Letters

To the Editor:

Reading John Agresto’s “Toward an American Liberal Education” (Summer 2017, vol. 30, no. 2), I was reminded of an earlier gem of an essay proposing educational reform, one first published in 1644: John Milton’s Of Education. In his penetrating examination of the role of the liberal arts in twenty-first-century America, Dr. Agresto proposes that we take as our model Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and Booker T. Washington, who regarded both philosophy and farming, liberal learning and practical knowledge, as the complementary acquisitions of an educated person.

Similarly, in Of EducationMilton pays attention to both humanistic studies and the attainment of practical knowledge of the world—everything from agriculture and architecture to engineering and navigation. His young scholars (sons of gentlemen, for this is a seventeenth-century proposal for the leaders of a commonwealth) will not only read up