printThink you’re educated? Think Again. I have.
For a long time, the “Aristotelian ideal of the educated person” was the aim of a Liberal Education. The ideal and idea of the Renaissance Man, however, has been completely lost:
… The Aristotelian ideal of the educated person, “critical” in all or almost all branches of knowledge, survived for centuries as the aim of liberal education. Originally, the student would be taught seven arts or skills, consisting of the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music). The names are antique, but the seven “subjects” were comparable to a modern liberal curriculum of languages, philosophy, mathematics, history, and science. The arts or skills were “liberal” because they were liberating. That is, they freed their possessor from the ignorance that bound the uneducated. … The original belief that an educated person should be “critical” in more fields than his own no longer exists …
(Excerpted from Charles Van Doren’s A history of Knowledge: Past, present, and future, 1991, New York: Ballantine Books, on Dr. Alexander A. Petrov’s blog).
In his discussion of a “humanistic education” (as Sean Gabb terms the liberal arts education of yesteryear), Dr. Gabb mentions our mutual, late, dear friend, Dennis O’Keeffe, who was “famous for his denunciations of what he calls socialist education—this being a denial that there is any value in the traditional curriculum. Such an education means”:
a training in habits of thought and the exercise of general intellectual ability. It may require the acquisition of specific skills—for example, learning at least one of the classical languages and few modern languages, and learning some of the technical aspects of music and the visual arts. It may also require an understanding of mathematics and of the natural sciences. It certainly requires a long study of literature and history and philosophy and law and political economy. But none of this may be useful in any direct financial sense. …
Dr. Gabb does, however, underestimate the mental prowess (albeit maybe not intellect) that goes into completion of advanced degrees of what he calls “technical or professional training.” Most of us are unable to manipulate the laws of nature (physics/mathematics) to create the workable technology that makes life so good.
I often watch “Food Factory.” I’m in awe of the mechanical engineers who design these magnificent robotic assembly lines, even though they may not be witty and entertaining dinner guests (which Sean Gabb most certainly is, as I learned when I attended a Liberty Fund colloquium in the UK).
Designing an assembly line that makes my chocolate slabs materialize is a pretty noble calling.