ERIC EJ682571: Practicing Liberal Education: Formative Themes in the Reinvention of Liberal Learning

2004·1.9 MB·English

by  ERIC

CAROL G. SCHNEIDER
Practicing
Liberal Education
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Formative Themes in the
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Reinvention of Liberal Learning

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THOUGHLIBERALEDUCATIONhas assumed many forms across different
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times and places, it has always been concerned with important educa-
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A tional aims: cultivating intellectual and ethical judgment, helping stu-
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dents comprehend and negotiate their relationship to the larger world,
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and preparing graduates for lives of civic re-
sponsibility and leadership. On the merits, then,
we might expect that liberal education would be the uncontested prefer-
Every college ence of virtually everyone who goes to college.
student And yet, American society today exhibits a striking ambivalence to-
wards the traditions of “liberal” or “liberal arts” education. Liberal educa-
deserves
tion is at one and the same time prized, despised, revised and disguised.
a liberal
Prized?Liberal education is recognizably the philosophy of choice at
education the nation’s most famous institutions, the campuses where admission is
seen as virtually synonymous with the expansion of opportunity. There
is, moreover, a persistent identification of liberal education with democra-
tic freedom, scientific progressand excellence that goes back to the revo-
lutionary period when many civic and political leaders both extolled the
liberal arts and also challenged them to embrace the scientific and prac-
tical needs of the new republic. W.E.B. du Bois reaffirmed the inter-
changeability of “liberal education” and “excellence” when he argued, a
century ago, that future leaders in the African-American community
deserved a college-level liberal education—that is, the best kind of
higher education, not just narrow occupational training. Most accred-
ited colleges and universities still espouse this liberal education ideal
and typically require that their students take some fraction of their stud-
ies in courses and programs aligned with the broader aims of education.
Despised?Many analysts and policy leaders declare without apology
that liberal education is already being consigned to the dustbin of history.
Markets, they sniff, are keyed to short-term outcomes and have no pa-
tience for forms of learning that pay off over a lifetime. Practicalstudies
will sell; the rest will just wither away. First generation, low-income, and
adult learners in particular, such observers contend, need job training
CAROL G. SCHNEIDER is the president of the Association of American Colleges
and Universities.
6 LIBERAL EDUCATION SPRING 2004
Annual Meeting
The nation’s campuses
rather than intellectual devel- are dotted with a more traditional liberal educa-
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I opment.Like school leaders in vibrant new generation tion for this new global era
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the twentieth century, these and for today’s newly diverse
O of innovative programs
T higher education realists are population of students. In-
and pedagogies
content to provide “elite” ed- deed, we are starting to see the
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E ucation to elites and voca- outlines of an emerging con-
R tional skills to everyone else. sensus on what this newly
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Other observers, more critical of the academy reinvigorated liberal education should entail
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A itself, believe thatliberal education is falling and even on the imperative of ensuring that
E victim to its own rigidity. The liberal arts, these more students—including first generation and
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critics suggest, are so ensconced in disciplinary adult students—can gain from its benefits.
silos and so resistant to the practical needs of
the wider society, that they will surely go the Three formative themes in the
way of the classics, moving inexorably from reinvention of liberal education
centrality to subsidized marginality. As we survey developments across the spec-
Revised?At the Association of American trum of higher education reform, three major
Colleges and Universities, we see a much more themes emerge as keys to the newly engaged
complex picture—a picture at once both and practical liberal education for the twenty-
promising and constrained. The truth is that first century. These themes are intellectual
liberal education at the start of the twenty-first judgment, social responsibility, and integra-
century is anything but a moribund tradition. tive learning.
