In a provacative and lucid article in this week's Commonweal, Alasdair MacIntyre proposes a new model for Catholic higher education: it's an update of the medieval trivium; instead of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, there would be math / science, hisotry, and literature. "All three have a philosophical component: philosophy of mind and body, the philosophical questions raised by different aspects of our past history, the interpretation and evaluative questions posed by our relationship to other cultures."

MacIntyre thinks his trivium could be done in three years (he doesn't say what that would do to football weekends). That would leave a fourth year for more specialized disciplinary studies.

So, those who teach college students, and those who provide colleges with students to teach, and those who went to college, and those who want to go to college, what do you think?

Cathleen Kaveny is the Darald and Juliet Libby Professor in the Theology Department and Law School at Boston College.

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