Our week’s task as Cohort 2 of the OLI initative: “We’d like you to pick 2-3 of [the liberal arts values from week 1] and write very brief definitions of how you think they might be interpreted within the context of a liberal arts teaching environment.” I am finding this to be a very hard task, maybe because I am more geared (personally and in my discipline) toward nuance and possibility than definition or definitiveness. I fear that I won’t feel satisfied with definitions because they become retrictive or prescriptive, which seems opposed to a LA community. All this by way of saying these are tentative.
Empowerment and Transformation: In a liberal arts environment, empowerment and transformation should be both inward- and outward-facing. They must refer to more than a change in knowledge measured by quantitative content. Rather, a broadening of mind, an openness to new paradigms, a growing comfort with widely applicable skills of analysis, interpretation, communication are at the heart of the transformation wrought by a liberal arts education. But, both during the school years and beyond, empowerment and transformation should be about more than individual change or self-improvement. Students invested and galvanized by a liberal arts education should be encouraged to model, foster, apply, and share their emergent cognitive, ethical, appreciative, and other aptitudes in the academic community and the broader world.
Life learning/Learning into life/Life-Long Learning: A variety of measurements calculate the shape and size of an education: the number of credits, the number of years or semesters, the single or double major, the types and number of degrees, the pages produced or read, the percentage correct, the rank in a graduating class, etc. And yet students should be encouraged to interrogate or even resist such parameters and delineations. A liberal arts education should catalyze the dissolution of boundaries between classes and leisure, between assignments and inquiry, between college and “real life,” between teachers and learners. It should encourage scholarship and creativity as patterns of practice rather than graded performace. It should help students forge meaningful connections between academic subjects and their contemporary experiences and world. It should question the very concept of being a “senior” in education and instead nurture a concept of learning that is illimitable and lifelong.
Ugh. Done.