Historically, the practice of liberal education Inquiry and Intellectual Judgment: College and
has changed radically over the centuries, and universities no longer assume that analytical
it is in the midst of far-reaching—if largely capability emerges automatically as students
unreported—change today. take courses. Instead, faculty members are de-
As we work with literally hundreds of colleges signing new curricula and new teaching
and universities, my colleagues and I can see strategies—online as well as face-to-face—to
plainly that the nation’s campuses are dotted help today’s diverse students develop strong
with a vibrant new generation of innovative analytical and communication skills, honed
programs and pedagogies. The majority of these “across-the-curriculum” and at progressively
innovations are indisputably reinventions of a more sophisticated levels. From intensive
Annual Meeting
8 LIBERAL EDUCATION SPRING 2004
first-year seminars on liberal arts topics to to integrative learning helps ensure that stu-
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writing-in-the-disciplines programs to under- dents will learn to take context and complexity I
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graduate research to senior capstone projects into account when they apply their analytical
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and courses, colleges and universities are pio- skills to challenging problems. The new im- T
neering new educational practices clearly in- portance of integrative learning also holds the
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tended to teach all students how to make power to bridge—at last—the long-standing E
sense of complexity, how to find and use evi- cultural divide in which one set of disciplines, R
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dence, and how to apply their knowledge to the arts and sciences, has been regarded as in-
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new problems and unscripted questions. In tellectual but not practical, while the profes- A
doing so, they are bringing new vitality to one sional fields are viewed as practical but, for E
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of the oldest and most enduring goals of lib- that very reason, inherently illiberal. Analysis
eral education: the thoughtful and creative and application are starting to come together,
use of human reason. where once they were presented as alternative
Social Responsibility and Civic Engagement: educational pathways.
There is also a pervasive new focus on putting Each of these new designs for undergraduate
social and civic responsibility into the cur- learning is intended to help today’s diverse
riculum. From Hawaii to Indianapolis to the
Bronx, faculty at every kind of college and OFTEN CONFUSED TERMS
university are providing students with real-
world experience and rich opportunities to Liberal Education
A philosophy of education that empowers in-
address social problems in cooperation with
dividuals, liberates the mind from ignorance,
others. This revival of civic engagement and
and cultivates social responsibility. Character-
social responsibility is happening in nearly
ized by challenging encounters with important
every field—from science courses taught
issues, and more a way of studying than specific
through the lenses of important contemporary
content, liberal education can occur at all
social and ethical questions such as HIV/AIDS types of colleges and universities.
to social justice issues addressed in professional
fields to internships, service learning, and Liberal Arts
field-based projects where students work with Specific disciplines (the humanities, social
the community to solve important problems. sciences, and sciences).
Simultaneously, the diversity and global educa-
Liberal Arts Colleges
tion movements also have developed a wealth
A particular institutional type—often small,
of programs—curricular and co-curricular—
often residential—that facilitates close inter-
that help students develop essential intercul-
action between faculty and students, while
tural skills and a sophisticated sense of how to
grounding its curriculum in the liberal arts
collaborate “across boundaries” in a diverse
disciplines.
but still highly fractured and violent world.
Collaborative, intercultural, and community- Artes Liberales
based learning is the new civic frontier for our Historically, the basis for the modern liberal
twenty-first century world of diversity, contes- arts; the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry,
tation, and inescapable interdependence. astronomy, and music) and the trivium
Integrative and Culminating Learning: Educa- (grammar, logic, and rhetoric).
tional leaders are rapidly inventing new forms
General Education
of integrative and culminating studies for their
The part of a liberal education curriculum
students. From first year learning communities
shared by all students. It provides broad expo-
to senior year interdisciplinary general educa-
sure to multiple disciplines and forms the basis
tion courses to capstone projects and thepop-
for developing important intellectual and civic
ularity of field-based learning, today’s students capacities.
now have multiple, structured opportunities to
make connections across disciplinesand fields, —from Greater Expectations: A New Vision for
to connect theories to practice, and evento en- Learning as a Nation Goes to College
gagetheir own lived experiences in the con-
text of what they are learning in general edu-
cation and in their majors. This commitment
SPRING 2004 LIBERAL EDUCATION 9
students achieve the traditional benefits of “liberal arts” education. Students who partici-
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I liberal education: intellectual acuity and judg- pate in them may never even be told that they
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ment,civic and social leadership, expanded are engaged in contemporary forms of liberal
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T horizons. Taken together, thesenew designs for education. Graduate students preparing to
what we mightcall the “liberal arts of practice” teach spend virtually no time considering
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E have the potential to make college learning their own role either in these innovations or
R more engaged, better connected with communi- in the larger traditions of liberal learning.
