General education - a new direction
Media
Part of Panorama
- Title
- General education - a new direction
- Language
- English
- Source
- Panorama XX (6) June 1968
- Year
- 1968
- Rights
-
- Fulltext
- ■ This article provides a better understanding of the teaching of general education and its advan tages than many superficial statements on the subject. GENERAL EDUCATION - A NEW DIRECTION It has always- puzzled me to try to understand our aca demic mentality. Ideally, we agree that general and special education should sup plement each other. Prac tically, we find ourselves in verbal conflict, in which ge neral education usually comes out second-best. Tradition is not on its side, nor is prestige. Today a teacher’s value is too often measured by the number of grants he brings to the institution and the smallness of the time he devotes to teaching. Certainly general education must take some of the res ponsibility for its present un easy position. We have ppt things together in a kind of crazy quilt fashion. We have, denounced survey courses as superficial but in effect have gone right on using them. We have set up thousands of high-sound ing objectives for our courses while paying little or no at tention to the real residues the student may carry away from them. Frightened by the bogy of standards, we have made our courses dif ficult instead of challenging and interesting. Like the rest of higher education, we have spoonfed our students with well organized lectures, controlled their supposedly immature minds in class dis cussion, and give them little or no chance to discover the joy of learning for them selves or creating vital ideas of their own. I am more convinced than ever that we can produce better learning by doing less so-called teach ing. As David Riesman puts it, “There is the paradoxical possibility that teachers are now too erudite and capable, for their students are given to feel that there is little left to discover for them selves ... There is hardly any room in which students can outflank (their teachers) and gain the feeling of in 44 Panorama dependence, that comes in this way.” In the natural sciences, for example, the teachers have been too devoted to their subject matter to do a good job for the nonscientist. I have about come to the con clusion that this job in science for the non-scientist might be better done by a philosopher — or by a scien tist-philosopher- historian team. Graduate preparation of all kinds of college teach ers, narrowly specialized as it is, gets in our way and keeps us from breathing life and meaning into liberal education. General education is not merely the victim of change; it is also the victim of its own blundering, philandering, andj ot. ‘2 gl!in academic eruatnonA) But let us not overlook its successes. It has opened the doors to experimentation, to better ways of dealing with the vastness of accelerating knowledge, and to better teaching. It has produced many fine programs and kept hopes alive for reaching more vital goals. It has by no means com pleted its mission, nor has it failed in its mission. Those who strangle it to pro vide more time for specia lization are focusing merely on a brief moment of the present. Yes, we need tech nicians and specialists. We also need in these same hu man beings those who can see, think, and evaluate the possibilities of the future in terms of the swift-moving present. Our pressing prob lems are noc technical; they are human. When we are willing to take a close look at the needs of our college product, when we are willing to quit build ing curriculums for the con venience of faculties and turn our attention to the student — how he learns, and what we can do to help him help himself — when we recognize that we as teachers have only a humble place in the learning process as the starters and promo ters of self-discovery and self-achievement, we will not need to worry longer about any conflict between breadth and depth. It will take care of itself. We can achieve this by doing less teaching, thus providing opportunity for more learning. June 1968 45 At this moment, one can see ahead only a hazy con tinuation of the present trend. There is only the mad drive for specialization and more education, what ever its nature. Continuing; down this path indefinitely can lead only to debasing the academic currency. General education needs to take a new direction. It has spent too much time revising and tinkering with curriculums and too little effort stimulating and inspi ring students. Our curricu lums must relate more close ly to life, to change, and to students. I have ^aid ma ny times that general edu cation curriculums should be torn up and thrown away every five years. Only in this way can they retain vi tality. We need to reduce and simplify our objectives and bring them closer to life. The student today is merely jumping ^through hoops to get thgf~ coveted degree, let we think ftro-pro viding hinX with ar ftdnration. If it is true that stu dents no longer trust any one over 30, we need to take a long hard look at what is wrong with us and our system. They have good reason to distrust us. We have long needed more meaningful prepara tion of college teahers, not only for general education but all fields. It is not enough today to be able to talk and to know one’s sub ject well. This kind of hand out teaching reaches the lowest level of efficiency if we are talking about real education. Most desperately we need experimentation in new ways of teaching as reflected in student learning, which is, after all, the only reason for teaching. We need a few institutions willing to go all out in experimenting, with the focus on the learning teaching process, in an ho nest and sustained effort to release all students from our present stupid system of cre dit accounting and the de based state of classroom handout bondage. Student independene and freedom to learn, evc;i if the process is slow and painful, must be the major objectives. I am convinced thaU there is pri vate-venture capital available to any institutions willing to 46 ORAMA strike out boldly in this di rection. It is time for this kind of experimentation on a ma jor scale. The place for it is in general education, where what we cover is of much less importance than what the student does with his own mind. We have all the accessory apparatus for moving rapidly ahead, such as teaching machines, work books, textbooks, and audio visual tapes to provide es sential handout learning of facts. The teacher must be free for the critical job — to raise questions (but not to answer them), to guide; prod, lead, provoke, and counsel as needed. This, is my judgment, is the essential direction gene ral education must take — to lead the way up and out of an educational stalemate with massive efforts to blast a new road toward intellec tual freedom. A former speech teacher, now an emi nent statesman-leader, said recently: “Most of all we need 'an education that will create the educated mind — not simply a repository of information and skills, but a source of creative skepti cism, characterized by a wil lingness to challenge and be challenged,... It means a fundamental improvement in the quality of our educa tion.'’ But there is no way to improve the quality of edu cation without seeking new directions. We have come close to the end of conven tional improvements — bet ter lectures, better discus sions, better textbooks, bet ter facilities. Experiment after experiment has shown us that students learn about the same amount of subject matter whether they are in large classes or small classes, lectures or discussions, be fore living teachers or view ing dudiovisual tapes, before machines or using work books. We have juggled with such experiments long enough. We need a few courageous institutions willing to takfc this kind of risk, not to in troduce safe independent honors programs for the se-. lected few, but to go out for freedom from traition and bondage — for all. Team teaching, with its strong counseling segment June 1968 47 and its emphasis on the stu dent, provides an ideal start ing place. The situation indicates the need for a sharp change in direction. Someone must make the change boldly; someone must support it ge nerously; someone must pro duce this minor miracle quickly. The alternative for general education is gentle demise. The alternative for all of higher education is a half-life of useless resi due. There is already a wide-open door — through well conceived existing pro grams of general education, and some willing leaders. — By Sidney J. French in the Journal of General Educa tion. LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE If I should sell both my forenoons and after noons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage. I wish to sug gest that a man may be very industrious, and yet ‘not Spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. All great enterprises are self-supporting. The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planing mill feeds its boilers with the shavings it makes. You must get your living by loving. But as it is said, of the merchants that ninety-seven in a hundred fail, so the life of men generally, tried by this standard, is a failure, and bankruptcy may be surely prophesied. — Henry David Thoreau 48 Panorama
- pages
- 44-48