Liberal Education and the Student's Response

Liberal Education and the Students’ Personal Response Liberal Education teaches people to think critically. Its goal is to nurture the growth of human talent in order to prepare individuals for a fulfilling and meaningful life in a free society. The study of liberal education should heighten students’ awareness of the human and natural world they inhabit. It should make them more reflective about their beliefs and choices, more self-conscious of their presumptions, and more creative about the issues that arise in their lives.

The world in which we live in is such a complex place, filled with a wide variety of ideas and information. Any person can just flip the channels on the television, surf the Internet, or read a book, and multitude of ideas and information leaps forth. The possibilities are endless; this is the age of information, and information practically run the everyday lives of people. But what is important is not so much the information itself, but how we perceive and process the information. Liberal education forms one’s own opinions through critical and rational thinking.

Liberal education spans the vast expanses of human understanding. Any education is a liberal education – that is, when conducted in a spirit of free exploration on any field of study without too much concern for topic relevance. To a person who has not had the benefits of such an education, lacks intellectual context, which makes it difficult for them to understand ideas and events in a broader, more complete sense—somehow without real substance or practical value. But to a person who has experienced the benefits of liberal education, the receiving of information promotes contemplation and individual thought, and leads to exercise of the person’s mind.

Another important benefit of liberal education is the ability of a person to understand the significance of things that happen to the world, in the context of many other related ideas. For example, the economic crisis