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Stephen Blackwood and Bernadette Guthrie on re-humanising education

News 1st November 2023 Stephen Blackwood

I had the privilege of representing Ralston College at the inaugural Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in London last weekend. 

Over three days, writers, thinkers, artists and entrepreneurs reflected on the acute challenges facing the West in the 21st century. 

In my essay, co-written with Bernadette Guthrie, we first survey the faults that vitiate the modern higher-education landscape, and then draw together the disparate, once-connected threads of our communal traditions that have so successfully propagated Western culture, allowing both the individual and the community to succeed. 

As we argue here, a better future really is within reach.

“Ralston College embraces a rigorous approach to humanistic study, one rooted in the habits and practices that have traditionally shaped a liberal arts education: direct encounters with the greatest works of art and intellect, study of ancient and modern languages, the sharing of common meals, and the demonstration of mastery through evaluations conducted by external examiners. In so doing, the College aims to rediscover and reanimate the essential features and activities of the great universities of the past.”

Stephen Blackwood, Founding President of Ralston College