EP 130: What We Lost When We Abandoned REAL Education

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Why did school feel boring or pointless? …because you were robbed of a true liberal arts education—learning that forms free people. We decode what “liberal” really means, chart how American education drifted into vocational training, and show how to revive the Great Books, the Socratic method, commonplacing, oral exams, and meaningful leisure. Drawing on Hayek and Mortimer Adler, it shows how this tradition was lost—and how reclaiming it can transform your thinking, purpose, and lifelong learning.

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Transcript (AI generated)

There is a reason why you were probably dissatisfied with your education—why you felt frustrated and unfulfilled, why you couldn’t find the meaning or purpose behind much of it. Why you felt bored, why you felt unfulfilled, why it felt brainless or pointless or full of frustration.

If you’re like me, when you were in school, you probably had some thoughts like: “This is really dumb,” or “This is really boring,” or “Why do we have to be at school so long?” or “What is it that we’re even doing? What’s the point of all this?”

I don’t know if you ever thought deeply about it, but I remember a consistent sense of dissatisfaction. It grew as I got older—especially in high school—until I finally thought, “Okay, well, high school education isn’t all that great.”

I mean, there were some classes, like my psychology class—it was so easy. Everything was straight out of the book. I think it was the gym teacher who taught us, and as long as I memorized some answers… that was back in the Scantron days, where we’d just fill in the bubbles and they’d run it through the machine.

I would get out early basically every time we had a test in psychology. Or there were times when you’d pour your heart into a paper or project and still get a bad grade because you didn’t check certain specific boxes with your formatting, or your teacher didn’t like how you phrased something, or whatever.

It was just not a great experience on a lot of levels. I was always waiting for it to get better and better.

And I’m here to tell you: there’s a reason why you were probably dissatisfied with your education—why you felt frustrated and unfulfilled, why you couldn’t find meaning and purpose behind a lot of it, why you felt bored or unchallenged, why it all felt brainless or pointless. It’s because you were not given a liberal arts education.

That’s the type of education that existed in Western civilization for over a thousand years. This was how education was done for a very long time.

 When I tell people that I have a liberal arts education, they usually have no idea what I’m talking about, because those terms have been hijacked. I’m going to explain that to you in a minute—what this really means, how education used to be, and how you were genuinely robbed by people who decided a hundred, hundred-twenty years ago that you weren’t smart enough to get the kind of education people had been receiving for hundreds of years.

They said all that information was just “unimportant dead white men” that you couldn’t learn anything from. That is so arrogant—because this is the very foundation we stand on.

 Anyway—obviously, I have feelings about this—but when I tell people I have a liberal arts education, they usually think it means something like being an artist, or doing something in the arts. They don’t even understand what these terms mean.

So, I’m going to break this down and give you a brief introduction to what this is—and what has been taken from you.

Because I’m passionate about learning, lifelong learning, and becoming better—about living the 7 Laws of Life Mission that I talk about in my book—we’re going to keep talking about this. I’ll keep putting out information about the history of American and Western education so you can understand how we got from there to here.

But for today, I just want to give you the basics of what this means.

 The word liberal—as in liberal arts—comes from the Latin root liber, which means “free.” It’s also the root of liberty and libro (which means “book” in Spanish). So, there’s this connection between being educated and being free. It was the educated classes who were free, and you received an education to be a free person. That’s what it was about.

Now, this might surprise you.

 In today’s culture, the word liberal is often associated with people on the political left—Democrats, progressives, whatever—and so in conservative circles, “liberal” has taken on a negative connotation. Liberals are seen as more open or generous or kind, and so on.

But liberalism is actually a Western cultural philosophy. Let me read a little about it:

“It’s a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual—liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, equality before the law, private property, market economics, individual rights, civil rights, and human rights.”

 We actually have liberalism to thank for our freedom and our ideas about human rights. It sought to establish a constitutional order—meaning that those in power (the king, aristocracy, or any tyranny) were subject to the law, and that there was a natural law above all mankind.

We derive those rights from God, not from government. And government must submit to its own laws. That’s a liberal idea.

 It prized individual freedoms such as freedom of speech, freedom of association, independent juries, public trials by jury, and the abolition of aristocratic privilege.

The fundamental elements of modern Western society all have liberal roots.

So what is this “liberal” that some people identify as—what does it really mean?

It’s actually social liberalism. In Europe and North America, “social liberalism,” often just called “liberalism,” became a key component in expanding the welfare state. That’s why the word was hijacked.

