Outside speakers as well as UW speakers and respondents were of nearly one voice when asked what courses of study should be required to enhance liberal education at a university. Our speakers and respondents proposed that the content of liberal education should focus on the liberal arts themselves, as intellectual arts. Thus, rather than taking a course or two in, say, social science, students should be expected, and given the opportunity, to learn to think as a social scientist, think as a humanist, think as a scientist, think and feel as an artist. It was the engagement in intellectual and artistic work, and the attendant arts that such engagement would imply, that our speakers advocated and advocated quite passionately. They answered that question by saying that the educated person should have experiences in reflective thought, writing, speaking, engagement with significant texts, engagement with a discipline, and engagement with disciplines and persons that are different from oneself and one s specialized field of study.
Liberal education is inherently an education in experiential social practice.
Each of the three outside speakers made a principled argument for the liberal arts as a study in engaged social practice. William Sullivan, a philosopher of higher education with the Carnegie Foundation argued that the public mission of a university is to bring the tradition of the humane and civic arts to bear on the problems and concerns of the present. He proposed a university that would serve a larger public purpose as a citizen within civil society than being simply a self-aggrandizing creature of the market. Universities, he said, educate students for citizenship to the degree they become places for cooperative dialogue and interaction among diverse groups of citizens from the larger community. Michael Leff, a Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University, also argued for liberal education as engaged social practice.