After General Education, What?

by W. Robert Connor, on Liblog (August 8, 2005)

A recent entry on "Liblog," a Web log about liberal education written by Teagle Foundation President W. Robert Connor, considers the future of liberal education. Noting that the general education model embodied in Harvard's Red Book is "unlikely to be revived in Cambridge or any other place," Connor questions the assumption that liberal education's fate is identical to the fate of such traditional general education programs. Instead of lamenting the passing of the common body of knowledge that was at the heart of those older programs, he suggests that we should recognize liberal education as the product "not of a few courses in general education, but of some mastery of the artes liberales." These, he continues, "are not subject matter or content, but skills--ways of knowing, thinking, arguing, valuing."

So how, Connor asks, "do we get today's students to develop those artes liberales even if they don't all study the same texts and problems"? The answer may lie in innovative approaches to teaching, he says. As examples, he points to a history professor at Barnard College who is using role playing to engage students with the past, and to a first-year seminar program at Ursinus College that deliberately raises "big questions" about life with students. When faculty are willing to take such pedagogical risks and "meet students at their own level," Connor suggests, they can help students develop the skills that are the hallmark of a liberally educated person.

To read the full text of this and other Liblog entries, visit the Teagle Foundation online. For information about AAC&U's work on liberal education, visit our liberal education resources page.