The Permanent Values In Education Classic Reprint PDF Download

Excerpt from The Changing and the Permanent in Liberal Education Among the many movements affecting the higher interests of society during recent decades none has been more conspicuous than that which has modified collegiate education. Marked tendencies toward change have made headway, and concession has been more common than opposition. Have we then a "new education?" Have traditional methods and aims been superseded? Do the changes touch what is vital, or are the best values conserved? Is a reaction to be desired, or shall the present trend go on? These are questions to which an intelligent answer can be given, only as we search for elements fixed and variable, and so discover the changing and the permanent in liberal education. It is not a question, of new subjects or new methods of advanced instruction, for education and instruction are not identical. Higher instruction may be quite different from liberal education. Moreover, the term "liberal" does not necessarily mean "bountiful." Plentifulness of subjects does not guarantee liberal training. Higher education, in order to be liberal, must have a distinctive scope, aim, and spirit. Its extent does not make it so, but rather its content and intent. Knowledge sought and used only as equipment for an occupation, a trade, a profession, may be marvelously minute and extensive, but it is not liberal. We must distinguish, as Plato did, those studies which are pursued "not with the view of making any of them a profession, but only as a part of education, and because a private gentleman and a freeman ought to know them." So the "liberal arts" of the mediaeval time were those deemed necessary to freemen, and deficient though they were in range, had high value in developing human capacity. A similar conception determined the type of education which has been known as "collegiate." About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."