The Philosophy of the Curriculum-The Need for General ...

General Education and the University CrisisWrn. Theodore deBarybution which a discipline can make to understanding of the human selfand man in societvIt we can proceed on this basis we shall be in a position to exploit awide range of competences and be able also to honor that kind of scholarlycompetence which is adorned by a breadth of humane learning andinspirited by a depth of human concern. . . . As illustrations of appropriatesubjects we might cite the state, bureaucracy, urbanism, politicalmovements and organization, social protest and revolution, problems ofeducational, judicial and penal reform, of industrialism and agrarianism,technology, and the environment; of community planning, the family,ethnicity and ethnic relations, housing, health and welfare systems. Ifthese are obvious examples of problems with a strong social orientation,there are other topics directed more toward the problems of the individual:individual freedoms and rights, the individual in his biological,psychological and spiritual dimensions, his need for aesthetic expressionand so on. . . . These are perennial and universal concerns in the sensethat they can be found in most societies, past and present. They can bedealt with both historically and contemporarily, and in many casesshould be. Though we do not hesitate to stress the importance of theircontemporary relevance, and the desirability of having as direct an involvementas possible with the problems that surround us, it is equallyirnnortant that these problems be seen in a larger perspective and...- r--- --against a wide background of human experience.5What i have offered as a working description of a general-educationprogram does not depart substantially from the "working principlesand commitments" of the programs at Columbia, Chicago, andHarvard, which Bell summarized in these terms:1. Ideological. The initial impulses were the unifying needs of Americansociety and the desirability of instilling in students a sense ofcommon tasks, though not necessarily a single purpose. The key wordhere would be consensus.2. Tradition. In all three schools, the main effort has been .directed atmaking the student aware of the history of Western civilization in orderto broaden his vistas, to make him aware of the recurrent moral andpolitical problems of man in society, and to chart the travails of the ideaof freedom. If there is a single conclusion to which the program points, itwould be that of instilling the idea of civility.3. Contraspecialism. The American university, as it emerged in thelatter decades of the nineteenth century, brought with it a new religionof research. Even scholarship in the traditional disciplines was conceived,within that purview, as being concerned with detailed andspecialized problems. The reaction of the liberal-arts college was tostrike out against specialism. The rallying cry, in this respect, washumanitas.4. Integration. The multiplication of knowledge, the rise of many newsubfields and subspecialties, the crosscutting of fields, all led to a desirefor courses that emphasized the broad relationships of knowledge,rather than the single discipline. This integration was to be achievedthroclgh a survey of fields, the elucidation of fundamental principles ofdizciplines, the centrality of method, or a combination of all of these.Whatever the varying emphases, the underlying assumption was of theneed for an interdisciplinary approach; and this became one of the keyterms in the language of general education.6Elsewhere Bell offers six purposes of liberal education (which heimplies should also be served by general education) in the followingterms:1. To overcome intellectual provincialism;2. To appreciate the centrality of method (that is, the role of conceptual innovation);3. To gain an awareness of history;4. To show how ideas relate to social structures;5. To understand the way values infuse all inquiry;6. To demonstrate the civilizing role of the humanities.'Any such brief formulation as Bell's is always subject to qualification,especially as times change and emphases shift. I would myselffeel that another effort is needed to deal with contemporary issues and"common tasks" as one important aspect of general education. Thisshould not imply any diminution of attention to history, because historyis also greatly needed. But if the past should not be sacrificed tothe present, neither should the present be sacrificed to the past. It maybe possible to have more of both (though never all one would want) ifmore time is allotted over all to general education. In the new and largercontext it should become possible for values that seem inherentlyantithetical to be made complementary.Similarly, we must reckon with the need to overcome provincialityin new ways, while we still have not fully succeeded with the old. Themind-expanding possibilities in surveying "the full sweep of Westerncivilization" are far from exhausted, but in the meantime educationhas fallen badly behind in the assimilation of Oriental civilizations,even while their exploration both by scholars and young people hasProceeded apace. From the scholarly point of view, there has been avast expansion in the investigation of data and translation of Asianmaterials, but much too little use has been made of what has becomeavailable.Yet with all this, we cannot fail to observe how radically our situationhas changed in the last decade. The seeming rootlessness andmindlessness of many persons today makes "provinciality" almost an