The learning goals of a well-designed course in the liberal arts include not only the imparting of knowledge but also the development of critical thinking and disciplinary expertise. A class on Luther can help students acquire those intellectual skills associated with the discipline of history and the liberal arts more generally as they consider…

Research has demonstrated the importance of emotions in learning, and academic service-learning (AS-L) has become an increasingly popular pedagogy. However, few studies have investigated emotional experiences specific to AS-L. The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to examine students' emotions related to their AS-L class. Results from the…

At St. John's College campuses in New Mexico and Maryland, teachers and other professionals attending the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education explore new ways of understanding classical works in politics, literature, philosophy, and the sciences and discuss how these are relevant to their lives. (MJL)

Argues that the Socratic method is inappropriate for children because it teaches them to question adult authority before they have the necessary experience and is therefore conducive to cynicism. A traditional liberal arts curriculum, combining transmission of culture with open inquiry, is preferable to attempts to teach critical thinking. (TE)

Legal education is on one hand professional education in the traditional sense, and on the other a liberal education. Its ultimate concern is not with students' competence at imitating other lawyers, but with the development of an individual's own capacities, sensibilities, and styles. (MSE)

The structure and results of a college faculty workshop in designing subject-area courses to promote critical thinking skills and intellectual development are reported. (MSE)

The concept of general education, its specific goals, and its role in the college curriculum are discussed. The goals of general education appear to center around teaching students to think analytically and to synthesize ideas into a general understanding. It is suggested, however, that these objectives tend to get lost in the specifics of…