Liberal education is not a theory. It is the tradition by which Western civilisation has preserved and enriched its inheritance for two and a half thousand years. Yet liberal education is a term that has fallen from use in Britain, its traditional meaning now freely confused with its opposite. This book is intended to correct that misapprehension, through the presentation of original source material from the high points in the liberal education tradition with particular focus on the British experience. It includes 4 sections: Section 1 - Origins (c. 450 BC to c. 450 AD); Section 2 - The British Tradition (c. 750 to 1950); Section 3 - After Tradition (1950 onward); and, Section 4 - Liberal Education Redux (America). ‘There is more common sense about education in this single book than in the whole unending stream of Green Papers, White Papers, Acts and Initiatives that have poured out of the Department of Education, under its various titles, in the last twenty years’ - Eric Anderson. ‘A much needed anthology which makes available the key educational texts. A copy should be sent to Mr Balls, his ministerial team, and each and every official in the DCSF’ - Chris Woodhead. ‘This reader serves to expose the cultural narrowness of the pragmatic and political forces that so seriously threaten the ideal of a liberal education today. Such a wealth of testimony, from the ancient world to the present day, must surely help to turn the tide’ - Gordon Graham. ‘O'Hear and Sidwell have accumulated a treasure chest of the riches of Western civilisation. For all those who still know what a liberal education is, this reader is a godsend. Not only the scholars who care about the preservation of that civilisation, and the teachers responsible for its transmission to a new generation, but any citizen of the open society should become a student of The School of Freedom ’ - Daniel Johnson, Editor of Standpoint .
