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Liberal Education, Spring 2003
The Challenge of Liberal Education: Past,
Present, and Future
Ellen Condliffe Lagemann |
We live in a world that is fundamentally new--new in
the often fearful interconnectedness of regions, states, and
people; new in both the scope of the challenges we face in
finding and sustaining peace and in the consequences we face
if we fail to achieve peace; and new, too, in the heterogeneity
of the peoples with whom we live, work, and communicate. As
globalization has changed the world we know, it has brought
great opportunity and challenge and it has added renewed vigor
to old, familiar questions. One such question is the one I
would like to take up: What can we learn from the past to
enliven our thinking about liberal education in the present
and future?
Let me begin with two comments on the current situation
of American higher education. The first is simple. According
to a recent report of the Carnegie Corporation of New York,
higher education today is significantly more professional
and technical in orientation than it was thirty years ago.
In 1970, 50 percent of all bachelor's degrees were awarded
in a liberal arts subject. In 2000, nearly 60 percent of the
degrees were awarded in a pre-professional or technical field.
I could multiply the statistics, but I do not think that is
necessary to make the point. Today's college students do not
have time or money to waste. They are careful consumers. And
they are voting with their feet for more vocationally oriented
programs of study.
My second observation derives from an essay by the journalist
Nicholas Lemann, called "The Kids in the Conference
Room." It is about recent college graduates, mostly
from highly selective institutions, who are recruited to work
at consulting firms for at least a few years after graduation.
As Lemann put it, working for McKinsey & Co., or some
close approximate, is "the present-day equivalent of
working for the C.I.A. in the nineteen-fifties, or the Peace
Corps in the sixties, or Ralph Nader in the seventies, or
First Boston in the eighties--[it is] the job that encapsulates
the Zeitgeist of the moment." Lemann goes on to point
out that working for McKinsey for a few years is "an
ideal placeholder" for bright young people, who leave
college with heavy debt and no certain idea of where they
want to end up vocationally.
To me, there is a disturbing paradox evident in the data
presented in the Carnegie Corporation's report and the observation
made by Lemann. On the one hand, student course selection
indicates that they want their college education to prepare
them for careers. On the other hand, by contrast, those students
who attend our most selective institutions--all of which,
I might add, consider themselves liberal arts colleges and
universities--graduate without a clear sense of vocational
direction. At a time of extreme social challenge, we seem
to have few alternatives between clear and, inevitably, rather
narrow vocational preparation and seemingly directionless
programs of liberal study. This makes me wonder whether in
the challenge of our moment in history there is not a way
to enliven the liberal arts by organizing them around deliberate
consideration of what it means to have a vocation.
Having a calling
The word vocation implies more than earning a living or
having a career. The word vocation implies having a calling:
knowing who one is, what one believes, what one values, and
where one stands in the world. A sense of vocation is not
something fully achieved early in life. For those of us who
are lucky, it grows over time, becomes more articulate, and
deepens. Granting, then, that a sense of vocation develops
over time, it is still not unreasonable to suggest that one
purpose of a college education, and a central purpose of liberal
education, should be to nurture an initial sense of vocation.
This might encompass personal dispositions such as awareness
of the importance of deliberate choices, individual agency,
and social connection as well as recognition, albeit initial,
of the ways of thinking and acting that seem most personally
congenial. It should also include a capacity for civic intelligence.
This requires that one recognize one's personal stake in public
problems, global as well as domestic. It also necessitates
respect for tolerance, the rights of others, evidence-based
decision making, and deliberative judgment--in a word,
respect for the values of due process that are essential to
a democratic way of life. Vocation is not simply about an
individual calling. It is about one's calling within one's
society and, increasingly, across different societies around
the world.
Historically, it is quite easy to see the power of vocation
as a driving force in the education of individual people.
One might even venture that vocation, broadly defined, in
the terms I have just described, tends usually to be the theme
that links the different experiences that define an individual's
education. Bearing in mind that I am trying to draw from history
to help us think well about the liberal arts today and tomorrow,
let me illustrate the importance of vocation by saying a few
words about the education of some very well-known people.
