Inaugural Symposium: Why the Liberal Arts? Jerry W. Ward, Jr.
Randolph College
April 25, 2014
WHY TEACH? WHY ADVISE? : HISTORY
AND THINKING
I deeply appreciate the honor of being
invited by President Bradley Bateman and the Randolph College family to share a
few ideas about the liberal arts, teaching and advising. The ideas are
inflected by companion ideas regarding creativity and service, the subject
matter of a slightly different discourse. Thus, I focus on what I have been
invited to address.
In the antiquity of Greek imagination, liberal arts (artes liberals) were essential for
citizenship. A citizen was obligated to master rhetoric, the art of persuasion
and public speaking; to have skill in forensic science or the art of defense in
court and in making juridical decisions; to render service military and
otherwise. Grammar, logic, and rhetoric (the trivium) were valued. These were amplified in medieval Europe to
include the quadrivium (arithmetic,
geometry, music, and astronomy/astrology). In later iterations, logic was
subordinated to accommodate history and moral philosophy (ethics), and studia humanitatis ascended, becoming the foundation for what in
contemporary thought is a liberal arts education.
In 2014, as if we are existentially obligated to replay the
debates “between the upholders of antiquity and those of modernity in the
seventeenth century” (Jones vii) regarding the rise of the scientific movement,
we concern ourselves with STEM versus the humanities. We hear the humorous noise of Jonathan
Swift’s “A Full and True Account of the Battel Fought Last Friday, between the
Antient and the Modern Books in St. James’s Library,” echoes of C. P. Snow’s The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, and the dirges in Aldous
Huxley’s Brave New World and George
Orwell’s Animal Farm. Shall citizens who ought to be agents of
history in a republic where critical thinking is valued become drones of a
State where the supreme values are those of capital and relentless information
technologies? The possibility of such
accomplished future shock makes the interrelated questions ---Why Teach? Why
Advise? ---crucial for how we choose now to deal with destiny and retain some
control of our lives.
Permit me to quote famous words:
“In this rapidly changing world, there is no better
preparation than learning and to work with other people to solve problems. It is also true that the world of work
becomes more international and more complex every day. A liberal education prepares you very well to
see the world from multiple perspectives.
In this sense, liberal education is the ultimate ‘career preparation’.”
“I see Randolph as a leader in the national debate about the
importance of liberal education in the 21st century.”
[Randolph-Macon Woman’s
College Alumnae and Randolph College Alumni Bulletin 4.2 (2013): 22, 24]
In short, President Bateman was saying the liberal arts can
reduce chaos to order.
My brief remarks are explanatory footnotes for Bateman’s
ideas. In the bloodless warfare entanglement requires, teaching and advising
are practices watered with morality, concepts of justice, and imagination; they
are actions that bespeak citizenship and membership in global societies. For
over forty years, the art and joy of teaching and the ethical onus of advising
have my life. The imperatives of David Walker’s 1829 Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World and the grains of
wisdom I have obtained from Plato’s Republic,
Machiavelli’s The Prince, DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folk, and Thomas
Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions have influenced my sometimes tense, often rich, and always
rewarding engagements with students and
colleagues. My discipline is English, the study of language and literature with
special interest in literary theory and criticism and African American
literature. From David Walker I learned how the so-called wretched of the earth
were obligated to destroy the material and psychological restraints on their
freedom imposed by those who violated their minds and bodies. Plato taught me
the difference between a statesman and a politician and the diverse outcomes of
morality in social space. From Machiavelli I learned the value of being
skeptical. DuBois instructed me how best
to use the strength and resilience of my soul so as not to be crushed by the
uncertainties of secular power and the unfolding of histories. From Kuhn I
learned the importance of empirical evidence, patience, and exactness in
changing from one paradigm of cognition to another. I delighted in teaching and
transmitting what I absorbed; life drove me to see my work as a vocation not a
job. My vocation would have been incomplete had I not helped my students to
identify their options for action and to retreat so they would freely assume
responsibility of their choices.
Teachers of my generation who taught at Randolph were most
likely as invested as I was in a pedagogy which maximized the importance of
making connections between our chosen disciplines and those we chose not to
pursue. I was transgressive and subversive with a purpose, determined that my
students would at once master specific content and be conversant with what was
emphasized in other areas of study and acquisition of knowledge. Walls between
disciplines in the humanities, pure and applied sciences, and the human or
social sciences are maintained for discursive convenience. Those who live fully, who embrace a liberal
arts education, boldly walk through them to go where they have never been. I share President Bateman’s belief that a
liberal education prepares us for multiple careers and meaningful lives.
WORK CITED: Jones, Richard Foster. Ancients and Moderns: A Study of the Rise of the Scientific Movement in
Seventeenth Century England. 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1965.
