Liberal education developments

What, then, are some of the aspects of liberal education that might engage us I would like to discuss five of them without in any sense presuming to say that there are no others, nor equally important ones. The first is the value judgement that needs to be developed. Then there is a sense of relevance and appropriateness that marks the able mind. Thirdly, there is the ability to reason in the broadest sense. Fourthly, a sensitivity to language, and, fifthly, an innate courtesy which should be sought after and cultivated. 

As the engineering profession developed in the nineteenth century, and its major institutions and educational frameworks were established, a number of groups advocated the cause of engineering science . The Gentlemen of Science of the British Association s early years saw engineering science as a way to institute hierarchical control over engineering by physical scientists, and even by gentlemen whose liberal education included mechanical science. Their representations... 

The Yale Report of 1828 (Hofstader and Smith, 1961, 278-279) expresses that the scholar must form himself, by his own exertions and that we doubt whether the powers of the mind can be developed, in the fairest proportions, by studying language alone, or mathematics alone, or natural or political science alone. The transformation of American colleges into research universities in which the elective system developed at Harvard was adopted in the 19th century meant that disciplines and fields of study were no longer limited to the classics, religion, and mathematics. To be liberally educated meant engaging many fields of study. 

Btiker, V. L., Baldwin, R. G., Makker, S. (2012). Where are they now Liberal Education, 98(3), 48-53. Professional Development Collection, EBSCOhost, accessed April 21, 2013. 

Chemistry, because of its particularities as important disciplinary knowledge, can readily be justified as deserving a place in the academic sector of education and, albeit rather differently, in liberal or general school education. It is not, as disciplinary knowledge, justified in the vocational sector where its knowledge and processes appear as essential ingredients of the behaviours, or immediate and future competencies, that a particular vocational course sets out to develop in its students. In this sense, the knowledge is needed to be able to do. 

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