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The odd couple reflections on liberal education.

Article Excerpt
LIBERAL EDUCATION is crucial, among other reasons, because it educates people to have a textured, informed, articulate understanding of the ways in which conceptual, empirical, and normative issues are interrelated. It can cultivate habits of intellectual responsibility that motivate people to think through and across those issues in an integrated manner, without compartmentalizing them. It also helps people develop abilities to formulate and address questions in ways not confined to the perspective of just one or another discipline, while also educating students in the rigor of different disciplines.

Liberal education enables people to appreciate that our thinking often comes to a stop too soon, and that, in fact, we are never done. Our understanding is always partial, less than fully informed and fully coherent. It can always be more integrated, more explanatorily complete, more fine-grained, and so forth. In addition, liberal education also helps people appreciate the significance of thinking as an exercise that is never complete. Acknowledgment of this helps sustain the recognition of liberal education as a necessity for the culture rather than just an expensive detour before entering the "real world." In addition, to the extent that liberal education is general or involves general education, it is not merely general. Rather, it is an education in abilities and habits of mind that are applicable in nearly all contexts. It would be better to see it as fully general rather than merely general. For all of these reasons, we should be alert to habits and tendencies of thought that misdirect or undermine liberal education.

In the following discussion, I identify some tendencies evident in liberal education and suggest reasons why those tendencies should elicit considerable concern. The concern is appropriate because of the importance of liberal education and the ways in which the tendencies defeat its purposes. The main phenomenon I want to draw attention to is what I shall call "the odd couple," a combination of naivete and cynicism that is evident in many students. It is especially unfortunate when this combination of naivete and cynicism is a result of their education, as it should be something that is overcome by it.

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Naivete

There is wide agreement that liberal education should not simply teach doctrine but that it should instead cultivate critical abilities, analytical rigor, and both intellectual responsibility and intellectual curiosity, perhaps with a...

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