I believe that the aim of an
undergraduate liberal arts education should be to promote students’
self-actualization. This
is best achieved not through the transmission of received knowledge and wisdom
but through intellectual experiences that challenge students to take command of
themselves. These experiences should include courses where students separate
their convictions from conventions, where students learn to fashion arguments,
marshal evidence, test theories, and learn to see themselves and the world not
as they think they know it, but as they come through critical analysis to know
and understand it. To achieve the goal of self-actualized students, it is
important that students take more responsibility for their own learning than is
currently the case, and that students have more flexibility and choice in their
education than is currently the case. To that end, I propose that a student’s
educational experience at Furman be divided into three equal parts: general education; the major; and
experimentation and exploration through electives, foreign study, internships,
etc.(1)
I also believe that in order to encourage students to be less teacher
dependent, the calendar needs to be changed to a straight semester system.(2)
General Education:
1. General Education seminars: Two courses to be taken by all
freshmen during their first year, fall and spring that would provide the
foundation of what we mean by self-actualization.(3) (They probably need a
better name.) These courses should focus on themes that lend themselves to
discussion and to writing with a focus on the construction and articulation of
arguments. They should not be discipline specific; they should not resemble
anything students might have had in high school; nor should they count toward
any major. Ideally, these courses would be interdisciplinary with topics that
encourage students to interrogate their deepest convictions about the world and
their place in it. A standing faculty committee should be established that
would evaluate and approve proposals for these seminars. These seminars should
have no more than 16 students in them, and there should be a uniform and
substantial writing component to the courses.(4)
2. Junior/senior seminars: In order to extend the culture of
liberal learning beyond the freshman year, all students should be required to
take an advanced interdisciplinary seminar in a team-taught course during their
junior or senior year. These courses would bring at least two disciplines into
conversation and may count toward a major or more than one major; for instance,
the psychology of language (linguistics and psychology); or social justice
(sociology and philosophy). These courses can be larger than the general
education seminars and would require a significant research paper by each
student.(5)
3. Writing: Both the general education seminars and the
junior/senior seminars should require substantial amounts of writing, critique
of writing and re-writing. Additionally, all students should take one course in
their major that is designated “writing intensive.”(6)
4. Language Requirement: The avenue to an understanding of other
parts of the world as well as to an understanding of one’s own world and
one’s own language is foreign languages. The language requirement as it
exists now consists of a minimum of one course and a maximum of three. We are
proposing that the requirement be changed to a minimum of one course and a
maximum of two. (The pronoun here shifts from “I” to
“we” because a group of us worked on this section.) For some
students this change would result in a reduction in the number of courses
required to satisfy the language requirement, but we believe this change would
strengthen the basic skills of those who do the minimum, and would encourage
interested students to pursue their language study beyond the requirement.
Students would be required to take at most two courses to satisfy the
requirement: 11 and 12, (7)
or 15 and 21; or a student may only have to take one course, 21 or 22 (or one
higher course) as determined by placement. All students would have to take at
least one course in a foreign language, as the requirement is now.(8)
We recommend that Furman’s admissions material encourage
students to take as many years of a language as their high school offers. In
order to encourage students to take language courses beyond the requirement, we
recommend that a language certification program be established which would
culminate in students in their junior/senior year taking a universally accepted
test administered off campus and satisfactory completion of that program would
be reflected on a student’s official transcript.
5. Distribution requirements: Students should be required to
take 6 courses distributed across divisions and departments.(9) These should be distributed
across the 4 divisions, no more than one in any department, no more than 2 in
any division.(10)
Students should complete these distribution requirements by the end of the
sophomore year.
