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Article: Practicing liberal education: formative themes in the reinvention of liberal learning.(Featured Topic)(Cover Story)
- Article from:
- Liberal Education
- Article date:
- March 22, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Association of American Colleges and Universities. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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THOUGH LIBERAL EDUCATION has assumed many forms across different times and places, it has always been concerned with important educational aims: cultivating intellectual and ethical judgment, helping students comprehend and negotiate their relationship to the larger world, and preparing graduates for lives of civic responsibility and leadership. On the merits, then, we might expect that liberal education would be the uncontested preference of virtually everyone who goes to college.
And yet, American society today exhibits a striking ambivalence towards the traditions of "liberal" or "liberal arts" education. Liberal education is at one and the same time prized, ...