The possibilities & limits of a liberal arts education

The goal for this workshop is to engage in a discussion about the goals of this contested concept called a liberal arts education and what relevance such an education might have to informing the focus question, “What is the good life and how do we live it together?” We begin with a foundational work in the ‘Western’ tradition that is particularly relevant to liberal arts colleges in the USA and then to modern texts that illuminate unexamined assumptions about teaching and learning at Middlebury. How do we consciously create the conditions through which students might make progress in answering the focus question?