A Study Of Contemporary American Liberal Arts College Of Liberal Arts Education Characteristics

Liberal education is also referred to as the "free education", or "elegant education". It is a kind of education which pursues the rational development of human and the perfection of virtue. It pays attention to the harmonious development of human body and soul, and always advocates the comprehensive and development of education. Liberal education originated in Europe, however, in modern times, they are developing well in parts of the Liberal Arts College in the United States. This study used two research methods, including historical research and case studies. Taking the Williams College as the representative, deeply explore into this kind of liberal education form, through presenting specific educational policy, instructional mode and campus culture of Williams College to reveal the characteristics of liberal education practice of American liberal arts colleges. And then to provide some reference suggestions for the undergraduate education in our country.This paper is divided into the following four parts except the introduction:The first part is the origin and history of liberal arts education, from Europe and the United States, these two different regional dimensions to study. In the European part, respectively to describe the history from the infancy of liberal education, the liberal education in Renaissance time, and then the 18 th and 19 th century period of liberal education, after that, introduced the liberal education developing condition in the United States in modern times, at last, this part talked about the general characteristics of liberal education in American liberal arts college in recent years.The second part is the characteristics studying of liberal education in Williams College, this part is the core part of this study, in this part, there are mainly three big aspects to introduce, they are the educational objectives and policies, contents and implementation of teaching, campus culture and evaluation. Specifically to say, it is from the characteristic education target, liberal characteristic education policy, the liberal arts teaching content, the implementation of liberal arts teaching, the characteristics of residential culture, the liberal campus activities, alumni relations, and graduate satisfaction of this liberal arts college and finally attempts to analyze the feature of the liberal arts education.The third part is the factor study of the liberal education’s characteristics development, this part is mainly from two dimensions: internal factors and external factors were analyzed to explore. In the internal factors, analyzed the principal’s leadership factors, the teacher and the school environment and facilities factors. In the external factors, respectively described the American economic, democracy, liberal education and even the civic cultivate objectives. Through these internal and external factors, trying to find out the reasons why the American liberal education’s practice characteristics made such a success.The fourth part is the thinking and enlightenment of this study, this part firstly described the liberal education in the field of higher education in our country, especially referred to the Tsinghua University, Peking University, Zhongshan University and other this kind of university which in the forefront of the Colleges and universities in the practice of liberal education, and then carried on the corresponding analysis and comparison of the American liberal education practice with ours, and finally proposed some corresponding suggestions in the field of higher education in our country’s liberal education, including the aim of our college education and college policy, our college teaching content and implementation, and our college culture and teacher development for future education practice.