Historical Look at the Liberal Arts Eduation

Over 100 years ago, two of our country's most distinguished educators, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois, led a debate about education. The formerly enslaved Washington challenged the Harvard-educated Dubois with the assertion that the liberal arts were of no practical value to the majority of people, be they white, black or red, the three races then attempting to live together in the American South.

In the 1880s Washington built Tuskegee Institute in Alabama on a model established at Hampton Institute in Virginia after the Civil War. Although far from the current model of vocational education, Tuskegee and Hampton were based on similar ideas: that the goal of higher education is to equip students to earn a living in the world, as it now exists.

In contrast with Washington, Dubois advocated a liberal arts curriculum such as the one he studied at Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn., where he acquired his passion for racial uplift during his undergraduate years. In language he would have no doubt modified if he were speaking today, Dubois wrote, in a collection of essays entitled The Souls of Black Folk, that "the final product of our training must be neither a psychologist nor a brick mason, but a man. And to make men, we must have ideals, broad, pure and inspiring ends of living -- not sordid money--getting, not apples of gold. The worker must work for the glory of his handiwork, not simply for pay; the thinker must think for truth, not for fame."

Washington believed that technical skills would provide newly freed, formerly enslaved African Americans in the South with the means to earn a living, become self-sufficient and thereby earn the respect of Southern whites. Dubois argued that a liberal arts education would equip African Americans to become citizens and leaders, with the mental skills and abilities necessary to dismantle the caste system into which they were born.

Interestingly, Washington sent his own children to liberal arts colleges. Most of Washington's publicly articulated ideas about education were largely based on expedience. Because of the rigid barriers of race and class held up by the weapons of terror and violence in the 1880s and
1890s, it seemed that only a thimble-full of African Americans and a handful of whites could expect to earn a living or even survive if they had to depend on critical thinking and creativity. In an agricultural, pre-industrialized America, those may have been the realities Washington thought he faced.

But gratefully,times have changed. The U.S.economy, indeed the world economy, has changed.More than ever before, critical thinking, creativity and values are essential to the future of humanity. When Washington lived in Alabama, the public school system was in its infancy. Today, the majority of high school graduates, an estimated 75 percent, will go on to higher education. Higher education, in many significant
ways, holds the key to human efforts to lay the foundations for the future. Humanity depends on a well-educated population -- a thinking citizenry, endued with values and the ability to apply reason in what appear to be chaotic times.

Philosopher and educator Mortimer Adler reminded us that "the aim of a liberal arts education is to develop free human beings who know how to use their minds and are able to think for themselves."  Adler noted that a liberal education is essential to scientific creativity and pointed to the fact that Europe's great scientists, in both the 19th and 20th centuries,were all thoroughly educated in the liberal arts.

The liberal arts have come a long way from their foundations in Medieval Europe, where they were defined as the study of grammar and rhetoric as well as logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music as a mathematical science. The liberal arts today include the humanities, the arts and the social sciences; and in some contexts, the natural sciences have been added in an effort to renew liberal education.

Modern liberal arts colleges like Guilford blend the traditions of a liberal arts education with the practical application of knowledge that had been formerly associated primarily with vocational or professional training. Since the liberal arts focus on teaching students how to think, how to use reason and logic, how to make sound, ethical decisions, how to solve social as well as scientific problems from a value-based foundation, how to create and not just duplicate what others have done, most of us would agree with another observation made by Adler:

"Liberal education, including all the traditional arts as well as the newer sciences, is essential for the development of top-flight scientists. Without it, we can train only technicians, who cannot understand the basic principles behind the motions they perform. We can hardly expect
such skilled automatons to make new discoveries of anyimportance."

Guilford is not about producing automatons but rather has invested heavily in science and technology that we hope will always be taught in a liberal arts context. Science and technology majors as well as business management, criminal justice, community and justice and sport management majors who graduate from Guilford have a thorough grounding in the liberal arts, and are equipped to move on to advanced study and become leaders in their fields.

Our goal is that everyone who graduates from Guilford will be equipped with essential intellectual and civic skills and understand the broader meaning of such time-honored ideas as the practical application of knowledge. We intend that Guilford graduates will not be simply doing what others have done in the same way they have done things, but will be able to think out of the box and create breakthroughs in their chosen fields that may help humanity survive and even thrive beyond the 21st century.

Adrienne Israel is the vice president and academic dean. She joined the college faculty in 1982 and is a professor of history and intercultural studies.