than, say, "culture"). Team-working, problem solving, communications abilities, and numeracy are often listed among the skills in demand. At the moment, such demands appear to be irresistible. In Europe and America, many colleges and universities have altered their educational, degree, and diploma programs; but whereas in America such ongoing readjustments have been common, in Europe they have been less so until a decade or two ago. So strong are the pressures that some scholars are tempted to say that in today's educational ecology liberal education is "practical" or is being influenced by "pragmatism" (Orrill 1995). Since all education is always useful in some sense, presumably we are hearing about a new kind of liberal arts practicality. Liberal Education and Today's EuropeIn the cauldron of education reform that is today's Europe, liberal education has reappeared as a subject of interest in discussions about breadth and depth in the curriculum. Nowhere has discussion reached the levels prevalent in the United States, however, and there is no obsession corresponding to the ongoing American debates. Europe has few organizations or programs specifically devoted to promoting liberal education as the descendent of different and competing traditions. Within Europe, Scotland may be an exception in that its traditions of liberal education are still invoked as a special part of what it means to be Scottish. Moreover, Scottish and American educational ideas are closely linked historically, especially in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. If it is true that references and allusions to various forms of liberal education abound in Europe, the offshore observer has difficulty discerning the depth of concern. In Sweden there is much talk today of bildning, and in Norway of dannelse, Nordic variants of the German idea of a liberal education called Bildung. These highly philosophical and metaphysical conceptions dating from the nineteenth century resist exact definition. While liberal education has never exactly vanished from the European educational agenda, it has been decidedly low on the scale of priorities. With only a few exceptions, governments, ministries, politicians, and bureaucrats establish the parameters of educational discussion in Europe. Until about 1990, the agenda largely followed from the fact that higher education was almost wholly dependent upon public taxation. The efficient use of resources in achieving national ends was the prime concern. The corresponding subjects for analysis were, therefore, budgets, planning, student access and targets, campus management and governance, assessment and quality maintenance, applied versus basic research, institutional differentiation, government-university relations, and, more recently, privatization or globalization. Governments remain preoccupied with questions of resource allocation and higher education on the cheap, even as they also consider policies that promote wealth generation, occupational mobility, and international competition. These policy concerns are equally under scrutiny in the United States, but, while it has some influence, Washington does not set the national agenda. Moreover, the existence of a large and important private sector committed to liberal education guarantees that its interests are widely voiced and represented. Revolutionary educational conditions in Europe have diverted some subsidiary attention to liberal education. Many European countries are now experiencing American-style problems in maintaining the type of advanced and specialized undergraduate education once deemed solely appropriate for universities. An increase in the number of students leaving high school with university qualifications and an expansion in the number and types of places offering higher education-an expansion that has accelerated since the end of the Second World War-have forced university leaders and academics, as well as government and civil service planners, to reconsider alternative forms of undergraduate education. They have discovered that basic or foundation year courses may be necessary. Further education colleges in Britain, roughly corresponding to community colleges in the United States, now offer a number of courses at university level. This has eroded historic distinctions between educational segments and led to debates about both how to fund the colleges and what to consider as appropriate academic work. The word "undergraduate" itself, a neologism of sixteenth-century England, is now commonplace in Europe to describe students in their first years at university, as if re-thinking the curriculum requires a different term to describe newcomers to the university experience. Experiments in the design of undergraduate programs and new ways of conceptualizing undergraduate learning and teaching have appeared within the interstices of the European higher education system. A liberal arts college frankly modeled on American practice exists within the Netherland's Utrecht University. Programs in problem-based learning have appeared in the Netherlands and Denmark. Roskilde, near Copenhagen, has an intense and impressive undergraduate commitment that consists of student retreats, interviews, close advising, student-led evaluations, group projects, and meetings with representatives of the public.2 Within the context of a law and business program at Sweden's new university college of Jönköping, a fascinating and well-publicized liberal