Benjamin Franklin
The first person is Benjamin Franklin, who left us a wonderful
record of his life in his Autobiography. Franklin was born
in Puritan Boston in 1706, the tenth son and fifteenth child
of Josiah Franklin and his second wife, Abiah. Intended for
the ministry by his father, Ben was sent to what is now called
the Boston Latin School at the age of eight. He survived only
a year. The tuition at Boston Latin was high, and Ben was
not sufficiently pious to make a promising candidate for the
ministry. His penchant for practical efficiency led him to
suggest to his father that he say grace over the family's
food once for the entire year rather than before every meal.
A struggling candle maker, Josiah quickly realized that Ben
was not suited for the church.
At that point, a search for vocation began. Nothing appealed
to young Ben, so, in desperation, Josiah apprenticed Ben to
his older brother James, who was a printer.
It was as a printer's apprentice that Ben Franklin began
quite self-consciously to find ways to understand who he was
as a person. He did this initially by taking on the roles
of people he was not. While working for his brother James,
Ben wrote fourteen essays describing the complaints of a poor
rural widow, whom he named Silence Dogood. In so doing, he
initiated a process of self-definition that one can also see
in Poor Richard's Almanac, which Franklin wrote as a prosperous
printer in Philadelphia, or in reports and portraits of Franklin
as a seasoned diplomat, parading around Paris dressed as a
rural hick in a coonskin cap. Repeatedly throughout his life,
Ben Franklin sought, defined, and clarified who he was in
relation to others, by juxtaposing his own persona with those
of others different from him.
Knowing oneself
If what might be described as role playing was an important
part of Franklin's search for vocation, so were his various
deliberate attempts at self-improvement. As a young man, for
example, Ben created a chart to measure his progress toward
moral perfection. It began with fairly obvious virtues such
as "Temperance--Eat not to dullness. Drink not
to elevation." And it ended with more adventuresome
ones like "Humility--Imitate Jesus and Socrates."
As a Philadelphia merchant, Franklin organized the Junto,
a discussion group that considered ways to better the city
and then sponsored projects to carry out specific reforms
and improvements. Whether charting his own progress toward
perfection or examining his city's adequacy as a growing urban
center, Franklin was studying who he was, what his responsibilities
were as a virtuous person or a civic leader, and, especially
in the case of the Junto, how actions taken for the public
good advanced not only the well-being of his fellow citizens
of Philadelphia, but also his own stature as a first citizen
and, increasingly, as a very wealthy printer and statesman.
If Franklin's own education was energized by an extraordinarily
self-conscious effort constantly to find a congenial, public
role for himself--a vocation--so, too, were his
writings about education predicated on the importance of vocation.
Consider as an example, the "Proposals Relating to the
Education of Youth in Pennsylvania," which was a plan
for what became the University of Pennsylvania. In this document,
Franklin admitted, "It would be well if [the youth of
Pennsylvania] could be taught every Thing that is useful and
every Thing that is ornamental." But Franklin observed:
"Art is long, and [the students'] Time is short. It
is therefore propos'd that they learn those Things that are
likely to be most useful and most ornamental, regard being
had to the Professions for which they are intended."
Here, subsequent occupation became an explicit guide in the
selection of the subjects to be studied.
In line with his emphasis on vocation, Franklin insisted
that the curriculum for the new university be modern. It was
to be free of medieval anachronism. Thus, it should include
contemporary writers along with the classics. Although all
students should study English grammar, instruction in foreign
languages should vary by future profession. Franklin did not
dispense with all traditional learning, but the curriculum
he generated reflected his insistent belief that, by preparing
young men for a useful role in the world, advanced learning
could have greater meaning for both the individual and the
society of which that individual was a part (women, it was
then, of course, presumed, did not need advanced education).
Having been essential to his own education, vocation became
a foundation for the education Franklin recommended for others.
Jane Addams
Jane Addams's life was also inspired by a search for vocation.
Growing up in central Illinois, Addams greatly admired her
father, a prominent local lawyer and first citizen of Cedarville,
Illinois, with whom she had an especially close relationship
since her mother died when she was two. She recalled in her
autobiography that, as a child, she had spent many hours trying
to imitate her father. But, of course, Addams could not imitate
her father exactly since as a woman her occupational choices
were restricted.
Rather than retreat to a traditional role, Addams instead
embraced the fact of gender limitation and defined herself
and her generation in opposition to traditional expectations.
Speaking of changes in the education offered to women, as
a student at Rockford Seminary in 1881, Addams said: "[Women's
education] has passed from accomplishments and the arts of
pleasing, to the development of her intellectual force, and
capability for direct labor. She wishes not to be a man, nor
like a man, but she claims the same right to independent thought
and action…. As young women of the 19th century, we
gladly claim these privileges, and proudly assert our independence…
. So we have planned to be ‘Breadgivers' throughout
our lives; believing….that the only true and honorable
life is now filled with good works and honest toil….[we
will] thus happily fulfill Woman's Noblest Mission."
The articulate and self-conscious search for vocation that
Jane Addams was able to describe in this statement had been
shaped by the formal study in which she engaged at Rockford.
The curriculum, while Addams was a student there, included
Latin, Greek, German, geology, astronomy, botany, medieval
history, civil government, music, American literature, and
evidence of Christianity. But, as her peers recalled, "the
intellectual ozone" that exuded from "her vicinity"
came from her unusual determination and purpose. Jane Addams's
insistent wish to find a way to express her ideals and talents,
despite the limitations imposed on her as a woman, was clearly
an extended and successful search for vocation.
That search, of course, eventually led her to the West Side
of Chicago, where, with Ellen Gates Starr, she founded Hull
House, a world-famous social settlement that provided social,
educational, and cultural services to the diverse immigrant
population of that neighborhood. Hull House's fame came, in
part, from the fact that Jane Addams helped to support it
by writing constantly for magazines and by lecturing. But
it is important to realize that it was not merely economics
that drove Jane Addams's public expressions. It was both a
desire to educate the educated middle-class public about how
their neighbors lived and also to continue to work out for
herself what she was doing and why it mattered. Questions
of vocation continued to drive Jane Addams's education even
after she founded Hull House.
W.E.B. Du Bois
As an educated woman, Addams was constrained by the fact of
her sex, and yet eager to be effective in the world. One could
say that she bore the burden of what her contemporary W.E.B.
Du Bois called a "double consciousness." Perhaps
a sense of social marginality is always at the root of soul-searching
concerning who one is and where one can contribute to the
common good. Certainly that was the case for Du Bois, who,
throughout his long life struggled to understand whether and
how he, as a black man, could be an American. Like Addams,
Du Bois turned his personal anguish about vocation into sometimes
stinging, always acute social criticism. His keenest insight
was probably the line that introduced the second chapter of
Souls of Black Folk: "The problem of the twentieth century
is the problem of the color line." However that may
be, having learned as a young schoolboy in Great Barrington,
Massachusetts, that he was seen as different and "a
problem" by his classmates, Du Bois spent most of his
ninety-five years writing about what he could and could not
do as a Black American. Even at the very end of his life,
when he left the United States for Ghana, Du Bois was still
figuring out his place in the world.
Searching for vocation is a deep human need that different
cultures and different historical eras have treated differently.
My suggestion here is that colleges and universities today
need to acknowledge the educative drive one can see in the
lives of people like W.E.B. Du Bois, Jane Addams, and Benjamin
Franklin, and, recognizing the essentially vocational character
of that drive, find ways to make vocational exploration central
to liberal education.
Vocational exploration and faculty roles
I trust that the difference I assume between vocational
and occupational exploration is clear already. Vocational
exploration is about identity formation within the context
of a particular society and a particular time. Occupational
exploration, by contrast, is considering one's job alternatives.
