CAROL G. SCHNEIDER Practicing Liberal Education Formative Themes in the Reinvention of Liberal Learning THOUGH LIBERAL EDUCATION has assumed many forms across different times and places, it has always been concerned with important educa- tional aims: cultivating intellectual and ethical judgment, helping stu- FEATURED TOPIC dents comprehend and negotiate their relationship to the larger world, 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 progress and 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. Practical studies 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. 6LIBERAL E DUCATION S PRING 2004 Annual Meeting The nation’s campuses rather than intellectual devel- are dotted with a more traditional liberal educa- opment. Like school leaders in vibrant new generation tion for this new global era the twentieth century, these of innovative programs and for today’s newly diverse higher education realists are population of students. In- content to provide “elite” ed- and pedagogies deed, we are starting to see the ucation to elites and voca- outlines of an emerging con- tional skills to everyone else. sensus on what this newly Other observers, more critical of the academy reinvigorated liberal education should entail itself, believe that liberal education is falling and even on the imperative of ensuring that victim to its own rigidity. The liberal arts, these more students—including first generation and FEATURED TOPIC 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 8LIBERAL E DUCATION S PRING 2004 first-year seminars on liberal arts topics to to integrative learning helps ensure that stu- writing-in-the-disciplines programs to under- dents will learn to take context and complexity graduate research to senior capstone projects into account when they apply their analytical and courses, colleges and universities are pio- skills to challenging problems. The new im- neering new educational practices clearly in- portance of integrative learning also holds the tended to teach all students how to make power to bridge—at last—the long-standing sense of complexity, how to find and use evi- cultural divide in which one set of disciplines, dence, and how to apply their knowledge to the arts and sciences, has been regarded as in- new problems and unscripted questions. In tellectual but not practical, while the profes- doing so, they are bringing new vitality to one sional fields are viewed as practical but, for of the oldest and most enduring goals of lib- that very reason, inherently illiberal. Analysis FEATURED TOPIC 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 address social problems in cooperation with A philosophy of education that empowers in- others. This revival of civic engagement and dividuals, liberates the mind from ignorance, 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- tion movements also have developed a wealth Liberal Arts Colleges of programs—curricular and co-curricular— A particular institutional type—often small, 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 of integrative and culminating studies for their General Education 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 the pop- for developing important intellectual and civic ularity of field-based learning, today’s students capacities. now have multiple, structured opportunities to make connections across disciplines and fields, —from Greater Expectations: A New Vision for to connect theories to practice, and even to en- Learning as a Nation Goes to College gage their own lived experiences in the con- text of what they are learning in general edu- cation and in their majors. This commitment S PRING 2004 LIBERAL E DUCATION 9 students achieve the traditional benefits of “liberal arts” education.