Lame laments about the contraction of the liberal arts, and the loss of their prestige, will not help invigorate humane reflection. Humanists need to envision a world in which the humanities matter and evoke a desire, will, and understanding from people at large to bring that world to its fruition. The possibility of such a world arises because each person can engage in liberal learning as an essential element of their human birthright.

In a deterministic world, liberal learning cannot exist, and most thinking about education is, from the student's point of view, thoroughly deterministic, depending on the effectiveness of teachers and the curriculum.  

Participants in the Collaboratory for Liberal Learning aim to understand and demonstrate how each student initiates, sustains, and controls the processes of education that take place as she interacts with her circumstances. Schooling, formal instruction at all its levels, is not the same as education, a student's inwardly controlled formation of self. Education is not deterministic; through education, the student is self-determining.

We invite all to join through the Collaboratory for Liberal Learning to develop a movement for Pushback Pedagogy, a movement by those subjected to formal instruction to evoke an accounting by their instructors. Pushback pedagogy affirms, as the prerogative of every student, the questions Socrates put to rhetoricians and paid instructors in ancient Athens: How will acquiescence to your instruction affect the way I lead my life?