IV. Program Considerations

First, liberal arts learning must self-consciously aim at integration, at helping students gain a sense of the “connectedness of things.” 

Education in any structure can degenerate to an exercise in trivial pursuit.  The disciplines have legitimate goals and they have served the advance of human knowledge well.  But unless the disciplines become open windows on a wider world, they can unwittingly contribute to the fragmentation of knowledge, drawing lines between things where, in the real world, there are no lines. 

Virtually any problem one may encounter in the world of work will require a multifaceted approach.  Knowledge gained from a specific discipline will rarely be sufficient.  Most disciplines—and, happily, many instructors—are self-consciously aware of the ways their fields of study overlap with an draw from other disciplines.  But this is also where the value of interdisciplinary courses of study—whether in a general education core, in courses developed by faculty in two or more disciplines that can be team-taught and/or cross-listed, or “capstone courses” that require the student to draw from a variety of learning experiences—can have both personal and career-oriented value.

Second, we had better be about finding the threads of “connectedness” running through the diversity that confronts us globally, nationally, and locally. The buzz-words of multiculturalism and global awareness herald a phenomenon and a cultural challenge that deserves to be called by the somewhat hackneyed but useful phrase, a “paradigm shift.”

All of us are anxious about the fragmentation of society and the ability of increasingly divergent groups to work and live together.  As I indicated in a previous blog (see On the Boundaries of Diversity and Community), a new interest in one’s roots and heritage has arisen—which is good—but what has come with it is the appearance dozens of “definitional communities” that idealize some element of one’s life— ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, political commitments, economic status, ability or disability, ethical commitments, religious persuasion, theological posture, and on and on —and make that the primary basis of self-identity rather than our common humanity.  In addition,

• Our world is no longer Eurocentric, male-centered, or first-world dominated.
• It is already largely non-white—only 16% of the world’s population is white—and poor—at least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day.

The graduates of our institutions will be seriously deficient if they cannot understand and connect with individuals from diverse backgrounds in the workplace and in their communities. 

That is the world for which our students must be educated.

The third “connection” that liberal learning must help students make is the relationship between knowledge and action, theory and practice, learning and application.  I think this point has two dimensions.

It was a consistent theme of John Dewey’s philosophy of education that “subjects” taught should never be separated from the needs and problems that gave rise to them in the first place.   A. N. Whitehead reiterates the same demand in Essays in Science and Philosophy: “. . . the applications are a part of the knowledge.  For the very meaning of the things known is wrapped up in their relationships beyond themselves“(Whitehead, 219).  In other words, liberal learning includes connecting knowledge and skills with their application in real-life situations. 

Now indulge my phrasing of that educational theory in more passionate, even preachy, language.  Learning to apply knowledge and skills, if that learning is indeed “liberal, liberating,” cannot be just to the limited world of narrow self-interest.  The point is to educate students who will resolve to live their lives well, to contribute more to life than they take out of it.  There is no educating, no pursuits or careers to which this notion is not relevant.  As Robert Greenleaf put it, “Performance in any field or calling should be judged by reference to the obligations assumed for society” (Greenleaf, 138). 

In other words, liberal education must help students relate what they learn to pressing human need.  That means helping them see

• that knowledge is not to be stored, but to be used;
• that education is a staging ground for action;
• that service is the rent we all pay for living;
• and that service can and should be done through one’s profession as well as through volunteerism, as important as that is.

Greenleaf also argues that we must produce individuals who are prepared “for responsible roles that would make a difference” and, paraphrasing Nikos Kazantsakis (in his Report to Greece), he adds the phrase “in accord with their own hearts.”  His point is that these commitments to service must be internalized and sheltered by sensitivity and compassion—“from the heart.”

To these “connections” I deeply believe liberal education must be committed.

CONCLUSION

I conclude by saying that quality liberal arts education does not merely meet needs; it also creates them.  It does not merely fulfill persons, it galvanizes them. As one graduate said: “The most important thing I got from my education is the feeling that I could tackle anything I wanted to, intelligently.”  That is what we mean by “liberating learning.

Robert Frost once said, “Education is . . . hanging around until you have caught on.”  I’m still hanging around the edges of the educational enterprise and I thank you for hanging around.  I hope we all caught something.