The Liberal Arts and General Education

Historically, the liberal arts were intended to provide a set of foundational skills and a theoretical framework that students could apply in the real world. This comes from the function of higher education in early America to provide education to an elite population in an agrarian society to prepare them to lead within that society.  Education was organized by basic knowledge units—professors and libraries.

Over a span of centuries American society progressed from an agrarian to an industrial to a knowledge base.  Accordingly the need arose for higher education to prepare a labor force with an increasing variety of specialized skills. To accomplish this, the liberal arts foundation of higher education needed to be supplemented by curricula that prepared students to become productive members of a new order.  This cultural evolution led of necessity to a democratization of higher education, making it accessible to the masses through systems of public higher education.

All of this transformed the function of higher education from its straightforward purpose in an agrarian society.  It now had to aid in the preparation of students for a diverse world of work.  And with this transformation, the role of the liberal arts shifted from a position of unchallenged centrality to one where it must develop core competencies, skills, and habits of mind that enable students to succeed in a complex environment and strengthen their ability to learn and change across their lifespan. One manifestation of this functional shift has been the labeling of the basic set liberal arts disciplines as “General Education.”

As I have discussed in previous posts, higher education as a whole has not kept pace with what society needs it to do in this regard.  There are two basic issues.  The first is that traditional higher education has continued to treat the liberal arts, now General Education, as separate and distinct from courses of study that lead to professions (aka jobs or vocations).  This ignores the fact that professionals in business, healthcare, or IT, for example, need the basic worldview provided by the liberal arts in order to function as contributing members of society.

Second, traditional higher education has ignored (even denied) the fact that
today’s student is substantially different from that of previous generations. The 18-yeaar-old student fresh from high school is no longer the norm. Students are, for instance, now older, work full- or part-time, and have familial obligations.  In other words, they already have experience in the real world and have de facto mastered many of the theoretical constructs that are in the realm of General Education.

So the question becomes how to keep the liberal arts and General Education relevant and intrinsically valuable.  The answer is not to stubbornly insist that this body of knowledge needs to be APPLIED TO professional preparation.  Rather, it must be INTEGRATED in a comprehensive approach to prepare students for the realities of a rapidly changing cultural milieu.  To accomplish this, we must first acknowledge the role of General education in the education process, and recognize who our students are.  We can then tailor the experience with course and credit requirements that encourage and promote exposure to a broad range of human learning. 

More to come….

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