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ties beyond the campus, more “hands-on,” and, Given this conspiracy of voluntary silence,
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A in the long run, more educationally powerful. there is very little public understanding or even
E Disguised?Even as specific practices within awareness of liberal education, despite its en-
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liberal education are being reinvented and during influence on both established and in-
reinvigorated, the tradition itself is largelydis- novative curricula. Studies show that the pub-
guised from public notice. The educational lic does not value it as named, even though
innovations described above are heavily pro- the same public places high value on the out-
moted by the academy but rarely described in comes—such as analytical judgment, social
campus promotional materials as “liberal” or responsibility, and economic opportunity—to
Pedagogies of Engagement and Goals for Student Learning:
A Guide to Contemporary Reforms
1. Inquiry Skills and 2. Social Responsibility 3. Integrative and Culminating
Intellectual Judgment— and Civic Engagement Studies, including
Across-the-Curriculum
Big Questions: imaginative ways Liberal/Professional: new
Student Learning Outcomes: of teaching the arts and sci- connections between liberal
goals for learning articulated ences that connect the content and professional education
across the entire curriculum, of these courses to important (see #1);
guiding liberal arts and sci- questions in the larger world;
Learning Communities: themati-
ences disciplines and profes-
Field-Based Learning:a new cally linked courses in different
sional studies alike;
emphasis on internships, service disciplines that students take
First-Year Experiences: first-year learning, and other forms of as a “set” with the expectation
programs and seminars that practice that help students that they will examine impor-
help students learn what is connect their academic learn- tant human, scientific, or soci-
expected of them educationally ing with “real-world” experience; etal questions from multiple
and work proactively to points of view;
Diversity, Global, and Civic
develop better skills in analy-
Engagement:a wealth of pro- Advanced Interdisciplinary
sis, research and communica-
grams, both curricular and co- General Education: courses
tion—including information
curricular, intended to foster that invite comparison and
literacies;
civic engagement, diversity connection;
Skill-Intensive Content Courses: and global learning, and social
Portfolios and E-Portfolios:
designs for practicing impor- responsibility;
documenting and assessing
tant skills recurrently “across-
Community-Based Research:a students’ intellectual progress
the-curriculum” in courses
growing emphasis on commu- over time;
explicitly tagged for their
nity-based research, often done
emphasis on intensive writing, Capstones: capstone courses
collaboratively.
technology, quantitative rea- and/or experiences that help
soning, second language, and, students integrate their learn-
sometimes, ethical reasoning; ing both in the major and in
general education arenas;
Undergraduate Research:
involving students in inquiry Culminating Projects and
and hands-on research. Assessments: required for com-
pletion of the degree, assessed
for important student learning
outcomes.
10 LIBERAL EDUCATION SPRING 2004
which liberal education leads. Campus leaders trends described above, the report calls for a
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report that students also don’t know what lib- new synthesis between liberal and practical ed- I
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eral or liberal arts education is and that many ucation throughout the educational experience:
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faculty are uncertain. “Liberal education,” the report asserts, “must . . . T
The nation is thus in danger of squandering become consciously, intentionally pragmatic,
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an extraordinary and unprecedented opportu- while it remains conceptually rigorous; its test E
nity. With millions of students of all ages and will be in the effectiveness of graduates to use R
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backgrounds both aspiring to higher learning knowledge thoughtfully in the wider world.”
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and actually enrolling, a new majority of Amer- A
icans could, in principle, now achieve the kind Sounding the call E
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of capacious and public-spirited liberal educa- In this context of opportunity and opposition,
tion once reserved for a tiny elite. But it is hard the challenges confronting today’s educational
to insist on the best when you don’t even know leaders are two.
that the best is an option. And without public The first is summoning the vision, the will,
support and student demand, these new educa- and the long-term commitment to coalesce in-
tional practices are likely to remain both under- novations already flowering around us into
developed and vulnerable. more intentional, connected, and cumulatively
AAC&U’s 2002 report, Greater Expectations: powerful frameworks for all students’learning.
A New Vision for Learning as a Nation Goes to And the second is the willingness to call
College, recommends that every college student these innovations what they are: a twenty-first
deserves a liberal education, one redefined to century vision for an inclusive liberal education.
embrace and address the way knowledge is ac- The future of liberal education and the fu-
tually used in the world, including the world of ture of our core educational missions are one
work and civil society. Strongly endorsing the and the same. nnnnn
Annual Meeting
SPRING 2004 LIBERAL EDUCATION 11