As a member of last year's Academic Program Working Group and,
now, as a member of the Curriculum Review Committee, I've participated in
frequent and extended discussions focusing on liberal education, the Furman
experience, and our curriculum. To say that these conversations have been
stimulating would be a considerable understatement. They have, however, brought
out so many nuances, multiple perspectives, and (sometimes) competing visions
of what our curriculum ought to be that I find myself at times confused if not
confounded by this remarkably rich set of ideas, concepts, and proposals.
Given the daunting breadth of the
landscape there is real value, I think, in trying to distill from these
conversations core (or connecting) principles around which a successful liberal
arts education is built. I'll present what I believe to be several core
principles though, like [another colleague], I reserve the right to
modify or even change my views as this year unfolds. Indeed, my thinking about these
questions has already evolved in important ways because of the insights offered
by our colleagues.
I'll note also that the principles suggested below are premised
on the assumption that a liberal education ought to make likely particular
outcomes. That is, a student who spends time at Furman ought to be influenced
by her or his education to develop certain habits of the mind and heart. My
comments, therefore, do not focus on content; this brief overview is not
intended to propose a curriculum or even to address in a very specific sense
many of the questions that we know must be answered before our work is done
questions related, for example, to the composition of the GER or the type of
calendar we use. I'd
leave it for the Committee and ultimately the faculty to determine what type of
content is most likely to produce the outcomes described here. Such principles
could, however, be used to guide (or at least shape) our decision-making about
those questions.
First, we should strive to create a community of learners in
which intellectual curiosity is stimulated, nurtured, and rewarded. This
should occur in and out of the classroom and should be obvious to students
and faculty alike and manifest in our decisions about admission, curriculum,
resource allocation, etc.
We talk a lot about creating "lifelong learners," a concept I
heartily endorse, but I'd argue that intellectually curious people will be
lifetime learners because they know no other way of relating to their world.
Moreover, our academic requirements and schedule (and extracurricular
activities) ought to be structured to permit at least some opportunity for
reflection and for unscheduled and unscripted intellectual interaction.
Second, a community committed to the values of liberal
education should help these intellectually curious people or
perhaps demand of them that they think critically. Our curriculum (and co-curriculum)
ought to be designed so that a student cannot graduate without being challenged
regularly to confront his or her own views (i.e., a capacity for
self-criticism) and the views of others.
Third, liberal education should cultivate an understanding of
those not like oneself. This is, at least in part, similar to Nussbaum's
"world citizenship," in that it encourages empathy and compassion. A
curriculum that accomplishes this must necessarily have a non-Western
dimension, include some foreign language exposure, and encourage consideration
of multiple moral and ethical perspectives.
Fourth, a successful liberal arts curriculum ought to be
based on what I'll call here the "unity of knowledge." A
knowledgeable person is broadly educated and sees the interrelatedness of facts
and ideas. Put another way, a liberal education ought to be based on connectedness;
we want our students to see the relevance of ideas and material in one course
to other courses. Interdisciplinary courses are especially well-suited to the
realization of this objective, but are by no means the only courses in which
connections ought to be implicit and/or explicit. This principle requires, as
well, that students are exposed to the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.
Moreover, it assumes that students are discouraged from focusing so narrowly on
one or two disciplines that they're not able to take the relatively wide range
of courses at the heart of successful liberal education.
Fifth, the liberal arts ought to have at their core the
development of expressive capabilities in particular, the
ability to write well and speak well. All of the other outcomes associated with liberal education are
diminished if a student is incapable of clear and effective expression.
Sixth, even as a liberal curriculum must be committed to breadth
of exposure, interdisciplinarity, and emphasis on connectedness, it also
ought to require intense study within a discipline. In [a colleague's]
essay, he argues persuasively for such focus, noting, in particular, that the
"depth of understanding" that comes from disciplinary study
"provides opportunities for individuals to participate as primary
contributors to the greater body of knowledge, not be constrained to
the
role of spectators."
([Emphasis in original.])
Can a single curriculum do all of these things? I think so
indeed, our current curriculum does many of these things already (though not
all equally well). Of
course, to enrich this curriculum so that these multiple objectives might be
achieved will require creativity, some risk-taking, and some compromise.
Finally, such a "curriculum" must be more than a set of academic
requirements or courses in a catalogue. It must, instead, be a commitment to
nurture a community that embraces intellectual vitality and activity as primary
Posted by love at
September 20, 2004 08:30 AM
Discuss
this proposal in the forum, or leave a comment below!