A liberal arts education

When I begin to reflect on the liberal arts education I have been privileged to receive over the last 13 years at Melbourne Grammar, my mind goes straight to this school’s embodiment of the liberal arts: the Quad Philosophy classroom.

In a recent discussion about John Stuart Mill’s reflections on liberty, my class examined how the world today feels fractured. Public debate is sharp, impatient, and sometimes even cruel. People speak past one another rather than engaging with different ideas, and there can be little regard for reaching a nuanced conclusion or learning how to respectfully agree to disagree.

And yet, through all this communicative collapse and the turbulence it has unleashed across the globe, at Melbourne Grammar School the broad liberal arts education we receive acts as a grounding force.

When I first heard the phrase “liberal arts” in Grade 4, I assumed it had something to do with the Liberal Party, a rookie error. In reality, it describes an education that values breadth: learning across the humanities and sciences, classrooms and co-curricular life. It is the antithesis of a narrow, soulless ATAR machine.

It is why Year 9s study art, even if their linocuts or handprint paintings may never hang in a gallery. It is why STEM enthusiasts still study history in Year 10. It is why I am part of the second Fifth soccer team, giving it my best despite a lack of speed. It is why we field a second Fifth soccer team at all.

It is why we debate, row, perform Shakespeare under bats and stars in the Quad Play, and thrash out ideas in Politics Club at lunchtime. It is why the school supports a Year 6 musical, even though most of us will never (and sometimes probably should never) set foot on a stage again.

It is why we read broadly, swim up and down the pool each year, and why the Outdoor Education program has seen us rafting, abseiling, and spending 42 hours alone under a bivy on our Beyond the Gates camps through heatwaves, thunderstorms, and the occasional Melbourne-style blizzard. It is why we have students playing piano for the elderly on Friday afternoons and turning up on frigid mornings to cook toast and flip eggs at homeless shelters.

For Melbourne Grammar students, a liberal arts education also means a lot of exercise – and I am not just talking about compulsory cross country and participation in APS. With the science building, language rooms, and humanities classrooms scattered across opposite corners of the school, a liberal arts education occasionally feels less like a philosophy of learning and more like an endurance sport or, if you include APS morning commutes across Melbourne, even a motorsport.

But the deeper point is this: within these bluestone walls steeped in history, students are nurtured and given the opportunity to grow in a safe and encouraging environment.

Perhaps I am being slightly idealistic. With the prevalence of knave social media algorithms and cycles of catastrophic news, no education can completely shield us from the complexities of a world beyond the bluestone. But even if our education cannot protect us from those realities, it certainly prepares us for them.

A liberal arts education arms us with empathy. To quote a source I encountered through my fine liberal arts education, the Roman poet Ovid once wrote:

“A faithful study of the liberal arts humanises character and permits it not to be cruel.”

To study widely; literature, philosophy, science, languages and history is to encounter lives and perspectives very different from our own. It cultivates a capacity to transcend the limits of our own perspective and to engage, with greater efficacy, with the worldviews of those around us.

But it can also help us understand ourselves. The Greek maxim inscribed at Delphi reminds us: “Know thyself”. A broad education encourages us to engage with experiences beyond our initial inclinations, and through this process we can slowly come to understand not only our identity but our values.

Now, most Melbourne Grammar students have not yet had to deploy these skills or confront the world in its full complexity. But for the students who wear this blazer badge, when that day comes, our Melbourne Grammar education will have prepared us to step into the wider world with empathy and curiosity.

Edgar Stirling
2026 Captain of the School