MY TURN: Getting a Liberal Arts Education

Several years ago, I wrote a piece entitled "How to Live 20 Billion Years and Travel to the Ends of the Universe." It was written for my students and colleagues at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. A corny title--to be sure--but true, in a sense. It was about obtaining a liberal arts education--in the broadest sense of that term--across a lifetime of learning.

My thesis, then and now, is that the modern world offers exactly that possibility. Let me defend the proposition with a few examples. In the early 1980s, Carl Sagan hosted a Public Television series, "Cosmos." In that program, Sagan took the viewers on a journey from the farthest reaches of the universe to our own solar system and planet, across geologic history and evolution, through human history and to the present.

Through clever special effects and various other means, the "Cosmos" journey took the viewer to the edges of the universe and through time, since the beginning of the universe to our time. "Cosmos" demonstrated the possibility I have suggested.

If we add the knowledge contained in books and other more traditional learning resources to the vast array of knowledge contained in the most modern resources, the average person can--without too much difficulty and certainly without anything other than average mental capacity--come to know, in general terms, the history of the universe as we believe that history to have been and the history of the world from the historical, scientific and religious viewpoints, as we now understand these.

The sad fact is that--just as all of these technologies are emerging and as all of this information is at hand--profound ignorance seems to be awash in the land. The education system in the United States is partly to blame. Over the past several decades education administrators and teachers at all levels have adopted or been coerced into fads that have not been in the best interest of the students, their parents or our nation.

The both the "new math" and the "new" new math are examples. In my opinion, the new math was a disaster for students and teachers alike and the "new" new math will fare no better. Both of these "maths" were adopted without sufficient research to see if, or how well, they worked.

A second fad was the move to open classrooms. Chaos, mostly, instead of enhanced learning ensued. Again, this fad was accepted before carefully planned and executed studies were done to see if more learning was fostered in the open classrooms than in the traditional classroom.

Middle schools are a current fad for which not enough research was done before the bandwagon got rolling. Early indications are that this fad will go the way of the other fads, but not before several "generations" of students have received an education limited by the fact that the middle school concept is flawed.

Recently, the "king" of all of the stupid bandwagons came along in the form of "constructionist" math and "whole language" approaches to education. The idea here is that, by letting the student off with any answer to math problems, or any interpretation for a story, or any spelling of a word, the student would not fail and that student's self-concept and her or his self-respect would be preserved and strengthened.

Phonics and drill went out the window. So did correct answers. There was not an adequate research basis for adopting the whole language approach. Since national average scores were falling, it was almost as if those who went the whole language route threw up their hands and threw in the towel. If any answer is "right," how can students fail?

In those unfortunate states and school districts where the whole language approach was adopted by teachers (or forced on the teachers, the students and the parents by poorly informed administrators), normative scores dropped, usually dramatically and precipitously. The California schools were hard hit; so were the schools in Houston, and elsewhere.

Panic set in. A move back to phonics and to drill has followed. When San Diego dropped the whole language approach and adopted a research-based system worked out by Siegfried Engelmann, and others, scores steadily moved upward once more. Common sense triumphed. The students, their parents and the nation were the real winners.

Please don't get me wrong. I am not against change. Far from it. I welcome any change that is effective change, a change for the better. My objection is with educators who come up with an idea, but who fail to put that idea to rigorous, extensive testing prior to adopting the idea. Many of us can come up educational ideas that seem to offer positive and constructive educational improvements. However, we owe the students and their parents--as well as the whole education complex and its processes--the necessity of adequate testing. If such research had been done with the new math and the "new" new math, with open classrooms, with middle schools and with the whole language approaches, it is my firm belief that none of these would have had the extensive adoptions that they did. Education would have been spared some difficult times.

There were elements of good ideas in each of these approaches. For example, the whole language advocates championed the notion that interesting readings should be used across the education experience and that reading choices should be given to the students. Anyone who has labored with an uninteresting or out-of-date piece of literature can probably appreciate the double merits of including interesting literature and choices in the curriculum. These represented commendable ideas within a flawed approach. The phonics and drill advocates--by and large--appreciated the merits of these two aspects of whole language learning. All concerned will benefit as these ideas are adopted.

The United States is a nation of specialization. Therefore the dominant education approaches beyond K-12 are most often specialty programs (e.g., business, geology, computer science, etc.). That is sad. It is also one of the reasons behind public apathy about and declining involvement in our republic and its democratic processes. Narrowly educated people typically do not take the broad view of the world necessary for involved citizenship.

Every college in the United States should mandate a core of courses molded within the liberal arts tradition. Most did until a few decades ago. The move away from the liberal arts core was often made in the name of academic freedom. More often, the real reason was something less noble than that, such as misguided attempts to cut institutional costs or efforts to offer vocational training. There will be no freedom--academic or otherwise--if democracy fails because of public apathy and ignorance!

Every student at every level in our modern educational system should be given the opportunity and the basic skills so they may live "twenty billion years and to travel to the ends of the universe," if they choose to do so through a life-time of learning. Giving every student a liberal arts education, within phonics and skills-based programs and within the framework of life-time learning, will provide each person with the fundamentals so that each person can travel--educationally--wherever their inclinations take them. That was the basis of the American dream and of American education until recent decades. It is time to re-establish that dream in modern American education.