On Liberal Education

GEORGIAN COLLEGIATE CONSORTIUM

Through various publications, lectures and seminars on liberal education, the Georgian Collegiate Consortium (GCC) hopes to familiarize interested parties in the principles of liberal education and the role of such an education in a liberal democracy.

The first in a series of essays focusing on the question, "what is liberal education," was published by Irakly Areshidze, a Fellow a the Partnership for Social Initiative, one of the three members of GCC, in Georgia/Caucasus: Profile in February 2001. You can read the essay here.

As part of the campaign to familiarize the Georgian public on the topic of liberal education, in the summer and fall of 2001, GCC will hold a series of three seminars on liberal education in Tbilisi. The seminars will focus on discussing writings on liberal education by the following authors, among others:

George Anastaplo
Professor, Loyola University School of Law, Chicago, IL, USA

"In re Allan Bloom: A Respectful Dissent," The Great Ideas Today, an Encyclopedia Britannica publication (1988): 252-273. Review of Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind.

Allan Bloom
Late Nef Distinguished Service Professor in the College and the Committee on Social Though, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

Selections from Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987).

Eva T.H. Brann
Tutor and former Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis, MD, USA

	"The American College as the Place for Liberal Leaning." Daedalus (January 1999): 151-171.
	"Eight Theses on Liberal Education." Lecture given at Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT, October 1997.

Robert M. Hutchins
Late President of the University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

	"The Idea of a College." Measure 1 (Fall 1950): 363-371
	Selections from Education for Freedom (Louisiana State University Press, 1943).

Alexander Meiklejohn
Late President of Amherst College, Amherst, MA, USA

Selections from Education Between Two Worlds (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1942).

Leo Strauss
Late Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

	"What is Liberal Education." An address Delivered at the Tenth Annual Graduation Exercises of the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults, June 6, 1959 (available in Hilail Gildin, ed., What is Political Philosophy: Ten Essays by Leo Strauss).
	"Liberal Education and Mass Democracy," in Higher Education and Modern Democracy: The Crisis of the Few and Many, ed. Robert A. Goldwin,(Chicago: Rand McNally & Co., 1967), pp. 73-96.