November 1,1977
Address to the Faculty on Curriculum Change
(Delivered at the Faculty Retreat)
First in a Two Part Series
BY JAMES GUTSELL,
Associate Professor
of English
Guilford College declares it
self to be a liberal arts college,
but whether we are actually
dedicated in a focused and self
conscious way to the liberal
arts strikes me as an open
question, a question, however,
that could be raised about
most colleges. The nature and
goals of the liberal arts
are not subjects we or anyone
else discuss often; and they
are, perhaps, subjects about
which we may discover our
selves to have little agreement.
It is encouraging, though,
that we as a faculty have
decided, by a more or less
spontaneous process, to
examine our curriculum in
light of our educational
ideals.
This examination requires
some definition of the liberal
arts. We will not do more
than begin such a discussion
today; hopefully we will never
finish it, but if we can gener
ate enough interest to begin a
dialogue in meetings such as
this and continue it over
coffee, lunches and on the
sidewalks, continue it with
some passion and friendly
disagreement, we ought to in
vigorate our sense of what
education means to us; we
might come to some consensus
as to how our programs
should be formulated; and it
is possible that we may pass
more of this concern
and understanding on to our
students in a variety of ways.
I would like to begin by
saying a few words about the
character of the liberal arts.
Then I will discuss some of the
implications that follow, and I
will conclude with several
recommendations which
might serve as a basis for
today's discussion.
"Liberal Arts" is our
rallying slogan. We may not
shout it from the housetops
much except when feeling
seriously threatened, but we
do growl it from time to time
to keep our enemies in their
places. The liberal arts are
under attack, and always have
been, no doubt, not from deli
berate opponents so much as
from the pressures of society,
in our case a society which
questions the practicality of
what all of us, I hope, believe
to be the larger view. Given
the pressures, we must, to
avoid fading away, come to
a consensus as to what we are
up to. We must be able to
articulate our ideals and
purposes to ourselves, to our
students, and to all the skeptics.
The liberal arts, if the
expression means anything at
all, means the installation of a
program of study which holds
the intention of promoting
intellectual freedom. The
liberal arts are the studies
appropriate to free people, to
citizens, to ones who should
and must in some sense
survey the world, know where
they stand in it, and make
decisions for themselves and
others which are well
informed in some sense logical,
and seriously ethical. The
liberal arts also assume that
free men must be able to
communicate their views.
In considering programs of
liberal arts study, we have,
for practical purposes, two
broad areas: the academic
majors and the area of non
major studies. Guilford has
made certain decisions to move
into what are traditionally
professional directions with its
majors, although with the
attempt to maintain this profes
sional interests within the
liberal arts framework. The
questions of what our major
programs should be is not a
concern for us today. The issue
we need to address is what
goals we should have in
general and particularly for
the core and distribution
requirements. It is in this
area that a liberal arts college
most clearly defines its
intentions. These intentions,
broadly speaking, must be to
encourage our students to
begin to move vigorously
along the path of intellectual
growth, a growth which has
private value, but in a very real
sense and in its larger import
bar public value. We, there
fore, need to consider what
sorts of study will most
promote such intellectual
movement. We need to
consider not just what we
should do, but where we are.
To locate ourselves, we
must recognize that we set out
to "commence" students. If
we are the formal ending of
a long educational process,
we are only the beginning of
what ought to be a life-long
growth. We can not hope to
educate a person for a life of
freedom with any set of
programs we could possibly
devise to fill four years. Four
years at Guilford will only be
a start, but it must be a
start in the most fruitful
direction. Since the greatest
part of a person's education
occurs outside of the class
room and in the years beyond
college, our programs must
Guilfordian
have as their first responsibility
the promotion of self
education. Students who
upon leaving us feel bored
with ideas and remain un
interested in the world beyond
their doorsteps mark us,
individually and institutionally,
as failures.
Our first goal must be to
promote self-education; this
means promoting self-educa
tion in college classrooms.
We must not accept as a live
able norm the initial hesitancy
and passivity toward discovery
which characterize so many of
our students when they arrive.
Our first concern should be to
encourage students to ask
questions and to seek answers.
Any classroom which does not
encourage such activity will
promote the opposite:
inactivity, passivity, disinterest,
and boredom.
Our formal educational
process can do things which
students have trouble with
on their own. It is our business
to identify primary issues and
sensitize students to the
importance of those issues,
to encourage students to ask
their own questions, and to
give experience, instruction,
encouragement, and methods
of asking and seeking
answers.
Above all and most import
ant, we must work to arouse
curiosity. In a really effective
education, thinking takes
primacy over information.
Thinking requires information.
It demands information, sifts
it, and uses it, but as the
material of thought and
problem solving, not as a
matter of primary consequence
in itself. All useful and liberal
education of a higher sort
begins with the curious person
asking a question and pur
suing the answer.
Yet, in our practices we
m y ■* •••■' "
tend to arrange the sequence
in the other order. We pro
vide information and often
leave it entirely to the student
to discover the questions and
look for the answers. And we
do this most frequently in
those courses which introduce
his experience with a subject.
Our concern needs to be with
process, the process which
begins with wanting to
understand. The difficulty
of this has been hnrn home to
everyone who has attempted
a BHTC 101 section. Failure
in this particular area is what
we should most fear, and
when experienced is most dis
couraging. But when we do
succeed, we recognize the
results through students who
want to know more than our
standard classroom fare offers
them.
The literature of educational
theory contains a number of
notable works which propose
various methods of promoting
the curiosity of students.
From Rousseau on, visionary
educators of the romantic
tradition have seen standard
education as a process by
which natural curiosity is
inhibited. There is enough
truth in this perspective that
we should both examine
what we are doing and make
a serious effort to work in
directions most likely to
produce intellectual activity.
And we must do this in a way
that encourages our average
student, if there is such a thing.
Whenever I get to know a
student well he ceases being
average and almost inevitably
turns out to have real inter
ests in a variety of matters.
Yet these interests are not
always apparent in class. If
we are inclined to accept the
norm of apparent uninterest
and half-hearted classroom
efforts, we do injustice to our
ideals and to our students.
Page 7
If my impression is correct,
upper classmen often seem
the most half-hearted and un
interested when out of their
majors. That's a bad sign.
My bias, in programs,
aside from generally develop
ing courses and methods
designed to promote the
questioning, problem solving
process, would be to cons
ciously design a program
within the core and distribution
requirement which is aimed
in a variety of ways through
every subject at the big ques
tions which we seldom care to
take on: What am I? Where
am I? What do I believe?
How should I act? These are
the matters we ourselves
spend our lives sweating
over; yet how seldom does
education consider them
directly. But they must be
questions which we must
admit an interest in if they are
to be dealt with. Such ques
tions are too general and
important to be left to
philosophers. The philoso
phers, in any case, don't know
any more about many of them
than the rest of us, except in
being privileged and obligated
to discuss them.
All of us need to be concern
ed with the historical perspec
tive. We need to come out
of our specialized closets and
admit to what is really
important. We don't have to
have all the answers, but we
do need to air the questions
and profess that we feel that
they are important not only
to students but to ourselves
as well. Where we can
reasonably do so, we should
build such concerns into our
courses, particularly those
courses which students take
to broaden their liberal
education.