With the release of the new Tim Burton movie based on Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, I was reminded of the wonderful lessons that book teaches, especially about the ongoing struggle to communicate clearly in a topsy-turvy world.   As AAC&U continues to work in our LEAP initiative to “make the case for liberal education,” for instance, we constantly struggle with confusions about language related to liberal education.

Sometimes talking to reporters about the LEAP campaign feels like a world in which everyone is, like Alice, commenting, “I think I should understand that better, if I had it written down: but I can’t quite follow it as you say it.”  Or, as the Eaglet in the book notes, “Speak English! I don’t know the meaning of half those long words, and I don’t believe you do either!”

While we have published many articles and books in recent years describing the value of liberal education and using as precise a set of words as we can muster, confusion still reigns in the use of such terms as “liberal education,” “liberal arts,” and “general education.”  The Chronicle of Higher Education, for instance, has recently published several very well-written and researched articles on various aspects of liberal education, but even in these articles, these various terms are used in confusing ways.  And as we conduct public forums as part of LEAP, we continue to encounter individuals both within the academy and beyond who assume that liberal education is just about the arts, not about science, only about general education, only for some students, only provided in some schools, etc.

The larger message about the importance of the essential outcomes of a liberal education continues to be our priority, and it resonates strongly with many audiences—see especially LEAP National Leadership Council member Martha Nussbaum’s excellent article, for instance, “The Liberal Arts are Not Elitist,” in the Chronicle of Higher Education.  But it still would be nice if more people could understand the distinctions between the various commonly confused terms related to liberal education.  AAC&U has created a handy guide to these terms online—see What is Liberal Education?

If you, too, are trying to explain what a liberal education is and isn’t, I hope this helps.  It’s our attempt to help communicate more effectively, for, as the Mock Turtle says in Alice: “What is the use of repeating all that stuff, if you don’t explain it as you go on?”

Tags: LEAP, liberal education