 Now, F.A. Hayek—an incredible thinker who wrote The Road to Serfdom and won the Nobel Prize—wrote about this back in 1944. He said the word liberal was already being hijacked in America even then. In the preface of his book, he wrote:

“Throughout this book, I use the term liberal in the original nineteenth-century sense in which it is still current in Britain. Its current usage in America often means nearly the opposite of this. It has been part of the camouflage of the leftist movements in that country—helped by the muddle-headedness of many who really do believe in liberty—that liberal has come to mean the advocacy of almost every kind of government control.”

So this word was stolen—from a form of education that had, for centuries, enabled people to gather, organize, and learn from the great thinkers—mostly men, but some women—throughout Western history. That’s the foundation we stand on in the West, and especially in America.

This is a liberal country, built on the principles of liberty.

Hayek goes on:

“I am still puzzled why those in the United States who truly believe in liberty should not only have allowed the left to appropriate this almost indispensable term, but even should have assisted by beginning to use it themselves as a term of opprobrium.”

So he’s saying that people started using it negatively—even though it defines the very civilization and nation we aspire to be.

 Mortimer Adler said, “The chief difference between ourselves and our ancestors is that they, for the most part, talked sense about liberal education, whereas we, for the most part, do not.”

That’s fascinating—that a word and an idea so foundational to our civilization could be so misunderstood today.

 If you read American Higher Education: A History by Christopher Lucas (which is really good), and look up “liberal learning” in the index, you’ll see row after row of citations. That’s how predominant liberal learning was in America—until recently.

 This is what you’ve been robbed of: liberal learning for the sake of learning itself—learning to be free—the education of a free people.

 That’s very different from vocational learning, which is learning for the sake of earning.

Those are the two kinds of learning.

 What we’ve done is take a liberal foundation and replace it with vocational learning—through apprenticeships, trade schools, and job training. But originally, everyone received a liberal education so they could be free.

 After the American Revolution, as the founders built the nation, they said, “Now we need an education system to match our form of government.” They knew people needed to understand what creates freedom in order to stay free—to preserve a free nation and a free people.

 That’s why they valued a liberal education: it teaches people how to be free.

Adler said,

“For anyone to become an educated person, it is necessary for his or her learning to continue throughout the lifetime that follows graduation from college or university. The most crucial contribution these institutions can make is in the field of the arts—the liberal arts—which are the arts of learning, and the arts which discipline our creative powers.”

He also said, “Education frees our minds by disciplining them.”

Our education is supposed to discipline our minds—to help us find, hold to, and adhere to truth.

 Mortimer Adler (I’ll talk about him more in another video on The Great Books and how we lost liberal learning in America) was one of the key figures who tried to preserve liberal education in the United States.

He often argued that the best education happens in adulthood—and he was right. Because it’s only as adults, with real-life experience, that our education takes on its deepest meaning.

 I could read Anna Karenina in college, but ten or fifteen years later—after I’d had a troubled marriage myself and been through much more life—Anna Karenina means a whole lot more to me. Right? So, we need the tools for lifelong learning, and that’s what liberal education was giving people.

There was a very specific way this was done, so let me explain it quickly so you understand what the “liberal” part is—and what the “arts” part means.

Liberal Arts are not Fine Arts, and they’re not Vocational Arts. They’re not arts for the sake of earning, and they’re not fine arts for the sake of beautifying. They’re the liberal arts—for the sake of being free, for disciplining the mind, for learning how to use our intellectual and rational powers to their fullest.

The fine arts are totally “useless,” and that is their glory—because the fine arts are meant to move the heart and to move the culture toward beauty and goodness.

 The liberal arts, on the other hand, are useful. They consist of the Trivium and the Quadrivium, which in their modern forms include reading, writing, speaking, listening, and all the mathematical and scientific disciplines.

 So, this hangover that we have in our schools—where those are still our focus—is a remnant of the liberal arts. We’re still trying to do the liberal arts, but we’re doing it without the same medium or methods used in the past. We’re doing it in a textbook model—which doesn’t work—and we’re doing it without the full toolset for liberal learning.

 We still teach that people need to write, read, and calculate, but we’re not bringing it home. The liberal arts are meant to help us live a robust life of truth—to be the search for truth itself.

That’s why Harvard’s motto was Veritas—“truth.” These colleges and universities were founded upon the liberal arts: the pursuit of truth, living the good life, and seeking real happiness in harmony with God’s natural laws.

 The fine arts were meant for those who would go on to create works that inspire humanity. The liberal arts were meant for everyone—so that they could perpetuate a free society. The vocational arts were training for earning a living in a particular trade or profession.

Today, we have remnants of what liberal education was meant to be. Sometimes we call it “the humanities” or “general education,” but at the college level it’s often turned into social indoctrination. It’s money-driven now, because these are no longer private schools making independent decisions—they depend on government funding. The government dictates what’s taught, and that independence is gone. The priority to help us be a free people has disappeared.