This proposal would reduce the number of general
education/distribution requirements from the current 14 (with only one language
course required) to 10.(11)
II. The Major: The major is an important aspect of the undergraduate liberal
arts experience, as important as general education, distribution courses,
electives, or any other aspect of the curriculum. However, the major should not
aim to be comprehensive, or to put it as the Harvard Curricular Review does, to
certify mastery of a field.(12)
Therefore, I recommend that there be a firm cap on the number of courses
(specific courses or elective courses in the major) that can be required for a
major, regardless of what licensing organizations require. Should a student
elect to exceed that cap, either to achieve some kind of certification or to
apply to graduate school (especially in the sciences), that should be allowed,
but it should be the decision of the student, not the department.(13) Additionally, all majors
should include some kind of capstone experience in the final year.(14)
III. The elective
component: as
described above.
1. The experimentation/exploration segment raises the question of
double majors. Since I am arguing for students to take more responsibility for
their education, it would be contradictory to turn around and deny them that
choice.
2. Even with longer semesters, on a
Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Tuesday, Thursday schedule, students would spend
less time in class and would have to learn more on their own and become less
teacher-dependent.
3. A small group of us agreed that
one of these courses might have a common content in all sections, which all
freshmen would take. It would not be a mini-humanities course, or a survey of
great books, but on a topic determined by committee with common readings that
could be tied to the summer reading and to on-campus speakers and programs
throughout the year. This could provide the intellectual stimulus that would
knit the community together, then to be followed in the spring term by a wide
variety of seminar topics. The common course would not be on the same topic
every year.
4. The question arises, who would
teach these courses? Ideally, faculty throughout the university would be eager
to participate in these seminars, but I think it would be unwise to force
people to participate in this first-year program. It would be unfortunate if it
were to become exclusively a humanities proposition, and perhaps some reward
system could be designed that would encourage broad participation. (For
instance, accumulating release time that could be applied to a full-year sabbatical.)
Designing and implementing such courses would take a lot of faculty time, time
that might not be rewarded in our current merit system. That would need to be
revisited. Also, new faculty should be hired with a mind to this program.
5. I believe this aspect of general
education is important because it keeps the flame alive in the junior/senior
year. The liberal arts project ought not cease at the end of the sophomore
year. However, developing and staffing such courses would be challenging.
6. Currently we try to address
students’ writing needs in English 11, which was designed at a time when
many students came to Furman with poor skills as writers. Today’s Furman
students are better writers in terms of mechanics, but they still need a lot of
work on thinking, organizing and expressing themselves, work that can only
occur over time and in a number of courses. Each student should have 4-5
courses while at Furman that devote significant time to developing writing
skills.
7. Most introductory language textbooks
are designed for 2 semesters, 28 weeks. We try to squeeze those textbooks into
fall and winter, which is to say 17-18 weeks. And the most difficult material,
which occurs in winter term, is subject to the most squeezing. We do not have
the leisure to linger over material to bring everyone along. It is possible
that with sufficient absorption time many students at the conclusion of 12
would have a better foundation in the foreign language than is currently the
case. However, we would only be open to this change if the current calendar
were changed to a straight semester system.
Under our proposal, students who start language study at the 11
level—either because of a low placement score or because they are
beginning a new language—would not in fact be required to make it through
21, which is an optimal minimum; in a curriculum that aims to free up course
slots to provide more student choice, we are reluctant to require of any
student three courses in a language. We would nevertheless urge apt students,
for the reasons outlined here, to choose as part of their elective program to
continue at least through the 21-level in the language they have begun.
8. We urge that all students,
including those who have acquired significant competency in a language before
college, be required to take at least one course at Furman using the language.
Language study is unique in that there is a sharp distinction between
acquisition of the skill and its application. MLL courses numbered 11, 12, and
15 are courses in language instruction: they are directed to acquisition of the
language. The focus shifts partially at the 21 level – and fully at the
level of 22, 26, and higher-numbered courses – from the language itself
as the object of study to its use as a medium for the study of literary and
other expressions of foreign cultures. It makes little sense to acquire a skill
and never put it to use – to take drivers' ed, for example, but never get
a license and begin driving. If new students were permitted to "place
out" of language study at Furman, many students would do just that –
acquire with much effort, in the high school classroom, a knowledge of the
vocabulary and structural patterns of a foreign language, and never put that
knowledge to use. (It is extremely rare that the shift is made from language
instruction to full-fledged application at the high school level.) Without the
reinforcement of active use, the language knowledge acquired in high school
fades rapidly and is lost, and one cannot easily dip back into it. With
reinforcement, however, a language can often be fully enough internalized that
it is retained to a significant degree for life.
