Books and a Balance

St. John’s College is dedicated to a strange idea—that education is for the sake of freedom. Our motto promises to “make free human beings out of children by means of books and a balance.” As the oldest Great Books school in the US, we’ve been working at this for a while. So what is a liberal education? What is its future? And what do books—and conversations about them—have to do with freedom and the life of the mind? Through conversations with a range of guests, we explore the meaning of liberal education, its power in the lives of individuals, and the economic, political, and cultural pressures it faces. Feedback and questions welcome at [email protected].