Liberal Education and the Teacher

Bloom’s account of liberal education and the teacher carries forward the perennialist commitments from the previous chapter into a sharper, more specific picture. The article works through what liberal education means in Bloom’s hands, the kind of teacher it requires, and Bloom’s own struggle with the tension between teaching and philosophical solitude.

What liberal education is

Bloom’s definition of the liberally educated person is exact. They can resist the easy and preferred answers, not because they are obstinate (resistance for its own sake is not the point) but because they know others worthy of consideration. The resistance is grounded in actual knowledge of better alternatives.

The contrast with the unliberally educated person is sharp. The unliberally educated person accepts the easy and preferred answers because they do not know there are alternatives. They cannot resist what they cannot see. The liberally educated person has read more widely, encountered more positions, and developed the capacity to weigh alternatives against each other. The resistance is a side-effect of having actually engaged with the breadth of human thought.

Liberal education, in Bloom’s account, means reading certain generally recognised classic texts, and letting the texts dictate what the questions are and the methods of approaching them. The classics are not just one source of education among many; they are the primary source for the liberal kind. The student reads them slowly, carefully, and lets the texts shape the educational process rather than imposing modern frameworks on the texts.

A real liberal education recognises the important questions of common concern to all mankind. The questions about the good life, about justice, about truth, about the nature of human existence are not the questions of any particular group; they are the questions every human community has had to face. A liberal education engages with these questions through the texts that have engaged them most seriously.

A liberal education also gives the student the sense that learning must and can be both synoptic and precise. Synoptic: it sees the whole rather than just pieces. Precise: it engages with the detail with care. The combination is hard but is what the texts at their best model. A student trained in either alone (synoptic without precision, or precision without synoptic vision) is missing the integration that makes the education complete.

The pay-off is the student’s capacity to ask the deepest question of all: what is man? Education must help students question their own nature and realise that there is no obvious answer. A student who has been led to think the question has an easy answer has been failed by their education. A student who has been led to see the question as open and worth engaging has been served well.

Flashcard

What is Bloom's definition of the liberally educated person?

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Answer

One who can resist the easy and preferred answers, not from obstinacy but because they know others worthy of consideration

The unliberally educated person accepts easy answers because they do not know there are alternatives; they cannot resist what they cannot see. The liberally educated person has read more widely, encountered more positions, and developed the capacity to weigh alternatives. Liberal education means reading the classic texts and letting them dictate the questions and methods. The student learns to be both synoptic (seeing the whole) and precise (engaging with detail).

The perennialist teacher

Bloom’s account of the teacher carries forward the perennialist commitments from the previous chapter and adds specific features. Attention to the young, he writes, knowing what their hungers are and what they can digest, is the essence of teaching. The teacher pays close attention to the particular students in front of them: what they want, what they need, what they are ready for.

The teacher’s stance, Bloom adds, is not random. It is not dependent simply on what the students want (which would make the teaching subject to the students’ undeveloped preferences); it is not imposed by the demands of society or the whims of the market (which would make the teaching subject to external pressures with no educational warrant). The teacher’s stance comes from the teacher’s own developed judgement about what the student needs, informed by attention to the actual student and by the teacher’s mature understanding of the tradition.

The aim, in the perennialist teacher’s hands, is to produce students who eventually grow out of the need for a teacher and become independent strong-minded individuals. The relationship between teacher and student is, in this account, temporary by design. The teacher’s success is measured by the student’s capacity to do without them. A teacher whose students remain dependent on them has not finished the job; a teacher whose students eventually surpass them has done the work right.

The task of the teacher, Bloom writes, is to assist the pupil to fulfil human nature against all the deforming forces of convention and prejudice. The vocabulary echoes the perennialist commitment from the previous chapter: there is a human nature to fulfil, the social environment contains forces that deform it, and the teacher’s job is to help the student resist the deforming forces and develop into what they could be at their best.

A modern teacher reading this picture will recognise both its appeal and its difficulty. The appeal: a teacher who actually does this work produces students of remarkable capacity. The difficulty: doing the work well requires the teacher to have themselves developed against the deforming forces, to know the tradition deeply, and to give close attention to particular students. Few teachers can do all three at once. Those who can are unusually valuable.

Flashcard

What is the *perennialist teacher* in Bloom's account, and what is their aim?

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Answer

A teacher who attends to particular students, neither follows their whims nor society’s pressures, and aims to produce independent strong-minded individuals

The teacher’s stance comes from their own developed judgement, informed by attention to the actual student and mature understanding of the tradition. The aim is to produce students who eventually grow out of the need for a teacher; the relationship is temporary by design. The teacher’s task is to help the student fulfil human nature against the deforming forces of convention and prejudice. A teacher whose students remain dependent has not finished the job.

The threat to philosophy

Bloom takes seriously a tension that few educational philosophers address directly. Teaching, he writes, can be a threat to philosophy. The reason: philosophising is a solitary quest, and the philosopher who pursues it must never look to an audience. A teacher with students is always, in some sense, looking to an audience; the audience’s needs and reactions shape what the teacher says. A philosopher whose work is shaped by the needs and reactions of an audience has compromised the solitary quest that real philosophy requires.

This is an unusual concern for a defender of liberal education to take seriously. Most defenders of liberal education treat teaching as straightforwardly good for both teacher and student. Bloom acknowledges that there is a real cost on the teacher’s side: doing the work of teaching may pull the teacher away from the kind of philosophical inquiry that the solitary mode permits.

Bloom did not rest on this concern. Later in his career he rejected the notion that teaching is purely a threat to philosophy. The reason: fascination with one’s students leads to an awareness of the various kinds of souls and their various capacities for truth and error as well as learning. The teacher who attends carefully to many students over years sees a wider range of human types than the philosopher in solitude does. The awareness is itself philosophically valuable; the teaching, on this reading, becomes a contribution to the philosophical inquiry rather than a distraction from it.

The shift in Bloom’s own view is honest and worth noting. He did not pretend his earlier worry was wrong from the start; he reported that experience had led him to a different view. The earlier worry remains valid for some kinds of teaching (where the audience really does deform the inquiry); the later view captures something the earlier view missed (the philosophical value of close attention to many human types).

A modern teacher can carry both views together. There are times when teaching does pull a teacher away from the deepest inquiry they could otherwise do; the worry is real. There are also times when the teaching opens views the teacher would not have had alone; the later position is also real. The discipline is to know which situation one is in and to act accordingly.

Flashcard

Why did Bloom worry that teaching could be a *threat to philosophy*, and how did his view change?

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Answer

Teaching looks to an audience, while philosophising is a solitary quest; he later saw teaching as adding philosophical value through awareness of many human types

The early worry: a philosopher whose work is shaped by audience reactions has compromised the solitary inquiry real philosophy requires. The later view: fascination with students leads to awareness of the various kinds of souls and their capacities for truth, error, and learning. The teaching becomes a contribution to philosophical inquiry rather than a distraction. Both views capture something real; the discipline is to know which situation one is in.