Though New College of
Florida
is one of 12 schools in the State University System of Florida, it has by law the “distinctive mission” of being “the residential liberal arts honors college” of Florida. A key responsibility of its board, to which I was recently appointed, is to keep the college focused on that mission. The initial media fracas has focused on what the New College should not be. The more important question is what the New College, or any liberal arts college, should be?
Much of the chatter so far has been about what is immediate, divisive, and highly politicized in the contemporary sense. The
liberal arts
are not subject to contemporary politics. The liberal arts teach permanent truths about the nature of who we are as human beings and what is required to lead a good life. This isn’t a liberal or conservative issue — nor is seeking knowledge reserved to the “Left” or the “Right.” There is, however, a profound and critical conflict between the liberal arts and
newer educational models
.
At best, modern education is a buffet of meaningless ideas flavored by relativism. At worst, modern educators are simply manipulators tasked with implanting a particular approved and “correct” narrative into student minds.
Instead, teachers at a liberal arts college should lead students out into a study of objective truth, the shared purpose of both teacher and student. By broad agreement, education should be focused on learning and acquiring knowledge. The essential purpose of liberal education is more specific: to liberate the mind from prejudice and narrow-mindedness as well as pop ideology and the latest fad and to cultivate an understanding of the more permanent things that make life worth living.
A genuine liberal arts education guards against a negative force that can often appear as subtle as it is insidious and destructive: tyranny over the mind. As a bulwark against intransigence, stagnation, and the mindless repetition of cultural shibboleths, the liberal arts stand resolute on what is tried, tested, and true. The works explored in a liberal arts education aren’t great simply because they are old. They’re great because they convey and explain the transcendent ideals of human existence.
Through the study of the humanities but also economics, mathematics, and science, a rightly construed course of study in the liberal arts directs our minds toward a deep contemplation of human liberty, human flourishing, and human happiness, asking the enduring and most important questions: How should we live our lives? What is the good? What is the happiness we have a right to pursue? Education in the liberal arts demands that we teachers help guide students on a path toward answering the highest questions for human flourishing on their life’s journey.
The liberal arts recognize that human beings are unique in this world because we are beings who think, make decisions, and act with purpose. But more than that, we’re hard-wired with a drive to explore — to know things and to seek answers to what we don’t know. We’re made to stand in a humble state of wonder at the everyday beauty all around us. We’re also made to stand amazed by the ever-expanding and mysterious frontiers of the universe.
Lastly, an education that explores the concepts of justice and right, of equality and liberty, undergirds and prepares us for being good citizens in a constitutional republic. Students must learn the art of self-government — as people governing themselves and as part of a self-governing political community. As a public school, the New College has an additional duty to the people of Florida: to teach and debate the ideas and the history of their state, their country, and the civilization that has produced the very civil and religious liberties that all people hope to enjoy and perpetuate.
The New College of Florida is chartered for a truly momentous task. I am honored by Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R-FL) appointment and look forward to serving. I also look forward to upholding, as one ought, an ideal of the liberal arts that call us to rise to that challenge.
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Matthew Spalding is vice president of Hillsdale College and dean of its Van Andel Graduate School of Government in Washington, D.C.