education experiment has resulted from the vision of a determined lawyer appalled by the poor general knowledge of his students. Here and there, advisory councils and philanthropies have formed to consider the requirements of undergraduate teaching and to identify excellence in the undergraduate classroom. These concerns especially occupy the planners of new university colleges, who are given the chance to innovate without the drag of vested interests. German scholars who have either visited or studied in the United States have introduced versions of liberal education at home. Eastern European scholars, who bring a special perspective from their own recovered past, have joined the dialogue. The disintegration of the soviet empire has brought back into Europe countries hitherto excluded from association with the free democracies and eager to benefit from economic and educational reforms associated with progressive societies. The Smolny College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at St. Petersburg State University is the first of its kind in Russia.3 In some cases, this association has led to the adoption of educational practices quite at variance with more recent history. In Japan too, interest in liberal education is heating up, although the national models there are uncertain. One of Japan's oldest and most prestigious private universities, Waseda in Tokyo, has just established a liberal arts college with an international outlook, drawing on American examples. How many of these departures and innovations can be confidently termed "liberal education" depends upon the context, the measure, the expectations, and the national experience to which the reforms relate. To these indications of interest in a return to thinking about liberal or undergraduate education, we can add the influence of the European Union. The formation of a "United States of Europe," the easy movement of labor and services across national barriers, academic and student mobility, and scientific cooperation on a large scale have produced a call for a common set of educational requirements with features long associated with American undergraduate education. The fundamental purpose is to enhance employment opportunities and to promote even greater student and academic mobility by creating something approaching a common university system in Europe. The hope also exists that a common conception of citizenship will arise from changes in the structure of higher education. (In light of varying national traditions, educational systems, and languages, one wonders whether in the brave new world to come universities will have to commit greater resources to remediation-a point not normally encountered in the euphoria of policy studies.) The blueprint setting forth this agenda appears in several documents. One was issued at the Sorbonne Conference of May 1998. Another is the Bologna Declaration of June 1999, which sets forth the agenda for "A Europe of Knowledge.as an indispensable component to consolidate and enrich the European citizenship, capable of giving its citizens the necessary competences to face the challenges of the new millennium."4 Guy Neave of the University of Twente in the Netherlands cautions that the Bologna scheme, while separating undergraduate from graduate instruction, is based far more on the British three-year first degree specialist model than on anything approaching the farrago (my word) of courses customary in the United States.5 Nevertheless, transnational dialogue on liberal education has more meaning now, as Europeans dissolve parts of a particular type of elite higher education system and acquaint themselves with the challenging traits of a system more highly differentiated as to kinds of institutions, academic expectations, degree and diploma awards, part-time and continuing education, and types of student. In the new circumstances of Europe, flexible responses are sought; new interest and academic lobbying groups are formed. The exchange of views has become noisier, more public, and more irresistible to media that are alert to academic, financial, and social scandals. No consensus is possible. Some critics point out that flexibility may be just an excuse for abandoning a certain educational rigor that is incompatible with egalitarian demands and wonder whether the traditionally high standards of the European university have been compromised. Yet those who favor a more open approach to education and those who deplore the abandonment of a particular kind of academic style both turn to liberal education as a solution, even though their understanding of the term differs. What is sought, or what is discussed, is a form of education that takes account of both the personal needs of students and their future relationship with society. There is always the possibility, as happens in the United States, that this emerging and, in some places, established concern may not be for liberal education so much as for student services. But turning an educational assignment into an administrative one may be an outcome that is unavoidable in a state of mass enrollment. What is certain is that liberal education, however it is conceived and whatever traditions are recalled, will need to confront and accommodate a great many ideas, funding models, and structures with which it was once at odds. The Past, Present, and Possible Future of Liberal EducationSome of the thoughts expressed in the opening paragraphs of this monograph and