Abstract
During the past 25 years, the meaning and purpose of higher education, the quality of education, and what students should know in the twenty-first century became leading topics at conferences, in panel reports, and in campus committees. Campus reformers faced the concerns of a public (students and their parents) who viewed college as a way in which to obtain a good job; policy makers who perceived college as a spur to public service, economic growth, and workforce development; and business leaders who wanted to hire graduates who were capable of thinking analytically, communicating effectively, and engaging in collaborative problem solving with a diverse community of colleagues and clients. Faculty were concerned that students needed a more significant understanding of math, science, society, the arts, and human culture. With these issues in mind, college committees worked on curricular changes that would provide undergraduates with multiple opportunities to develop lifelong practical learning skills without sacrificing the goals of a liberal arts education.
As nearly as I can determine, the liberal arts were originally not arts at all as we understand the term; neither in the present sense of the word were they liberal…. [T]hey were liberal in that they constituted the education of a free man or gentleman in contrast to the vulgar craftsmanship developed by the slave…
… We have come to emphasize instead another quality not originally intended but always easy to read into this word “liberal.” The liberal arts, we say, are the liberalizing arts, the studies that liberate the mind and send it questing on strange and alluring adventures.
Alfred H. Upham (1930)
The curriculum has been an arena in which the dimensions of American culture have been measured, an environment for certifying an elite at one time and for facilitating the mobility of an emerging middle class at another. It has been one of those places where we have told ourselves who we are.
Frederick Rudolph (1977)
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Notes
The epigraphs to this chapter are drawn from Alfred H. Upham, “The Liberal Arts,” Association of American Colleges Bulletin 26, no. 3 (1930): 332–33 and
Frederick Rudolph, Curriculum: A History of the American Undergraduate Course of Study Since 1636 (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1977), 1.
Ernest L. Boyer, College: The Undergraduate Experience in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 110–11.
See Jerry G. Gaff, “Prologue,” in Strong Foundations: Twelve Principles for Effective General Education Programs (Washington, DC: The Association of American Colleges, 1994), i.
Barbara S. Fuhrmann, “Philosophies and Aims,” in Handbook of the Undergraduate Curriculum: A Comprehensive Guide to Purposes, Structures, Practices, and Change, ed. Jerry G. Gaff, James L. Ratcliff, and associates (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997), 89.
For an understanding of where and when the term liberal arts came into being, I rely heavily on historian Bruce A. Kimball. For a comprehensive and provocative study of liberal education, see Kimball, Orators and Philosophers: A History of the Idea of Liberal Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1986), 2–11.
Kimball refers the reader to Richard S. Peters’s, “Ambiguities in Liberal Education and the Problem of Its Content,” in Ethics and Educational Policy, ed. Kenneth A. Strike and Kieran Egan (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), 4, 6;
J. Winfree Smith, A Search for the Liberal College: The Beginning of the St. John’s Program (Annapolis, MD: St. John’s College Press, 1983), 18.
Robert Orrill, “Editor’s Prologue,” in Education and Democracy: Re-imagining Liberal Learning in America, ed. Robert Orrill (New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1997), xv–xix.
Robert Maynard Hutchins, The Higher Learning in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1936), 78.
Thomas H. Huxley, Science and Education (New York: D. Appleton, 1896), 152.
Horace M. Kallen, The Education of Free Men: An Essay toward a Philosophy of Education for Americans (New York: Farrar, Straus and Company, 1949), xvii–xix.
Orrill, “Editor’s Prologue,” xvii. For more insightful information see John Dewey, “Construction and Criticism,” in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925–1953, vol. 5: 1929–1930, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984), 127–43.
Jacques Maritain, Education at the Crossroads (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1943), 57.
Ibid., 203–04. See Theodore M. Greene, “Liberal Education and Democracy,” Association of American Colleges Bulletin 27, no. 1 (1941): 45–52;
Theodore M. Greene et al., Liberal Education Re-examined: Its Role in a Democracy, by a Committee Appointed by the American Council of Learned Societies (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1943); “The Post-War Responsibilities of Liberal Education: Report of the Committee on the Re-Statement of the Nature and Aims of Liberal Education,” Association of American Colleges Bulletin 29, no. 2 (1943): 275–99;
James P. Baxter III, “Commission on Liberal Education Report,” Association of American Colleges Bulletin 29, no. 2 (1943): 269–74.
See the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Missions of the College Curriculum: A Contemporary Review with Suggestions (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1977), 164–85.
For an overall understanding of the multiple meanings of the word curriculum, see James L. Ratcliff, “What Is a Curriculum and What Should It Be?” in Gaff et al., Handbook of the Undergraduate Curriculum, 5–29.
Ernest L. Boyer and Arthur Levine, A Quest for Common Learning: The Aims of General Education (Washington, DC: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, [1981]), 2–3.
Association of American Colleges, Integrity in the College Curriculum: A Report to the Academic Community (Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges, 1985), i–iii.
See Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987).
Mildred García and James L. Ratcliff, “Social Forces Shaping the Curriculum,” in Gaff et al., Handbook of the Undergraduate Curriculum, 122.
See James L. Ratcliff et al., The Status of General Education in the Year 2000: Summary of a National Survey (Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2001), 5.
Carol Geary Schneider and Robert Shoenberg, Contemporary Understandings of Liberal Education (Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities, 1998), 12.
Association of American Colleges and Universities, College Learning for the New Global Century: Executive Summary with Employers’ Views on Learning Outcomes and Assessment Approaches (Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2008), 10.
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© 2012 Nancy Kindelan
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Kindelan, N. (2012). The Evolution of the Liberal Arts. In: Artistic Literacy. The Arts in Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137008510_2
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