A direct approach to civic formation that preserves the spirit of pure liberal education
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11953299 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Christopher William Love (0000-0002-4912-2733, independent scholar, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 58 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 433-449 |
| Publication date | 2024-03-25 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Philosophy of Education (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0309-8249 • E-ISSN: 1467-9752 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jopedu/qhae025 |
| OpenAlex | W4393144755 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 17 |
According to one historic view of liberal education, such education is incompatible with the express pursuit of civic goods. Call that view ‘pure liberal education’. Students engaged in pure liberal education are set free, temporarily, from utilitarian concerns, for a course of study aimed at intrinsic goods—most notably knowledge but also the formation of a virtuous mind. Proponents claim that a direct pursuit of civic goods would compromise the mode, matter, and/or integrity of pure liberal education—that is, its freedom from utilitarian concern, its wide-ranging and intrinsically valuable subject matter, and its commitment to following the truth wherever it leads. In reply, I offer a pedagogy that requires (almost) no departure from the pure liberal ideal yet which reserves a modest, though important, place for civic formation. That place emerges from the fact that academic and civic life ‘overlap’ in an important respect: both involve a conversation and thus a common set of virtues. The latter consist in those practices and dispositions that enable the conversation to go well, by encouraging mutual understanding and the formation of true beliefs. The existence of this overlap provides a way for pure liberal educators, who already expressly influence their students’ academic formation, to likewise influence their civic formation. It consists in teachers consciously developing those virtues in their students, along with an awareness of the virtues’ relevance for civic life. This pedagogy retains the matter and integrity of pure liberal education, with only brief introductions of the practical mode
Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Higher education · Liberal arts education · Liberal education · Philosophy of education · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Critical and Liberation Pedagogy · Diverse Education Studies and Reforms · Global Education and Multiculturalism · Law · Philosophy
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |