The End(s) of General Education?

Drury, like many institutions, is in the midst of reviewing and revising its general education curriculum. The conversation is intense and as someone who has been deeply involved in the current curriculum, I have participated in many of these discussions. I do think the conversation is progressing even if I am not sure exactly where it is leading. (Curricular reform is kind of like sausage, you don't want to watch it being made . . . . )

This whole conversation, however, has left me feeling rather conflicted between the vocabulary of general education reform and my own approach to teaching and learning. The key words in general education reform - assessment, learning styles, pedagogy, student engagement, global learning seem to miss the point.

I find my confusion is the greatest after teaching a "good" class. It seems to me that the best class sessions are pretty narrowly focused affairs in which students and faculty really grapple with some text, evidence or problem. While we may hit a whole host of general education outcomes, the bland goal or outcome statements just don't do justice to the detailed conversation in which I just participated. Learning is not always predictable and it can be a challenge to figure out what will work with a given group of students and where classroom conversations lead. Moreover, it was the preparation and the participation in an intellectual conversation that seemed to be the point more than the subject-matter or the intellectual products produced. While the claim of general education is that helps "educated people" share an intellectual universe, the reality is that sometimes learning alienates us from the supposed intellectual and popular universe for which we are supposedly preparing!

As a result, I want to say that the goal of general education is to create a structure where students might have a wide range of intellectual experiences and develop their thinking and communication skills. This is it - nothing more and nothing less. But, how do you quantify that? How do you know when a student is done? How do you do that in an era in which students get dual-enrollment in high school, transfer frequently between institutions, and change majors every semester? How about curricular structure, advisement, and the relationship between departments and general education? In addition, the assessment gurus will tell you that merely having a handful of good learning experiences does not necessarily translate into broader improvement in writing, critical thinking, etc.

But I think that is the problem. Education, following the ancients, is probably more about cultivating certain habits of the mind than it is becoming a repository of facts or reaching a particular level of attainment. I increasingly view education as a process or a way of life, but the trend in higher education administration is to view it through the lens of products, assessments, portfolios, and measurements.

So, where does this leave general education reform? I am not too sure other than to note that the tenure of national conversation about general education seems very modern and/or progressive. The irony is that most of us (especially university professors) have adopted a postmodern worldview and possess a deep skepticism about our disciplinary knowledge. Rather than a neutral or objective rhetoric, the whole concept of general education seems to carry with it a set of assumptions that may, in fact, be hostile to classical notions about learning and wisdom. The concept of general education also seems to conflict with contemporary assumptions about culture, sustainability, globalization, diversity, etc. The rhetoric of general education may be more attuned to the 1950s (or a caricature of the 1950s) with its neatly defined career paths, finite disciplinary boundaries and the confidence in academic knowledge to master and improve the world.

This all leaves me to wonder if general education is kind of like a rotary phone - at one point a great advance, but no longer a current technology. I am getting the sense that the "Age of General Education" may be passing. I just don't know what the next age will bring. Probably one version of this new world are places like University of Phoenix where general education is a checklist of sorts and something that can be infinitely transferred across borders and boundaries. The question is how places like Drury and other traditional liberal arts institutions will respond.