Liberal education: a renewed role within religious education

Abstract

This paper reviews the concept of liberal education and shows how, from its beginnings in classical times, it has been socially influential in schools and universities. After the rise of science and the proliferation of technology in the nineteenth century, liberal education was threatened and this threat continued in the form of late twentieth-century philosophical attacks. Liberal education was said to be elitist and individualistic and to be inappropriate in a multicultural society. Embedded within religious education, however, the arguments in favour of liberal education justify the notion of ‘learning from’ religion.

Keywords:

• J.S. Mill
• Matthew Arnold
• J.H. Newman
• religious education
• art–science debate

Notes

1. See his letters to Lord Lyttelton (29 August 1861) and to Sir S. Northcote (12 November 1861).