Liberal Education is a term used for multi-disciplinary approach to education. Liberal Education emphasizes a learning system of education which provides students the choices to take courses which are varied and responds to the discovery and explorations the student needs to make. Students can experience a broad spectrum of courses and they have the possibility of meandering into many streams of knowledge to discover which their calling is and which stream they respond to. Their curriculum is not open ended. There is a structure and the student experiences some courses across the streams of existing knowledge to be able to make very well informed choices in their specializations. It is an interdisciplinary platform of education that propagates different models and paradigms from various learning disciplines. This platform develops students with abilities to connect and integrate knowledge helping them to apply it in current and future real world scenarios.
Liberal Education strives to deliver an academic experience that fosters intellectual curiosity, a critical thought process, self-reflection, leadership and teamwork skills, a sense of commitment and professionalism and a heightened sensitivity to one’s socio-cultural environment. It lays emphasis on the creation of a learning environment where the student takes the responsibility of learning and the role of the teacher is to facilitate the learning process.
In essence, Liberal Education inculcates the following:
- Broad knowledge of multiple disciplines
- In-depth study of a chosen discipline
- Inter-disciplinary learning
- Differential approach to learning
- Transferable skill set
- Ability to apply knowledge to practical real world situations
- Connecting the dots through various mental models
- Habits of self-reflection
- Contextual learning
- Freedom of the mind
- Lifelong learning