Liberal Education: Cornerstone of Democracy

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12188
• Author: Stephen C. Rowe
• Published date: 01 May 2017
• Date: 01 May 2017

Liberal Education: Cornerstone

of Democracy

By STEPHEN C. ROWE*

ABSTRACT. Democracy is a form of government that requires an active

and informed citizenry who share material resources sufficiently to

enable all members ofsociety to participate. But a minimum of material

equality is not a sufficient condition for democracy. Citizens need

training in skills beyond those that will enable them to earn a living.

Widespread availability of liberal education is an essential component

of any society that seeks to sustain democratic institutions. The United

States has been fortunate to have had leaders for two centuries who

understood the need for liberal education as a cornerstone of

democracy. However, the growing demand that universities operate

according to the same principles as a business has been undermining

the consensus aboutthe need for liberal education.

Introduction

If we want an egalitarian democracy, we must prepare for it and create

it by providing the prerequisite conditions. One of those conditions is

widespread involvement in interactive or participatory processes that

constitute public dialogue. The aim of that involvement is to build the

capacity in ourselves and our fellow citizens for a relational understand-

ing of the world—one in which each of us is engaging in committed

action, not simply observing as bystanders or acquiring as consumers.

In this article, I will argue that liberal education is one of the most

important, and often overlooked, forms of democratic practice. It is,

*Professor of Philosophy at Grand Valley State University, Allendale, Michigan.

Actively engaged in advocacy for liberal education. Award winning teacher. His books

include Rediscovering the West (1994, SUNY Press), Overcoming America / America

Overcoming: Can We Survive Modernity? (2012, Lexington Books), and Two Americas

and the Drama of Education: Toward a Relational World (forthcoming, Process Cen-

tury Press).

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 76, No. 3 (May, 2017).

DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12188

V

C2017 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

therefore, an essential prerequisite for the continuation and expansion

of democracy.

There are types of democracy that do not presuppose the active

involvement of all citizens. Democracy as it was first practiced in

ancient Athens emerged in a slave-owning society. The first eight deca-

des of constitutional democracy in the United States also left the ques-

tion of slavery up to each state. “Elite democracy” may sound like an

oxymoron, and yet that has been the primary form of this institution

until now. The sort of democracy in which ordinary citizens would

have a high degree of social equality and develop institutions for self-

governance has remained more of an aspiration than a reality.

In this article, I shall be concerned with what we might call “true

democracy” or “egalitarian democracy,” a system of self-governance

that demands a great deal of citizens and that aspires to treat all citizens

with justice and fairness. This is a far cry from a system of constitutional

democracy that embraces the rule of law and formal procedures but

that allows institutions to prevail that deny the majority of citizensgenu-

ine involvement in the decisions that shape public life. It also goes far

beyond the many forms of democracy in the world today in which citi-

zenship consists of little more than choosing between political parties

on voting day. To achieve a full-fledged democracy requires active

efforts to bring about the conditions that make it possible. That is a task

requiring commitments from a wide range of citizens.

A highly skewed distribution of wealth and ownership of productive

enterprise is an obstacle to true democracy because it creates a condi-

tion of economic dependence in the population that undermines the

capacity for self-governance. For that reason, Thomas Jefferson ([1776]

1904: 178) proposed that every adult receive 50 acresof land:

Every person of full age neither owning nor having owned 50 acres of

land, shall be entitled to an appropriation of 50 acres or to so much as shall

make up what he owns or has owned 50 acres in full and absolute domin-

ion. And no other person shall be capable of taking an appropriation.

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Jefferson’s aim wasto create a system of property in which no person

was beholden to another for a livelihood, since he held that a loss of

economic autonomy would prevent democracy from flourishing.

According to Jefferson ([1782] 1832: 172): “Dependence begets

The American Journal of Economics and Sociology580

subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares

fit tools for the designs of ambition.” This was an early statement of the

material basis of democracy.

If the fruits of toil are shared sufficiently to enable every citizen to

participate in publiclife with some degree of effectiveness,that is a nec-

essary condition for true democracy, but not a sufficient basis for it. As

Jefferson and the otherfounders of the United States understood, a self-

governing nation, in which sovereignty lies with the people rather than

an aristocracy, must provide the means to cultivate citizens who arenot

only productive but who also share a vision about the common good.

To achieve that requires educational institutions designed to fulfill that

purpose.

The Peculiar Role of Liberal Education in Democracy

Liberal education is an essential element in the development and per-

petuation of democracy. The contribution of liberal education to

democracy operates independently of the economic and social basis of

democratic life. We shall return below to the precise nature of liberal

education, but for the moment, we must first ask what function it

serves.

Liberal education is not only preparation for democracy, it is democ-

racy. This is a striking notion, at odds with our usual instrumental view

of “civics” education and other elements of the curriculum that are

designed to teach citizens the formal structures of democratic process.

The idea that liberal education is itself constitutive of democracy goes

far beyond that simplistic view.

The relationship of liberal education to democracy is undoubtedly

hard to discern if one’s familiarity with higher education is limited to

the factory-like atmosphere in some modern universities. Although

most universities have a “college of arts and sciences,” and some even

have a “college of liberal arts,” the bureaucratic management of the

modern universityis, in many ways, the antithesis of democracy.

There are several characteristics of liberal education that lie at the

heart of democracy, each of which is also a precondition of human

maturity:

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