Liberal Education and Democracy

Liberal Education and Democracy addresses three vital arguments for liberal education and its integral relationship to democracy.

Liberal education is currently under attack as both politically subversive and economically impractical. In Liberal Education and Democracy, Bob Pepperman Taylor evaluates both the defenses that have been offered for liberal education and the complex relationship between liberal education and democracy. He offers a compelling case for maintaining a strong commitment to this form of education as an essential good for all citizens.

His three primary arguments for liberal education are that it prepares students to be useful contributors to the economy, that it prepares citizens to be thoughtful and responsible, and that it can stimulate students to experience the delight of intellectual exploration and understanding. Taylor moves through each of these arguments and concludes that the seemingly least practical of them may in fact be the most powerful. He gives an insightful glimpse into the current democratic climate and through thorough examination argues that democracies need liberal education as much as liberal learning requires the freedom of democratic societies.

Bob Pepperman Taylor is the Elliott A. Brown Green and Gold Professor of Law, Politics, and Political Behavior at the University of Vermont. He is the author of Lessons from Walden: Thoreau and the Crisis of American Democracy, which was named the winner of the American Political Science Association section award for the best book of 2020 in American political thought.