This subject is from the Great Books...Most of us admitted these books are the intelligence of humankind. We are grateful to extract few of the textes in these books for your consideration....

 

        Let us first be clear about the meaning of the liberal arts  and liberal education .

       The liberal arts  are traditionally intended to develop the faculties of the human mind, those powers of intelligence and imagination without which no intellectual work can be accomplished. .

      The liberal education is not tired to certain academic subjects, such as philosophy, history, literature, music, art, and other so-called humanities.

      In the liberal arts tradition, scientific disciplines, such as mathematics and physics, are considered equally liberal, that is equally able to develop the powers of the mind. The liberal arts tradition goes back to the medieval curiculum. It consisted of two parts. The first part, the trivium  comprised grammar, rhetoric, and logic. It taught the arts of reading and writing, of listening and speaking, and of sound thinking. The other part, the quadrivium, consisted ofarithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music ( not audible music, but music conceived as a mathematical science ). It taught the arts of observation, calculation, and measurement, how to apprehend the quantitative aspect of things. Nowadays,of course, we would add many more sciences, natural and social. This is just what has been done in the various modern attempts to renew liberal education..

       Liberal education, including all the tradional parts as well as the newer sciences, is essential for the development of the top-flight scientists. Without it, we can train only technicians, who cannot understand the basic principles behind the motions they perform. We can hardly expect such skilled automatons to make new decouveries of any importance. A crash program of merely technical training would probably end ina crashup for basic science.

      The connection of liberal education with scientific creativity is not mere speculation. It is a matter of historical fact that the great German scientists of the XIX th century had a solid background in the liberal Arts. They all went throught a liberal education which embraced Greek, Latin, logic, philosophy, and history, in addition to mathematics, physics and other sciences. Actually, this has been the educational preparation of European scientists down to the present time. Einstein, Bohr, Fermi, and other great modern scientists were developed not by technical schoolong, but by liberal education.

        If you will just note the birth dates of the men who have done the basic work in Science, in certains pays, it will be apparent to you that they could not have received their training under any new system of education.  As for the presnet educational setup in certains pays,  which many alarmists are demanding that we emulate, it seems to contain something besides technical training and concentration on the natural sciences and mathematics. 

       We able to think for themselves. Its primary aim is not the development of professional competence, although a liberal education is indispensable for any intellectual profession. Itproduces citizens who can exercise their political liberty responsibly. It develops cultivated persons who can use their leisure fruitfully. It is an education for all free men, whether they intend to be scientists or not.

     Our educational problem is how to produce free men, not hordes of uncultivated, trained technicians. Only the best liberal schooling can accomplish this.

 

 

 

      If the ancients were asked whether education should be specialized, they would answer that il should be specialized only in that it should be conceived in terms of man' s specifically human nature. If they were asked whether ot should be vocational, they would say that the only vocation with which it should be concerned is the  common human calling- the pursuit of happiness. What we call specialized and vocational training- training for particular jobs- theywould regard as the training of slaves, not the education of free men.

    Writing in 1776, at the beginning of the industrial revolution, the  English economist Adam Smith advocates a minimum general education for all citizens. He points out that a man who is incapable of using his intellectual faculties properly is not fully human. He descxribes the sultification of the worker from whom no real crafsmanship or skill is demanded. The division of labor, which limits him to performing a few simple operations, makes him a mere appendage of the industrial process.

   As a result, the worker, according to Adam Smith, " becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any moral judgment concerning many of the ordinary duties of private life".

  Adam Smith' s picture may be unduly grim, and more applicable to the eighteenth and to the twenty firsth century. But the essential truthit points out remains unchanged. Specialized vocational training which does no more than fit a manfor a limited task in the industrial process is as stultifying as the job itdself. Such training is, strictly speaking, not education in the human sense at all. It contributes to the production of material goods, not to the development of human being.

     While the ancients had the correct view of education as essentially liberal, they did not think that all men should be liberally educated, because they did not think that all men are fitted by nature for the pursuit of happiness or citizenship or the liberal pursuit of leusure. But we today, at least those of us who are devoted to the principles of democracy, think otherwise. We maintain that all men should be citizens, that all have an equal right to the pursuit of happiness, and that all should be able to enjoy the goods of civilization. Hence we think that a democratic society must provide liberal schooling for all.

    Vocational training for particular tasks in the industrial process should be done by industry itself and on the job, not by the schools or in the classrooms.. The curriculum of basic schooling, from the first grade through college, should be wholly liberal and essentially the same for all. In view of the wide range of abilities and aptitudes with which the schools have to deal, that curriculum must be adapted to different children in different ways.

    In other words, we must solve the problem of how to give all the children- the least gifted as wellas the most gifted- the same kind of liberal education that was given in the past only to the few. Upon our success in solving that problem the future of democracy depends...

 

                                                                                               anonymous

 

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  Shogun was the title of the greatest of the Jepanese Feudal Lords.  The term  shogun  means great general  in Japanese, and is an abbreviation of the title meaning  Barbarian - Subduing Generalissimo. This official had originally  received  emergency military powers from the Japanese Emperor  to fight against the Ainu tribe  in the A.D. 800's . After 1192, the power of the Imperial Court  decreased, and the Shogun   also assumed civil power. In theory, the Emperor  appointed  each New Shogun, but the Shogun  was the real ruler of Japan. The Minamoto, the Ashikaga, and the Tokugawa families  carried the Shogun Title. The Shogun' s power  reached its peak under  the Tokugawa family, from about 1600 to 1867. In 1867, the Shogun  resigned and returned his power to the Emperor.

   Hara - Kiri  is a method of suicide used by members of the Japanese Warrior class. The person who commits hara - kiri  cuts  agash in his abdomen according to the prescribed manner, and disembowels himself. The Japanese term this ceremonial rite Seppuku. During the feudal period in Japan, men considered it a  privilege and duty for the  Samurai  ( warrior nobles ) to kill themselves in this way, rather than to submit to public disgrace. Later, defeated commanders sometimes asked the Emperor for permission to commit hara - kiri. The Japanese  tended to give up this custom after 1868, but it has never completely died out.

    Samurai  was the hereditary warrior class in feudal Japan. The term originally  referred only to the Imperial Guards. After the coming of a feudal system, it meant the entire military class. This included the Samurai Warriors, the feudal Lords called Daimyos  or  Daimios, and the  Shogun. About 5 of every 100 Japanese belonged to this group.

   A code of  unquestioning Obedience and Loyalty, called  Bushido, bound the Samurai Warriors to their Lords. The  Samurai prized honor above weath or life,  and atoned for dishonor by committing hara - kiri., or  cereminial suicide.  They wore two swords, and a distinctive headdress. The Samurai  were graded in military ranks, each with an appropriate income in rice. They lost their privileges when the Japanese abolished Feudalism in 1871.

 

                                                                       anonymous