University of Dallas News

Issue date: 11/3/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Peter McDonough Dr. Scott Crider, professor of English, discussed the usefulness of a liberal arts education with a crowded audience in Theresa Lounge on Wednesday night.

Is a liberal arts education useless? Over 50 students, from freshmen to seniors, poured into Theresa Hall on Wednesday evening to hear Dr. Scott Crider of the English department discuss this very question. Most University of Dallas students will face this question at some point on their educational journey, but Crider assured his eager audience, "You will be useful. Just not yet."

Crider began his remarks by recalling how many people questioned him in college about what he was going to do as an English major. The people who took this pragmatic approach, he said, saw education simply as a way to "upgrade their financial prospects through a degree."

He contrasted this view with that of a liberal education, which he described as "an education which presupposes, first and foremost, that knowledge is a good in and of itself before it is useful for other things."

While "liberal arts" refers to a curriculum of subjects in the humanities and sciences, a "liberal education" is not a subject but a disposition, Crider continued.

He elaborated on this by pointing to Aristotle's insight into human nature, "All human beings naturally desire knowledge." Thus, a liberal education seeks knowledge as its own end, he said.

"The joy of the goodness of liberal learning is like love," said Crider, explaining that people do not ask why love is useful, but rather they embrace the "fair encounter" of love, and the results follow naturally from that encounter. This fair encounter, he said, will never come if one is only looking for the results.

Crider referenced the works of John Henry Newman, who described a liberal education as the "cultivation of intellect," which is primarily a good and an end in itself, but can also secondarily be a power and a means to other ends.

Therefore, he explained, liberal education diffuses good first to the learner and then to the learner's community. So, "the liberal learner, though at first the most useless person, becomes later the most useful," he said.

The liberal education is useless right now, Crider explained, because it is still cultivating the intellect, thereby fulfilling the human nature that desires knowledge. Once cultivated in this manner, the individual is prepared to yield an abundance of good. "Liberal education postpones utility; it does not forsake it."

However, Crider noted, a liberal education is never finished because man's desire for knowledge can never be fully quenched.

Following this talk, Crider led a dialogue as the students discussed the place of technical studies within a liberal education, the degree to which the Western tradition should be complemented by studies of other traditions and the difference between perceiving oneself as an instrument and a human person.

Junior Gabbi Chee was very pleased with the success of her first R.A. event. "The turnout was great, and I think that was a testament to the strength of the topic," she said.

Chee was especially pleased with the dialogue that developed from Crider's talk, and the encouragement that it gives to students at UD. "It's nice to have a reminder of why we are here," she said.

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