Vocational exploration is, in my view, the job of the faculty;
occupational exploration is a matter for the office of career
services.
To make vocational exploration a more important aspect of
liberal education, faculty will need to re-think their roles.
They will need to take seriously John Dewey's admonition that
if one teaches math, history, or science in school, one must
remember that it is people that one is really teaching, and
not the subject matter. The subject matter is the medium through
which one seeks to nurture habits of deliberation and orientations
toward inquiry. It is the medium through which one helps people
to learn to learn. Hopefully, the subject matter of the school
curriculum is also important knowledge that is worth mastering.
Still, it is worth acknowledging that teaching is not merely
about furnishing the mind. It is equally, if not more importantly,
about shaping, energizing, and refining the mind.
This is difficult for teachers in K-12 schools to keep in
mind, and it is even more difficult for professors. Virtually
all professors are trained as scholars. A number are now also
being trained as teachers. Even when teaching is presented
to graduate students as an art to be valued and mastered,
it is still one's scholarly credentials that tend to get one
a job, and it is certainly one's scholarly credentials that
determine whether one wins tenure. Hence, it will take determined,
steady work to convince faculty members that they are, first,
teaching young people, and secondly, teaching some aspect
of the field they profess.
More important, giving increased primacy to overall student
development will also necessitate institutional reform. As
we all know, colleges and universities, especially the most
selective, are reluctant to modify the model that has helped
them to thrive for more than fifty years. As Louis Menand
recently observed in the New York Review of Books, from the
end of World War II until quite recently, universities flourished
if they gave priority to research and publication and increasingly
specialized knowledge. This enabled the faculty to view their
teaching and advisement responsibilities as less important
than their "own work," which was fairly transparent
code for going to the library or laboratory to develop new
ideas.
Giving teaching and advisement equal priority among faculty
activities will be necessary to engage faculty more centrally
in the lives and vocational concerns of their students. And
that is not all that will need to be altered to give more
emphasis to matters of vocation.
Humanistic values
Generally, today, core liberal arts subjects are taught in
ways that are intended to give students an introduction to
characteristic ways of thinking in a discipline, to the essential
elements of an area, and, more generally, to what I would
call the map of knowledge in some particular domain. All that
is important. But the purposes currently most commonly associated
with liberal arts study represent an unnecessarily narrow
conception of why one should read Shakespeare or consider
the ideas of French philosophers.
In addition to their canonical value, subjects like these
have humanistic value. They can and should encourage thought
about oneself and others and about virtue and vice--the
good, the bad, and the ugly. They can and should encourage
thought about vocation, in the broad sense in which I am using
this word. As the philosopher William James once asserted,
a liberal education should "help you…know a good
man when you see him." That is because a liberal education,
at least according to James, is not a matter of taking certain
specific courses, but rather of viewing any subject in terms
of its "humanistic value," its value to illuminate
the human condition.
Of course, in many liberal arts classes there is discussion
of the humanistic side of things. But without neglecting canonical
perspectives, which are important for helping students locate
knowledge in historical or cultural perspective, the humanistic
side of things could be given greater emphasis if faculty
members spent more time talking with students about what they
could learn and what they are learning about their own interests,
values, and sense of person and place as well as what they
are learning about the subject matter in question.
Going "meta" with students, by which I mean
helping them realize that they should be learning about themselves
while reading the Tempest or debating Camus and not merely
becoming culturally literate, is not something, at least in
my experience, that faculty members tend to do systematically
and on a regular basis. They tend not to do this because they
tend not to have learned about meta-cognition. They tend not
to know that it is pedagogically powerful to help students
understand how and why they can learn what they are learning.
Being subject-matter specialists as opposed to teachers, they
tend not to touch upon the personal because they are instead
inclined to focus on insuring an understanding of, say, the
play's structure or meaning. Taking this one step further
to capture in addition how and why the play connects to particular
students is to take a step beyond a faculty member's role
at least as traditionally configured. It would require pedagogical
knowledge that many professors lack. But doing this would
likely enhance a student's interest. It would offer a vital,
personal reason for studying Shakespeare beyond knowing that
somehow it is good to be "cultured."
