When the liberal arts were strong in universities, their
students were gentlemen - wealthy men who did not work (and
did not need to) and who ideally spent the rest of their
lives improving their minds and serving society in politics
and arts and without pay. The best of these were aware that
in pursuing the liberal arts they were realizing their
human being.

Democratization has significantly changed all that; these
days and for a long time most colleges and universities
have more or less shelved the liberal arts and devoted
their efforts to the training of the worker, professional
and technical. The liberal arts are suffered, but they are
no longer in the forefront of required subjects. The
development of human being has given way to the production
of the worker.

Educators who lament this, seem not to have noticed that
the new "gentleman," the new wealthy, leisured person is
not only the trust baby but that growing number of persons
who are retired, many of them perhaps unconsciously hungry
for a meaningful intellectual life.

I see little evidence that the exclusively liberal arts
colleges (like St. John's?) make significant effort to
recruit these new "gentlemen." It is a pity. Those of us
who have been so fortunate as to have had older and retired
persons as students in our classes and found them
delightfully eager to learn our subjects for simply the
sake of the knowledge should speak to our university
administrations and urge them to make a special effort to
recruit these potential students.

L. Swilley

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