As the philosopher John Dewey argued through much of the 20th century, one can teach subjects with the aim of liberating the students, or one can teach them mechanically simply to train students. Once we drop, as we must, the notion that some people should be educated for leisure and others for work (the notion on which the traditional view of the liberal arts was based), the question becomes only: How can we educate people so that they can continue to learn through inquiry in their private and public lives? For Dewey, liberal education should help us develop the intellectual and moral capacities to imagine a future worth striving for, and to enhance our ability to create the tools for its realization.