Specters in Liberal Education

Abstract

LIKE the ghost of Banquo at the feast in Macbeth, specters of defunct educational theories still haunt curriculum committees in nearly every liberal-arts college in America and do more than their fair share to determine the method and the content of liberal education. We may rid ourselves of a few superstitions that balk the success of general education if we stop to examine five of these specters: first, the mistaken notion that the methods and materials of instruction deserve more serious study than the student who is to be educated with them; second, the lack of controlled experimentation; third, the emphasis on fact at the expense of moral and esthetic training; fourth, the notion that education for democratic living must be uniform; and, fifth, the belief that the fate of democracy depends upon universal liberal education. The first specter to haunt the educator is the mistaken notion that the value of a liberal education can be determined without considering the nature of the individual student. We have continued to refine the materials and methods of instruction while we neglect the factors each youth brings to his education-his innate capacities and his power to develop them. We have not sufficiently used the broadest principles of growth and heredity. The concept of student growth in liberal education is, of course, not new, but certain aspects of the nature of growth have sometimes been forgotten. Trees will not grow without moisture, air, sunlight, heat, a few chemical elements, and a suitable place to anchor themselves. The first four of these must be supplied at the right time as well as in the right proportions. A deciduous tree will shed its leaves and pass through an annual dormant stage regardless of the favorable growing weather with which it may be provided throughout the year. People, of course, are not trees, and the analogy cannot be pursued too closely, but the psychologists tell us that the learning process is very much like physical growth in that it is gradual, intermittent, and organically integrated. Like physical growth, it also depends upon the total environment of the learner, and that implies food, clothing, and shelter, as well as the smile of the teacher. The dual ryles of heredity and environment need also to be considered in connection with general education. Both are determining factors in the life of an organism. A grain of corn will not produce an oak, no matter how favorable the environment is made for the growth of oak trees, nor will the grain grow into any kind of corn at all if moisture and