If placement alone were sufficient to satisfy Furman's language
requirement, the students able to opt out of language study at Furman would be
precisely those who are best equipped – through their superior aptitude
for language-learning – to bring linguistic knowledge to bear throughout
adult life on their role as citizens in a global community. Furman has never lapsed
in its commitment to foreign languages as other institutions have and now
regret. Harvard, in its recent curriculum review, is recommending that all
students be required to take at least one language course at Harvard.
(Currently, one can place out of the language requirement at Harvard, and 2/3
of the freshmen do place out of it.) The visitor from Colgate also lamented the
fact that their students could place out of the language. The language
requirement enables us to offer not just frequently taught languages like
Spanish, but also more difficult languages like Chinese, Japanese, ancient
Greek; it sustains our worthwhile residential foreign study programs; and it
positions students who pursue language study to apply for distinguished
graduate awards like the Fulbright or the Rotary, or to prepare for the
expectations of many graduate programs.
9. These might be gateway courses to
the major, or they might be designed to introduce students to the variety of
issues in a discipline, but in all cases they should be rigorous, requiring a
lab for science courses.
10. There are, of course, many
different ways to divide this pie. This recommendation spreads the pain as
evenly as possible. The greatest reduction is in the humanities, but the
humanities also have the largest share of the GER as currently constituted. And
everyone in this new system takes something of a hit (except for fine arts):
math/science could be just one course, as could social science.
11. Clearly this curriculum entails
many changes from our current practice. One noticeable omission is the
Asian-African requirement, which is to be much regretted. I found it difficult
to justify a non-western requirement when there isn’t any specific
western requirement. (However, the argument could be made that much of our
students’ education before coming to Furman has consisted of
“western” subjects.) One might designate courses as having a
non-western focus and say students need to take one before graduation, which
might include major courses, or even the general education seminars or the
junior-senior interdisciplinary seminars. I would, however, expand the subject
matter beyond Asian/African or even non-western to include Latin American and
any aspect of diversity or minority cultures.
12. It would be interesting to know
how many Furman graduates go on to do something that relates directly to their
major—I suspect not the majority. Regardless, our ambition as an
institution is not pre-professional.
13. The last curriculum review
committee (around 1990 or so) floundered around for a year and came up with
only one concrete recommendation: that the 44-hour rule be eliminated. That
rule would not allow any student to take more than 44 hours (11 courses) in one
department. It was, indeed, a capricious rule, since there are departments like
MLL or EBA (at least there was) where it might make good sense for a French
major to take a number of courses in Spanish or a business major might want
greater foundation in economics, but these students could not exceed the
44-hour rule. It also encouraged a proliferation of 2-hour courses that require
a great deal more than 2-hours work. My recollection is that while we voted to
eliminate the 44-hour rule, it was still the case that students could not be
required by departments to take more than 44 hours for a major. In practice,
however, the sky became the limit. Some departments think that if one requires
an elective in the major, a so-called required elective (as opposed to a
specific course), it is within the spirit of the now dead 44-hour rule. My
proposal raises that limit to 48 hours, but I think departments should hold
that line absolutely.
14. Honors: It is unfortunate that
honors at Furman, whether it be distinction at graduation (summa cum laude,
etc.) or membership in Phi Beta Kappa (or any other honorary society), is based
exclusively on grade-point average. Furman should develop some kind of
honors’ program that would involve a thesis and defense of that thesis,
either at the department or university level. Or there might be a series of
honors’ seminars that could be worked into the curriculum. As with Phi
Beta Kappa, only a limited number of graduates, or majors, should qualify for
honors.
Posted by
mfairbairn at October 19, 2004 06:03 PM
Discuss
this proposal in the forum, or leave a comment below!