in the pages that follow were explored in "An International Conversation on the Past, Present, and Future of Liberal Education," as explained in the foreword by Robert Orrill. At meetings in New York City in September 2000 and in Washington DC in May 2001, a group of scholars representing the United States, Scotland, England, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Sweden, Israel, Russia, Slovakia, and Ukraine met for the purpose of discussing the past, present, and future of liberal education, comparing national traditions and history. (Their names and affiliations are provided in Appendix B.) Our view was that while a comparative and historical approach to understanding issues as emotional and complicated as those associated with the magical phrase "liberal education" would not resolve all difficulties, the gains would still be substantial. Issues could be clarified, and stumbling blocks identified. Possibly also, the strengths and limitations of liberal education as appearing in free societies and in those seeking to be free could be assessed. I am pleased to pay tribute to a deeply learned community whose ideas and comments have been indispensable to me. Nevertheless, the observations and conclusions appearing here are not a summary or report of the "Conversation" but reflections and observations on what was said (or omitted) in the context of my own studies and experiences. The general plan for this monograph is to reproduce the dominant characteristics of liberal education as a number of historical typologies, models, or categories and, from time to time, to distinguish the claims of defenders from reality. The typologies are familiar ones, chosen because of their frequent occurrence in discussions of liberal education. They are character formation, leadership, breadth, personality development, critical thinking, and general education. Other scholars will prefer a different set of categories, and I doubt that anything said here will deter them. In fact, I suspect that precisely the opposite will occur. But no matter which categories or models are chosen to illuminate the history of liberal education, all will display the contradictions, paradoxes, pious hopes, and special qualities that mark any cultural inheritance viewed, as the French are wont to say, in the long duration. I begin, as some writers do, with secondary education because it has always been a crucial determinant of how liberal education is conceived and taught at higher levels. I would in fact go further than some observers in saying that unless secondary education is given firm and solid support in any national program of universal education, higher education will have difficulty providing the type of education that is normally subsumed under the heading of "liberal." That difficulty is most apparent in the United States. It is becoming apparent elsewhere. Typologies are, heuristically, a useful means of analysis. They clarify themes that, in their actual historical versions, may not be so evident. At the very least, the typologies offer a way of noticing how many different and incompatible ideas get packed together in the usual discussions about liberal education. Admittedly the typologies overlap, or they appear to overlap. Do "breadth" and "general," for example, actually refer to the same phenomenon? I don't think so, but the reader will have to decide. I also leave it to readers to decide how many educational burdens a particular version of liberal instruction is capable of bearing before it succumbs to the impedimenta of time and circumstance. History is, in some respects, an experimental laboratory for investigating the dimensions and dilemmas of liberal education. But its clinical limitations are obvious. We can never reproduce what is departed. Furthermore, an historical outlook inevitably reveals problems and paradoxes and can leave us hanging from the cliffs of indecision. These dangers notwithstanding, a survey of liberal education as transmitted via several national legacies opens up ways of imagining its uses in utterly altered circumstances. This, I submit, is an improvement over a familiar urge to create one's own definition of liberal education, possibly drawing unabashedly from some admired past principle as if the course of time means little. Those who do not see the issues in their historical dimension have no difficulty in telling us exactly what a liberal education does or does not do. Much of the debate is therefore exhortative-advocating this or that subject, this or that approach, this or that presumed outcome-but without any supporting legitimacy beyond the rhetoric of persuasion or an appeal to a residual sense of idealism. Overall, my weighting of the arguments is rather toward illuminating the American experience, both because of the attention paid to it historically, and because of the influence it exerts over the thinking taking place elsewhere. Precisely because other nations, not only in Europe but now also in Asia, regard the American experience of liberal education as a guide to their own educational futures, simplification must be avoided. Short-cuts are impossible. Each nation must consider, with glances toward the others, how best to incorporate the principles and structures of a liberal education into its own history and culture. Part of The Academy in Transition series Item Code: LIVING / Member Price: $12 / Non-Member Price: $15 
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