Lehrman American Studies Center

If education is soul-crafting at its best, then crafting a general education curriculum is perhaps the epitome of educational soul craft. So imagine my delight in being given the opportunity and privilege to lead my institution’s effort to review and perhaps revise its general education curriculum. I truly was delighted (some may think me crazy!). But there are very few times in academia when one has the opportunity to develop and create or re-create something from the bottom-up. And, alas, here was my opportunity. Let the tinkering begin!

In all seriousness, such an amazing opportunity has caused me to step back and reflect deeply on the craft of education and how to apply the lessons of philosophy, history, theology, and politics to the review and re-design of the general educational core. I thought deeply about what the Ancients, Moderns, and Post-moderns could teach us. I read and re-read articles addressing questions of pedagogy, epistemology, and higher education’s dirty little word – assessment. And I sought help and advice from various colleagues, administrators, and the Divine. Here is a lesson that I have learned – crafting a general education curriculum is an exercise in the art of the possible.

All of us academics live in the world of ideas. We don’t shun the practical or everyday reality. But we are all too aware that ideas are nice, neat, and clean whereas the everyday is messy and muddy. The task of crafting a general education curriculum is one where ideas inhabit the world of messy reality. The nice and neat must confront and adapt to the messy and ugly and vice-versa. Pure ideas must be made to fit within earthen and worn vessels.

This exercise is not for everyone. It is difficult. But I confess that it forces the philosopher to leave the gaze of the sun and come down to the shadows to serve and minister to his fellow-citizens and cave dwellers. It is an exercise of mediation. In this sense, there is something sacred about this task of re-developing a general education curriculum since one is attempting to represent the good and true in a way that is correct and not vain and for the sake of developing and bettering minds and souls.

But, as I have suggested, it is a faulty mediation at best. In my work thus far (and I will continue to blog about it in the days and weeks ahead), there is always a disjuncture between the ideal and its demands and the real and its demands. There is no perfect human mediator in the task of education or curriculum development. There is only better or worse.

Tags: Colleges and Universities, Private Education, Public Education, The Liberal Arts