What does it mean to be a liberally educated person? It seems such a simple question ...
In speaking of “liberal” education, we certainly do not mean an education that indoctrinates students in the values of political liberalism, at least not in the most obvious sense of the latter phrase. Rather, we use these words to describe an educational tradition that celebrates and nurtures human freedom.
Freedom and growth: here, surely, are values that lie at the very core of what we mean when we speak of a liberal education.
Here are the ten personal qualities I most admire in the people I know who seem to embody the values of a liberal education. How does one recognize liberally educated people?
I’ve had many wonderful students at Yale and Columbia, bright, thoughtful, creative kids whom it’s been a pleasure to talk with and learn from. But most of them have seemed content to color within the lines that their education had marked out for them. Only a small minority have seen their education as part of a larger intellectual journey, have approached the work of the mind with a pilgrim soul. These few have tended to feel like freaks, not least because they get so little support from the university itself. Places like Yale, as one of them put it to me, are not conducive to searchers.
