PBK Induction Speech – Liberal Arts
Professor Greenia and Professor Abelt told me that the student response is traditionally a defense of the liberal arts. Simple enough, only one catch. What are the “liberal arts?”
About 1600 years ago, Martianus Capella wrote an allegory about the seven liberal arts: rhetoric, logic, and grammar, or the trivium, and geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music, the quadrivium. The problem with ancient texts, though, is that sometimes we don’t have accurate copies. I know that Economics and Hispanic studies were included in the original. So, I moved on to a more reliable source: Wikipedia, which quotes the Encyclopedia Britannica:
In classical antiquity, “liberal arts” designated the education proper to a freeman (from Latin liber, “free”) as opposed to a slave.
“The education proper to a freeman as opposed to a slave.” This is problematic, because slavery itself is never proper, and nothing but freedom can be proper to a slave. So, I will offer my own definition: a liberal arts education is an education in freedom.
An education in freedom must go beyond skills. In any enterprise, there is a ladder of responsibilities, beginning with basic skilled tasks but ending with questions about our values and ideals. For example, take Miller Hall, the new Business School under construction down the road. We lay bricks from the first rung of our ladder, we organize bricklayers from the second. On the third we draw the blueprints, on the fourth we imagine the building, and only on the fifth level do we talk about spending priorities at a public university. A little higher up, about the idea of public universities, and higher yet we question the hierarchical assumptions of any academic institution. Eventually we must get to talking about our life goals, and about life itself. If we stop at the third rung, or the fourth rung, or even the fifth rung, someone will stand above us on the sixth and he or she will be our master in ways we may not realize. If we will be free, we must take responsibility for every sort of question, and so an education in freedom makes no assumptions.
Sometimes we equate “liberal arts” with “citizenship education.” This is true, but let us be careful about what we mean by citizenship education. It is more than training students to vote, to lobby and to build a more just world. These are excellent first steps, but we must include all the rungs of the ladder. We discuss not just how to build a better world, but how to imagine one. A liberal arts citizenship education allows students to choose their own role in the body politic, as traditional citizens or, if they choose, as visionaries who propose a new role for citizens. Either way, the result is a deeper citizenship which flows not simply from training but from an internal richness.
How do we develop this inner richness? How do we climb this ladder? A liberal arts education begins as a ship departing for the open ocean, abandoning all masters and taking sole responsibility for its own navigation. To quote Melville, “all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore.” But the shore need not be slavish. Striding along the deep we plant our feet; we grow a solid independence that does not shake when we sight another ship. Our sovereign meditation joins with other voices and forms a conversation. The sojourning sails return to port, and our independence becomes the foundation of our re-incorporation into society.
Our strongest supporters now surround us–parents, professors, peers, and others who do not fit in this room. We engage together, bearing the prizes of our pondering, sharing new questions and competing answers. Together we have lost a university president and gained another. Together we watch and work as the same happens nationally. Globally, we are drifting into a financial crisis. Locally, nationally, and globally, we serve, called not only by tradition but more importantly by our own reflection, and because we boast a liberal arts education we question the foundation, we imagine a different structure, and we renovate our world.
In 163 days, we will wear these robes again and listen to a better speech. We will graduate, we will leave William and Mary, but we will not stop pursuing our education in freedom. We will continue our sovereign meditative searches, leaving no question unasked. We will learn together, offering new questions and competing answers. We will labor together–on all the rungs of the ladder–to advance humanity’s cause. We will continue our liberal arts education. Go Tribe and Hark upon the gale.