Loyola University Maryland - Evergreen / Green and Gray Yearbook (Baltimore, MD)

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LIBERAL ARTS AND THE GRADUATE When high school seniors of 1957 read in the Loyola College catalog that it was a college of liberal arts, a frequent enough reaction was, “That’s all right; I don’t mind.’’ Now, as graduates of Loyola College, it seems that they do mind. by Walter F. Truszkowski T oday, the whole world is on a technological kick. Science has not only broached the microcosm of the atom but has sent satellites to probe the ver macrocosm of space, giving to man a superiority over nature never before experienced. Keeping in mind the accomplishments of empiri- cist thought and method, and turning one’s attention to the controversial field of education, the question might rise: What is the value or need of a liberal arts system of education? The persistence of those many educators who extol this system can best be appreci- ated when one has just completed a long stay in halls proudly dedicated to the pursuit of the liberal arts. I write personally of the value of a liberal educa- tion, as befits one whose training has been to be a person; yet, I do not write egotistically, as if the rec- ognition of these values were exclusive to myself. Rather, in the flush of new realization at the time of departing from the care of teachers and guides, I set down what, from conversations with other members ol the class of 1961 of Loyola College, I know to be thoughts widely enough held, but too soon to be for- gotten. As years slip by and the fruit of our education becomes more habitual and less explicit, we may relish the opportunity to look back at the way we felt at the time of commencement about what was past, yet was in large measure to determine our future. O ur own familiarity with liberal arts education was restricted to the particular form indigenous to a small part of North Baltimore from 1957 to 1961, but the tradition had been flourishing for long before our lour years’ contact with it and in places far re- mote from the Chesapeake and Patapsco. I he idea of liberal arts has its origins in Greece. It evolved from the teaching of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. According to Plato, there were five liberal arts: grammar, geometry, astronomy, music, and phi- losophy. 1 his list remained fairly constant until, in the first century b. c;., Varro, a Roman scholar, re- vised and enlarged the list somewhat to include gram- mar, rhetoric, logic, astronomy, arithmetic, geometry, music, architecture, and medicine. Again, in the fourth century a. d., the list was revised by Capella, who omitted architecture and medicine. The im- portant position that the liberal arts idea had in medieval schools, however, is due to the monk Cassi- odorus, whose treatise De art i bus et disciplinis liber- aliurn served as the guiding light in the education of monks and later shaped the system of education in the monastic and cathedral schools. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the list of Capella as per- petuated by Cassiodorus reached its most prominent application in the European universities. L iberal education derives its name from the fact that in republican Rome, tutelage stressing the disci- plines I have mentioned was offered only to the liberi or free-born. In the modern republic, however, the term has acquired a new connotation; indeed, it would be considered an insult to the bulk of the citizens of a free society for a few to claim for them- selves the privilege of the “free-born.” Today, we characterize as “liberal” an education based primarily on the humanities and whose object is not the trained technician but the mature human person, intellectu- ally alert, with mental horizons so broadened as to en- dow him with the greatest possible freedom in the choice of a subsequent career in life and the promise of excellence therein. Where lies the intrinsic value of such a system of education? This question can be answered only after a reflection upon the complexity of man and the yearning of man that all his needs and appetites be satisfied. Basically, man is social, political, and religious. When we say that man is by nature social, we mean that he has not only the need but also the desire and capability to communicate with his fellow men. To foster this linkage among men, he develops language to tie together all human experiences. He is political in that he relies upon political society to safeguard his natural familial aspirations and to help satisfy his need for freedom, both intellectual and physical, and to help him afford all the necessities ol social life. He is religious in that, if he gives himself to true in- 8

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FATHER JOHN J. SCANLAN, S. J. is well known to thirteen years of Loyola grad- uates as a book-laden figure coming down to psychology and theology classes; as a teacher with the presence, memory, and timing of the veteran performer; as an understanding and inspiring priest with time to listen to their problems.

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trospection, he comes to a realization of his utter in- social order is unattainable. It educates a man politically— not in the techni- ques of electioneering so much as in the fundamentals prerequisite to any sound political society. Through the pursuit of the liberal arts, a man attains the intel- lectual freedom for which he longs. The way is opened also for the further freedom of democracy, for democracy cannot flourish where thinking is stilted and unimaginative. Democracy thrives on vitality and withers in an atmosphere of mental inactivity. By adequacy, of the existence of an omnipotent being, and of the necessity to offer Him homage. A liberal arts college has value because it edu- cates a man in his essential properties, socially, politically, and religiously. A liberal arts college educates a man socially, for it gives him the techniques of proper speech. It shows him how to communicate with such clarity of thought and precision ot language that no nuance of his mes- sage is lost. In so doing, it provides the seed of growth in knowledge, without which true progress in the . Exchange of ideas, as in senior honors seminar in modern ethics, is essential to liberal education. if spreading before a man the vast treasure of human ex- perience, a liberal arts education stirs the depths of the human personality and incites the mind to action. It enables a man to use his initiative and to procure anti make safe his freedom. A liberal arts college educates a man religiously in that it causes him to reflect upon human history, to become aware of his own status and his own ultimate meaning, and thus to arrive at a sense of spiritual sig- nificance. L oyola College— for ill or well, our college— is a , liberal arts college because it offers the advantages I have been enumerating. Each year in the course of a student’s life, the college demands participation in programs which seem to have no pertinent practical use. It does so because it, if not the student, sees in them an invaluable asset to the human personality, a spur to manly initiative, a resource of spiritual treas- ure which (Otherwise might not have been tapped. Whether it be a concentration on literature, on sci- ence, or on philosophy, each in its own place and turn plays its unique part in evolving the liberal arts graduate. “The liberal arts graduate”— strange as the words may sound in our ears, they describe us. What does it mean lor us to be, at last, no longer “students” but “graduates?” Upon reflection, we see that the days we thought would never end were days which could not have lasted, however much we might have desired their endurance. They were days of becoming ac- quainted with what it means to be a man; but they were also days in which we were becoming men, and in the glare of a June sun we reflected that, after all, we had done nothing but become acquainted with ourselves. We also realized how little and how great an accomplishment that had been, were grateful for the opportunity, and resolved to be in future that which one might have hoped we would already have become. Fall Honors Convocation is important part of liberal program, since it di- rects attention of students to their goal. Convocation of 1960 was ad- dressed by Msgr. John Tracy Ellis, who spoke eloquently of liberal ideal. |j jjfyjjf KtiHf SF