My Educational Platform - Plank #2: Liberal Arts -Is Liberal a Bad Thing?

It keeps coming around in circles:the philosophical struggle between educators who believe in a liberal arts education model and those who believe in the technical, or job-preparedness model.

I could write a book about this, but I’m going to limit myself here to two main issues:1.Liberal arts is not what it used to be. and2.To quote Robert Heinlein:“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

Many arts students balk at the idea of taking in-depth mathematics or sciences courses, just as many science students balk at the idea of taking upper level literature or humanities courses, but the point of a liberal arts education is the concept of the fully rounded individual.You really never know what information will be helpful or useful to you and when.My dad always used to tell me that algebra taught you how to think and learning it taught you how to learn.I may have hated it, but it did make a part of my mind work that I didn’t tend to use otherwise.The same is true for my friends who were in calculus and advanced physics when they had to take Shakespearean literature.They were using mental muscles that they didn’t want to use, but it was good for them.

The concept of a “liberal arts education” got a bad rap with working class America because “they [were] the arts appropriate to free persons, that is, persons who do not have to work for a living and have the leisure to pursue their interests in literature or philosophy.”(Wayne Bivens-Tatum:The Usefulness of the Liberal Arts)My father, who is a very politically conservative and shrewd and smart businessman, went to a business school on the G.I. bill after the Korean war.He financed my “liberal arts” education, but not without picking on me ruthlessly for becoming “liberal” for going to that school.But that is really no longer what a liberal arts education is.Today, employers are looking for individuals who can think themselves out of a crisis, who can meet a problem with creativity and finesse, who know how to learn new tools, who can look at historical and social precedent and interpret future trends, and who are strong communicators, both written and oral:in short, they want technologically-savvy people who have had a strong liberal arts education. (Think of Anne Hathaway's character in The Devil Wears Prada.)

My husband is a very, very good physician.He is one of a dying breed:a primary care doctor.It’s dying because insurance plans don’t like to cover preventative care, and people like to feel like they’re being treated by a “specialist.”However, primary care physicians ARE specialists:they are specialists in the whole of the body.Tim went to a medical school that was entrenched in the family medicine bio-psycho-social model – meaning the whole of a person’s physical health needs to be treated in relation to that person’s life, family, work, and mind.The human body, when opened up, appears to be a tangled and messy amalgamation of gloppy stuff – not sharply delineated, specific organs.The body works together as a whole, not discretely.Incidentally, my husband had a strong liberal arts education.He majored in theater and dance.One of his good friends in medical school was a philosophy major.Yes, they both got the requisite math and science they needed, but the whole of their education was so much more.

One of my biggest sadnesses as a community college instructor is to see students who have short-changed their education, or had their education short-changed over the years, now try to make a go of higher education without the prior knowledge to do well. Sometimes we have older students on the trade act who have just a few short semesters to get trained in a new career before they're funding gets taken away. This is battling really bad odds for them and for me, their teacher. Most of them have developmental needs. Most of them have been out of school so long, they can feel their mental muscles complaining over their school work. Many of them don't have the media literacy, the writing skills, or the math skills necessary to be trained in ANY decent career path. It's sobering and frightening.

Frequently I get recent high school graduates who never applied themselves to school a day in their lives, for whatever reason, show up the first day of class and think they're going to make it as "college" students. Some of them show up in English 080, and can't figure out why they ended up there. I've told all of these students that I wish I could go back in time to when they were children and somehow turn them into readers, real readers who read for pleasure - who see education as an adventure, not a torture. What I really and truly wish I could do is get them to embrace education for its own sake, because like I said before, you never know what piece of knowledge is going to be valuable to you at some future point in your life and career.

My Educational Platform - Plank #1: Ability Tracking - Birds on a Wire

(We've been asked to write up our educational platform in the course I'm taking for my graduate certificate in online instruction. I could write a book about this, but I'm gonna keep it to three "planks" in my platform for now.)

The Story:

I was a bright child. However, when I was in kindergarten and first grade, I scored consistently poor- to average in my coursework. My parents were befuddled, and I was frustrated. I was "tracked" into a lower (not upper) level curriculum. This curriculum was slower and not as challenging...and certainly not as interesting. I continued to do poorly, even in the "easier" curriculum.
My parents knew me and knew I was capable of doing better. They were so confused. They had conferences with my teachers; nothing seemed to help.
One day, I was taking a walk with mom and dad down our gravel road on a lovely early evening after dinner. I happened to glance up at the telephone lines and see something I couldn't identify. I asked my parents what those black dots were up there on the lines. They looked in the direction I was pointing and saw me squinting up at a troop of birds flapping their wings - which I could see only as dark blurry dots. It all became clear - to them, not to me - that their bright little girl simply needed glasses to correct astigmatism and near-sightedness. After I got the glasses and could see clearly for the first time in years (I never even knew the world could be so sharp and focused) I started to make high scores in all of my coursework.
But I remained tracked in the lower level for several grades regardless. Untracking me, or "re"tracking me was like steering the Titanic. Once you're labeled mediocre, that's how you continue to be perceived in the public schools. It wasn't until a particularly feisty 4th grade teacher petitioned for me to be put in a higher level in 5th grade that I got in with the bright kid crowd...and stayed there until I graduated, with honors, from high school.

My Experiences Since Then:

That story no doubt would leave readers to believe that I think ability tracking is inherently wrong. I do not. One of the hardest things for a teacher to deal with effectively is teaching a class full of students with a large range of ability levels. (My grandma did it in a one-room school house in West Virginia.) You can make all kinds of arguments for how the bright kids are supposed to teach the not-so-bright kids, but then, how is that fair to the bright kids? We know that kids who are not challenged in school tend to act out. We know that kids who are overwhelmed in school tend to act out. I’ve taught adults in developmental English classes who range from barely literate to just a point away from assessing into ENG 111 – how do I meet the needs of both and assess them fairly???

This being said, if we are going to separate out kids and adults based on their ability levels, we must bear three things in mind: 1. These levels are not and should not be thought of as permanent. You can assess out of them. (Upwards or downwards.) 2. We should not stick our new and unproven teachers in the lower levels, but rather our most talented and proven teachers – since the remedial programs require the most teaching talent and skill. 3. We need to build true learning communities regardless of the students’ skill levels. Learning must be a challenging but fun and uplifting environment. This will be no simple task, since kids and adult who are placed in “remedial” classes tend to already be antagonistic towards formal education. (Usually because they have been marginalized by it in the past.)