Liberal education lost

I, too, along with Paul Greenberg, bemoan the fact that current educational practices have resulted in the loss of liberal education in America, which has resulted in the decline of a capable citizenry.

As a teacher of over 40 years, I have personally seen the undermining of American instruction as the result of external, mostly federal, controls. The result has been that the goal of liberal education, which emphasizes the development of the student’s intellectual abilities, has become replaced by the goal of simply preparing the individual for a career— the providing of professional skills through what has become essentially vocational and technical education.

Unlike that which we see in today’s educational system, the aim of a liberal education is not the development of professional competence. Rather, it is the cultivation of the intellect and imagination in order to produce individual human beings who know how to use their minds and are able to think, critically and independently, for themselves, to write, and to reason. Such an education provides society with people who can become leaders in many walks of life.

Among other reasons, the effectiveness of America’s public school system has deteriorated because it has been used for the purpose of engineering social outcomes. When teachers spend most of their days filling out forms and providing mandated pseudo- academic instruction on topics such as race, class, social mixing, and other social concerns, a liberal education is no longer possible. JANET L. JAGITSCH

Springdale