Liberal Education

BY drastically curtailing liberal education, the war has created a breathing spell for reconsideration of the importance and teaching of the liberal arts, and Mark Van Doren’s plea for “the idea of a college,” which he finds exemplified in St. John’s College at Annapolis, could not be better timed. Severely critical of the elective system and of American education in general, Mr. Van Doren conducts in a rather oblique fashion a search for a curriculum “that is worthy to be uniform and stable,” and finally lists the great books which at undepartmentalized St. John’s all the students and all the faculty must study. Despite the skittish style of its advocate, the St. John’s idea of a college communicates a thrill and a large hope, and the author’s frequent and well-cliosen quotations from St. Augustine, Pascal, Emerson, Thoreau, Arnold, Comenius, and other luminous writers enlarge many of his pages from thin to weighty discourse.