Red, Right and Blue: The education of freedom of thought

It is the purpose of this column, and a responsibility I take very seriously, to represent the conservative voice on campus (a voice which is sometimes sadly lacking from much of the discourse represented on this campus). However, this week I am going to stray slightly from my usual topics in order to address a topic I feel almost as passionately about as politics and which, I believe, is even more important to true learning: a liberal arts education.

In the last few weeks, there have been whispers of the school taking a new direction in terms of the educational experience it offers. The reasons given for this are the financial problems, caused by the global economic crisis and the eternal worry of preparing students for their future lives in some career or another. These are, of course, extremely important considerations. Economic problems have affected everyone, causing us all to make some compromises in order to weather it, and as someone who is currently looking rather grimly into the future of job markets, the idea of marketable skills is extremely alluring. However, the reason we have all come to a place like Middlebury is not merely to be able to be hired for the job we want. It is something more: we have come here to be educated. Education is something deeper than the readiness for a career: it is the reordering, the organization of the mind and the soul. Or, at least, it is if done properly.

In coming to Middlebury, we as students have put our faith in this college that it will rightly re-order our souls allowing us to become, better, happier and more full human beings. In the reorganization of the soul, education seeps through to every part of our identities, informing our future lives in all of their facets: from the most ordinary of readiness for career, to readiness for family, friends, politics, religion and even death. Thus, in arguing for an education that will give us a career alone, we are cutting short the entire idea of education. We are pretending that the career is the only human goal which requires education when, in reality, it may be the one which requires the least.

Of all earthly creatures, human beings alone require education. This is true because they alone are capable of complex thought that goes beyond the need to survive and the relations between themselves and other creatures. Rather, human beings can contemplate not only these relations, but ideas separate from their products. We are the only ones who can separate the concept of “haplessness” from a single apple, or as Socrates puts it in Plato’s Republic, “bedness” from a particular bed. This allows us to be conscious of truth, goodness, beauty, etc. We alone make these things the purposes of our lives insomuch as we judge one another by them, hold them sacred and even contemplate beings such as gods who are made from them. We need education not so that, like all other beasts, we can serve but so that we can rise above mere survival into the realms of thought. Liberal education, as opposed to all other educational forms, teaches us to think. And it is thought that allows us to be happy in the things that we persue whether that be family, career or the fulfillment of some other goal.

The facility for thought is not instilled in people through instruction in one particular subject, it is instilled by the *** of many subjects. It becomes part of us as we are taught what it means to learn, to discern what we believe and disbelieve, like and dislike. It is the connection of many different kinds of thought into one — it is the mixing of the scientific, the historical and the study of character, the ingenuities of language and many more elements of understanding into one synthesis, which is able to contemplate anything. It is not knowledge per se, it is the ability to gain knowledge. And this is the difference between vocational education and liberal education as well. While one may give you particular knowledge, the other gives you the ability to gain any knowledge. Particular knowledge can always be gained, while there comes a time when the mind and the soul have become too developed in chaos for them to suddenly become organized. It is therefore our great good fortune that we have been given this chance to learn to think — to become truly educated.

I began this column with a comment of my duty as one of a minority of conservatives, my duty to express our views. I believe this to be a duty not only for the sake of that minority, but for the majority as well. It is part of liberal arts education to experience conflicting views, for choosing between them is a part of learning to think. Therefore, I believe that it is not a mismanagement of this column to speak of liberal education. It is liberal education that allows for the difference of opinion (which in the best of cases can lead to knowledge) and on the other hand, it is the differences of those opinions which act as the cornerstones of liberal education. It is clear to me that the goods of freedom of speech and of thought are inseparable from the good of real education.