The Pope Defends Liberal Education

The mission of the modern university professor is not merely “forming competent and efficient professionals capable of satisfying the demand for labor,” Pope Benedict XVI said in a speech in Madrid on Friday. Instead, professors and students should be “looking for something more lofty and capable of embracing the full measure of what it is to be human.”

Drawing a distinction between training students for jobs and educating them to seek truth, he warned his audience of “this sort of utilitarian approach to education,” which “is in fact becoming more widespread.”