Lehrman American Studies Center

This is more of a confessional than it is a blog posting. I need to come clean. I’m looking for absolution. For what, you ask? I use Wikipedia.

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Admissions boards should consider student character as much as, perhaps more than, their ability.

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Political theory, faith, secularism. A potent concoction.

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In a recent post on teaching the U.S. history survey, I wrote about how best to discuss with students the complex paradoxes present in America's past. I also mentioned that freedom is one of my course's central themes. I typically examine the intellectual roots of the concept of human liberty, why freedom emerged in the British American colonies in the 17th–18th centuries, and how/why Americans have debated the parameters of freedom ever since. But I've always struggled to find the right balance in discussing some of the grimmer realities of American history alongside America's profoundly important ideals and idealism.

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Liberal education for Professor Eva T.H. Brann consists of "artfully superintended conversations . . . aided by great books." It provides Americans with an education that suits its political regime, a matching, according to Brann, that Aristotle would have recommended. Studying the classics and the American founding does "not aim at a return to the past but at its re-appropriation for the present."

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Is this statement true, false, or uncertain? Explain fully.

"Liberal education implies integration of knowledge. Professors of liberal learning must be well-integrated people. They should avoid narrow specialization in their own discipline: their aim should be to be conversant in many disciplines. Hence their work should always be interdisciplinary, crossing the artificial boundaries set up by modern academia."

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In An Education for our Time, Josiah Bunting suggests that the fictional Adams College ought to hire mentors especially based on "how the candidates have lived their own lives . . . " (210).

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Debating the character of national political structures—in this case Canadian.

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Concluding thoughts on the nature of true philosophy and authentic liberal arts at a Christian school.

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In my last post I laid out some brief reflections on the sport of fly fishing and its relationship to Aristotelian natural law teaching. The reaction has been predictable among some of my close acquaintances. Evidently I have succeeded in living up to my reputation (undeserved!) for undue magniloquence. Well, I am sorry to report that I have more to say on the subject.

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