The public value of the liberal arts

Academic Questions

Volumn 12, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 40-44

  Agresto, John ^a  

^a ST JOHN S COLLEGE   (United States)

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EID: 84873530280     PISSN: 08954852     EISSN: 19364709     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s12129-999-1025-3     Document Type: Article

References (3)

1. For various formulations of the definition and nature of the liberal arts, I am indebted throughout this paper to Jim Carey, dean of St.John's College in Santa Fe, and to Leo Strauss' writings on education.
2. The publicly useless nature of the liberal arts was so apparent to some public-spirited men--I have Locke in mind--that for the sake of the public good, they publicly disparaged the liberal arts even as benefiting the individual. To continue our reference to Latin, no father who loves his child, Locke tells us, will ever have his son learn the Roman language for which he will have no use... [and] which he is never to use in the course of a life that he is designed to, and neglect all the while the writing a good hand and casting accounts, which are of great advantage in all conditions of life, and to most trades indispensably necessary. To the most public spirited of men what we later would call the cultivation of the mind was suspect even as a private activity.
3. John Henry Cardinal Newman, The Idea of a University (New York: Image Books/Doubleday, 1959), 191.