The Virtue of Liberal Arts

Abstract

Despite a decline of liberal arts values and institutions of higher education, the demand for a liberal arts approach to study remains strong at many church-related colleges and universities that affirm a Biblical worldview and strive to promote interdisciplinary integratim. This essay proposes that Christian schools with a liberal arts heritage need to reaffirm liberal arts values and pedagogy. Prompted by perennial questions of the human condition--"Who am I?" and "How should I live?"--students should be challenged to form responses consistent with ethical inquiry. Christian liberal arts teachers need an informed historical understanding of the "liberal arts." The cultivation of virtue is a core component of the classical artes liberates ideal, which entails shaping persons into moral citizens able to contribute to the common good. Quintilian, the first publicly paid teacher in Western civilization, promoted virtue through curricular aims and methods, and the early Church adapted them for catechization. Proponents of Christian higher education may thus draw on Quintilian's educational ideas to inspire teaching that truly builds character and civic responsibility, consistent with the liberal arts ideal.