It is only three weeks into the quarter and, therefore, it is too early to celebrate, yes. But, dammit, I am excited. I am excited because it is clear that at least a few students are demonstrating that what we are trying to accomplish over the term's ten weeks is a lot more than merely the course contents and their eventual letter-grades.
The larger and nobler goal of liberal education is that even as we engage students with everything from economic geography to biology to literature, they would begin to use these to figure out for themselves the good life they would want to lead and the good and just society in which they would like to live. And, thus, contribute to making the world a better place for all of us.
We accomplish that by questioning, especially within ourselves.
Thus, when students' essays include comments that reflect that internal inquiry, I get excited. I am not referring to any youthful and anarchic dismissive statements, but constructive exercises. While thinking about the economic transformation over the past couple of centuries, a student writes in an assignment:
Instead of taking advantage of what people before us did, we sit and watch television all day. ... I went home with a different mindset and started appreciating all the time I had to do homework, and when I thought I was getting bored I would just think of other activities to do because I should value the free time I have.
Even if the student has already forgotten this and has gone back to the old ways, isn't it fantastic that the light shone brightly for those couple of days?
Another student notes in the context of the complex web of interdependent economic interactions in the world:
A lot goes into making our world livable, but many don't understand or think about these conveniences. Everyone should take an economic geography class so they too can understand how even small things are actually a big part of our world.
BTW, such opportunities to examine life won't be possible in a typical "test" scenario, especially when students have to merely bubble in their responses, right? All the way from the K-12 system and into the undergraduate studies, our fascination with
testing is simply killing learning.
I worry that students who have been brought up in a standardized testing environment will find it even more difficult to become thinkers and creative people. I am quite convinced that
I am beginning to see that already in my classes.
The gap in what students are expected to know between high school and college is often thought to be vast. A newly released survey quantifies just how wide it is.
Eighty-nine percent of high-school instructors described the students who had completed their courses as "well" or "very well" prepared for first-year, college-level work in their discipline. But only about one-quarter of college faculty members said the same thing about their incoming students. The gap was similar when the survey was last conducted, in 2009.
Even as I worry about all those, a few students like these easily convince me that the future will be in safe hands. A future that, in a democratic society, will depend on
citizens thinking about many, many important issues:
“When we ask about the relationship of a liberal education to
citizenship, we are asking a question with a long history in the Western
philosophical tradition. We are drawing on Socrates’ concept of ‘the
examined life,’ on Aristotle’s notions of reflective citizenship, and
above all on Greek and Roman Stoic notions of an education that is
‘liberal’ in that it liberates the mind from bondage of habit and
custom, producing people who can function with sensitivity and alertness
as citizens of the whole world.” –Martha Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education, 1998
We don't need
fancy buildings with climbing walls to achieve these goals, right?
 |
At the college where I did my undergrad
No liberal education there! |
