Dr. D. Bruce MacKay

Coordinator of Liberal Education
Faculty of Arts and Science

Office: UH A812F

Phone: 403-394-3907

Email: mackayb@uleth.ca

Current and

Upcoming Courses

Liberal Education 1000 A
Knowledge and Liberal Education

Fall 2009

Syllabus

Liberal Education 3010 A
The Problem of Genocide

Fall 2009

Syllabus

A student's blog about this course

“We still have at our disposal the rational interpretive skills that are the legacy of humanistic education, not as a sentimental piety enjoining us to return to traditional values or the classics but as the active practice of worldly secular discourse. The secular world is the world of history as made by human beings. Human agency is subject to investigation and analysis, which it is the mission of understanding to apprehend, criticize, influence, and judge. Above all, critical thought does not submit to state power or to commands to join in the ranks marching against one or another approved enemy.” (Edward w. Said, Orientalism. Vintage: 1979; 25th Anniversary edition preface 2003. p. xxix.)

Liberal Education?

The question "why?" I think best captures the essence of a liberal education. A student who has a liberal education should be able to ask good questions, to evaluate the answers others give, and to search for good answers on his or her own.

As Northrup Frye said 50 years ago (and, no doubt, with tongue in cheek), "I should say that the purpose of liberal education today is to achieve a neurotic maladjustment in the student, to twist him into a critical and carping intellectual, very dissatisfied with the world, very finicky about accepting what it offers him, and yet unable to leave it alone." (Full passage and reference here.)

I see liberal education as building the attitudes, skills, and practices of critical thinking, intellectual engagement, sympathetic understanding of multiple perspectives, and active participation in the discourses of life. Breadth of learning and knowledge are a significant part of what students need to learn, but more important is the stance of critical interest and active participation in the world that I believe is necessary for the future well-being of our communities and planet.