Liberal Education Reconsidered; Reflections on Continuing Education for Contemporary Man. Notes and Essays on Education for Adults, 60.

Overview & Synopsis

These four essays are the final papers of staff members of the Center for the Study of Liberal Education for Adults; their theme is that liberal education embodies a concern for man rather than things. James B. Whipple proposes a concept of "relational education," which aims to help the professional person relate his career to the rest of human life. Kenneth Haygood concludes that urban education has far to go before it will be ready to deal with man, since most efforts are still being directed at solving mechanical problems. Thus he sees the main task of future liberal adult education as providing men with the opportunity to become humane in an anti-humane community. Freda Goldman's goal for liberal education is to give direction to man's long range leisure activities. She maintains that affluent contemporary man is as much a man of leisure as a working man, and suggests that we further develop the concept of occupations of leisure which provide serious avocations. Peter E. Siegle states that a thing-oriented education is an obsolete concept. Seeing modern man as a product of knowledge, technology, and the dilemmas these have brought, he views the goal of education as helping people acquire personal attributes that form the basis of continued learning throughout life. (se)