I could give you all kinds of examples from American and Western history that you’ve never heard—because they’re not taught in school anymore.

 Here’s how it used to be done—it was very simple. You would choose a text of broad and deep significance, what we call a great book. That’s where the Great Books of the Western World and the Harvard Classics came from. These are books that have stood the test of time—books that have spoken to people across generations, cultures, and circumstances.

 But in our modern, technological society, we’ve begun to think we can leave those behind. I’ll tell you—authors like Plato and Aristotle, whom I’ve studied, are completely relevant today. The things they discuss are the very things on my mind now. The way they reason and write—it’s often over my head. It’s hard for me to understand, even in modern English translations.

I’m limping along to really grasp it. But I love this quote by Mortimer Adler, one of my favorites:

“Whoever passes by what is over his head condemns his head to its present low altitude, for nothing can elevate a mind except what is over the head.”

They chose deep, rich works.

 I did another video on the five types of questions, and I talked about St. Thomas Aquinas’s Treatise on the Passions. That’s the kind of reading we’re talking about. We all have passions, right? He explained that the passions follow a certain order, and he explored how they work.

That’s exactly what you and I think about today: What are my emotions? How do they work? How much should I listen to them? These are timeless questions. They’re relevant, important, lasting, and world-changing. We need to understand what these thinkers said—why their ideas had such impact and how they changed the world.

 So, they would choose a truly rich text—often in the original language. These men (and sometimes women) would learn Latin and Greek. Then they’d study those works in small sections, reading and writing in a commonplace book.

Books were rare and expensive, so you didn’t write in them. You’d copy long passages into your commonplace book—your favorite quotes, insights, questions, and reflections. That’s how you internalized what you read.

Then you’d meet in a small group, or “pod,” with a tutor or mentor. You’d discuss what you’d read. The tutor would question you deeply, guiding you with thoughtful questions. If you want a better picture of what this looks like, go watch that video on the five types of questions—I share an example from one of Mortimer Adler’s classes.

Those discussions were powerful. That’s why book groups were so popular in early America.

Benjamin Franklin, in his Autobiography, describes how he started the first public library and made book clubs fashionable. It elevated the educational level of that generation and those that followed.

 Eventually, when you were ready, you’d have an oral exam. That’s how they knew you’d truly absorbed what you studied—when it had become a part of who you were. You could articulate it clearly, discuss it thoughtfully, and apply it wisely.

You gained skills of discussion, negotiation, reasoning, and the search for truth—honed and refined over years of dialogue with your peers and tutors.

The last part of a liberal arts education was about the use of free time—what was called leisure. Mortimer Adler argued that you can tell the quality of a person’s education by how they choose to spend their leisure time.

Do they play instruments? Do they get involved in their community? Do they serve in government? Do they volunteer? Do they practice the fine arts? Do they build strong relationships? Do they read great books? Do they find ways to elevate themselves and those around them?

The quality of that leisure time is the mark of a truly educated person. Someone with a real liberal education will always use their free time for the most enriching things.

Adler said, “A good human life is one that is enriched by as much leisure as one can cram into it.”

So, you’re always finding ways to elevate yourself as a human being—and to elevate humanity—through what you do when you don’t have to work.

If you were dissatisfied like I was—if you felt frustrated with the kind of education you received, or sensed something was missing—you were right.

 You were robbed.

 Over the last century and a half, bits and pieces of this education were eroded away until now. You can expect low-quality textbooks, many steps removed from original sources. You can expect not to engage with great minds or great ideas. You can expect not to hear about the pivotal moments of Western history.

 You can expect to write papers for a professor instead of for yourself—to aim for “the right answers” instead of deep understanding. You can expect to stay stuck at the level of knowledge questions, instead of seeking meaning, truth, and personal application.

So I hope that clears up what you’ve been robbed of—and helps you understand that a liberal arts education is the education we all need to become the best human beings we can possibly be.

 I spent fifteen or sixteen years in structured, formal, traditional public education. Later on, I discovered liberal education—and it absolutely changed me as a person. It changed the way I live, the way I think, the way I use my leisure time, the way I teach, and the values I hold most dear.

It’s the great minds I’ve interacted with and the tools for lifelong learning that have completely transformed my life.

 If that’s something you want more of, we do learn these skills—we do engage with great minds and study the classics and great books—at The Mission Driven Mom, through the MDM Academy. Check that out, and tell me in the comments below about your experience with school—what you wish you’d had, and what you feel you missed out on.

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Thank you so much for joining me today, and I’ll see you next time.