Vocational interests can make the liberal arts more compelling
to students, and so can tying programs of liberal education
quite directly to the world and its problems. This is happening
increasingly on college campuses today as more and more institutions
offer programs of service learning. More often than not, however,
such programs are special courses often linked to community
service of one kind or another. What I have in mind is broader.
Emerson observed that without action "thought can never
ripen into truth." If that is, indeed, the case, as
I believe it is, then, virtually all college classes should
have some kind of practicum attached to them. There is a lot
of this already going on, but there needs to be more translation
of classroom abstractions into action. This would enhance
learning because the test of knowledge is in its application
and also because constantly having opportunities to act in
the world will help students develop a sense of vocation.
Having to help their students apply the models and theories
they were presenting in their classes would also present faculty
with a salutary challenge. After all, the efficacy of a professor's
ideas would be evident in his or her students' worldly competence.
That is a high threshold for faculty accountability, but one
that is not out of line in our times. The challenges we face
domestically and globally are vast. With poverty, disease,
and inequity fueling attacks on secular democracies around
the world, we cannot allow colleges and universities to be
home to what Alfred North Whitehead called "inert ideas."
Instead, we need to encourage faculty to become engaged with
the problems around us in ways that will at once contribute
to our society as well as to their students and their own
competence and even wisdom as scholars.
Recalling our mission
None of what I have said is very new or original. But I believe
that the problems facing all of us require recalling what
our collective mission is. Colleges and universities grew
up across the United States for all sorts of reasons. Many
were founded to insure the continuance of a particular religious
group. Some were established to increase the land values in
a small town. All were intended to educate people who could
provide the leadership necessary to improve society. That's
why the capstone experience for nineteenth century college
students at liberal arts colleges was a course in moral philosophy
usually taught by the college's president. The course was
intended to insure that graduates would know their responsibilities
as college-educated people (actually, with few exceptions,
college-educated men). It provided a last chance to inculcate
values and a sense of one's self as an educated citizen. It
offered a final window on the opportunities and challenges
then current in the locality and the region and across the
United States.
I do not entirely live in the past and I do not think we
can revive moral philosophy classes. But I do think we need
to re-embrace the logic behind them. Liberal education should
establish one's sense of direction, one's knowledge of one's
self as an active, effective person and citizen. Liberal education
should ready one to participate in the defining issues of
our times. Whether it's the AIDS epidemic in southern Africa,
the chaos of states like Afghanistan that lack basic civil
infrastructures, or the social anomalies we observe in our
own country where there are, for example, racial achievement
gaps among high school students in both wealthy, racially
integrated suburbs and blighted urban areas, social challenges
like these should be familiar to graduates of liberal arts
colleges. They should have helped to define how graduates
see themselves making a difference in the world.
By giving renewed emphasis to their vocational purposes,
liberal arts colleges and universities can help people live
productively, responsibly, and well, amidst all the confusions
of the present times. By making matters of vocation central
to all they do, liberal arts colleges and universities can
play a more direct role in improving the world. This is not
to say that detached, seemingly idle speculation and abstract
knowledge do not have value--great value--in institutions
of liberal learning. They do. My concern is balance and underscoring
the educative power of vocational interests. The famed social
psychologist Kurt Lewin once said, "There is nothing
so useful as a good theory," and following his logic,
I would like to close by saying: There is nothing more liberal
or liberating than education approached with matters of vocation
foremost in mind. Our students seem to know that. We should
give them the kind of education they want and deserve.
Ellen Condliffe Lagemann is Charles Warren
Professor of the history of American education and dean of
the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Excerpted from the
keynote address at AAC&U's 2003 Annual Meeting.
To respond to this article, e-mail:
liberaled@aacu.org, with author's name on the subject
line.
The full text of the address can be heard at www.gse.Harvard.edu/news/features/
lagemann02012003.html
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