Which is better: a classical education or a liberal education?

A bit of both would be best, as children respond in different ways to different subjects and teaching styles. The child’s needs should inform the curriculum, not the other way around.

This is a great question to me. I am quite passionate about the MA I got in the liberal arts from St. John’s College. It followed the classical curriculum, but the graduate program I did lacked the language (classical Greek) that the undergraduates get. I have to say that I’m biased.

A classical education prepared me to enter life with great background knowledge in why things worked the way they did. It also gave me great organizational skills. I think, most importantly, it taught me how to read artfully. I can taste words now that were flat before. Books have more flavor, and I have an appreciation for a much wider field than I did before. I am quite at home reading Homer or Pynchon.

I do understand that this type of education is confining to some people. They want more variety, and that is fine. To me, however, it opened a world of variety that will never be closed.

A bit of both can come in handy when needed because a person learning both educations could always communicate in one way or the other.

This seems to be a false dichotomy to me. Each method has it’s pros and cons and education never has to end. A mix of both will provide the most opportunities for everyone.

@hawaii_jake After reading your post I now want to go back to college.

@FutureMemory : Be my guest.

I believe if you had a true and honest education then you would not have asked this question.

Education in our day and age should mean a teaching of global accumulated knowledge, skills, beliefs and values .
Stay alert of any educationial system that does not function that way.

Both I’d say…But then again I’m still learning….. :-/

I think a classical education better prepares you to provide your own “liberal” education outside of school. The public schools in America today do not teach you to think or learn on your own – they teach you to parrot what the teacher spoon-feeds you. They were designed to provide good, obedient little factory workers, not to educate anyone. SO glad my grandkids are being homeschooled!

I think that the classical education with some additional material sprinkled in is the best.

The schedule of courses should not be the direction of the question but the method of learning should be where we focus. I am not an expert but hopefully someone will jump in and help me here.

The old method is the ROTO method which is basically teaching our children facts and fiqures but not teaching them how to.

The other method would be (and this is where I need help) focused on Problem solving and information gathering or how to get and desseminate the information received. Which if I understand it correctly would put our children on a much greater path towards knowledge than being an encyclopedia.

I am for the more Liberal method that I described but a real educator could probably give a better explination.

while @hawaii_jake refers to college, this question is really about grade school through high school (notice that grammar and arithmetic are among the subjects listed). As such, there are very few schools remaining today that teach this way. One of the very few is Boston Latin School in which the typical student studies four years of modern language AND four years of Latin.
https://www.bls.org/podium/default.aspx?t=113760&rc=1
But truth be known, this type of education is narrow and archaic. As @yarnlady said, this question presents a false dichotomy, because there aren’t two types of education, there are many. And not all students have the same educational needs or goals. I personally believe Leonardo da Vinci was about the most well rounded and prolific genius of the past thousand years. But he would likely have hated this education and it would have kept him from becoming the genius he became. Leonardo was terrible at learning languages and suffered greatly trying to learn Latin, he abandoned it in favor of Italian. And if you think such a school would tolerate his backward writing with sketches all over it, well I don’t think so. Leonardo’s is a common profile in creative right-hemisphere-dominant students (visual thinking, difficulty learning languages). While a classical education might have been torture for him, an arts magnet school would have been perfect for Leonardo.
I think the classical education model is perfectly suitable for left-brain-dominant students who love languages and hope to be classics professors when they grow up, but that’s a small segment of society. The ideal preparation for the professions, the arts, mechanical trades, engineering, diplomacy, the military, and so forth each would each be quite different from each other.

Liberal education. We need scientists and engineers. Lots of them. There are enough people studying Plato and Homer.

I agree with @mattbrowne, but I may be biased ;)

I am no fan of the typical liberal education. American public schools today, as a whole, are absolutely worthless. That said, I don’t think a purely classical education is sufficient today either.
I am a big fan of the philosophy of teaching of the Vandamme Academy. It is sometimes described as a classical education but it is much more than you describe above. They put an emphasis on history, science, literature, math, and writing.
They put importance on the hierarchy of knowledge, which ensures that the students actually understand the principals being taught instead of just memorizing.

Liberal education, but with a few modifications. Yes, we should encurage studying topics that actually matter to people BUT, we shouldn’t ignore a) ancient history, expecially roman and greek, b) philosophy.

I’m currently studying computer engineering, so i’m not exactly your average history nerd, but two things about each of these subjects are VITAL to create a people that is capable of actually ruling a democracy and deciding its own destiny.

The roman and the greek civilizations already passed pretty much all the possible situations a civilization can exist in, up to and including too rich to know better. Every time i saw Bush make a speech i thought about Crassus leading his soldiers to utter destruction because he was rich enough to have them yet too dumb to use them properly. Studying roman and greek history ensures that those smart enough will recognise the patterns when they see them. Furthermore, they’re the two cultures that pretty much formed 80% of the modern western world’s way of thinking, at least as far as europe is concerned. I’d say 60% for the states.

Philosophy should be mandatory for two reasons as well: Firstly because, by now, nothing is original and pretty much all non superstitious omnicomprehensive views of the world that are presented will be a rehash of something that’s already been said by someone else, so it’s worth giving it a look. Secondly because one should not study the history of philosophy as much as one should study the logic rules that govern it, as well as logical fallacies. This, again, to better prepare people to actually be part of a democracy.

IF we want to keep this model of civilization, where we pretend we’re all equal, while not actually thinking so or acting so, the least we can do is push towards actually being all equally prepared in what’s necessary to make informed decisions.

As a teacher of many years, I’ve noticed a few things. Classical and Liberal educations are extremely similar with just a few tweaks here and there. The most important things are structure, problem-solving skills/application of knowledge, and teachers paying close attention to the different needs of their students. Without structure, no one will learn anything anyway, because they end up lacking focus. Without problem-solving/application, knowledge is useless. If teachers don’t pay attention, kids fall through the cracks. I normally teach high school maths. As much as it pains me to say it, the core subjects are ALL extremely important for different reasons. How do you choose your likes and dislikes without exposure to different things? How do you learn from the past without learning the past? How do you communicate without reading, writing, and speaking skills? The cores are all important. The rest is a matter of ability, likes, dislikes, etc.