Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 1, No. 1 | Liberal Arts for a New Millenium, page 2

Fast-moving developments in the world of computers also impact on education. In one instance, administrators in a Florida high school announced the formation of a freshman class in which all teaching and learning will be done online. The self-paced learning will be available to 30 freshmen and is offered in part because of a shortage of classroom space. Students will have the opportunity to interact with each other during a lunch break and by participating in extra-curricular activities.

In another sign of the times, the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges and a venture capitalist have joined forces to offer Tek.Xam, an online examination for undergraduate liberal arts students to demonstrate their technology skills.

The cyberspace school and the Tek.Xam raise questions about the Internet explosion and the appropriate role of computers in education as well as the need to ensure social interaction among students who may be spending an increasing amount of their time face-to-face with a computer.

On the other hand, it is also a concern that under-resourced youngsters are falling behind in computer literacy. Steve Case, chairman and CEO of America Online, Inc., seeks to erase the “Digital Divide” with programs such as the AOL Foundation and PowerUP that are tailored to help disadvantaged people and to make computer technology available to underserved students. Case, who co-founded AOL in 1985, is also an advocate for liberal learning.

“I think a broad-based liberal arts education provides important grounding, especially since we are entering a phase of unusual change as we kick off what likely will become known as the Internet Century,” Case says in a recent article that appeared in The Washington Post. “A shift to a more connected society will have profound impacts on business, education and government, as new perspectives and linkages are brought to bear,” he continues. “So having a broad understanding of the past and a broad perspective on the future will be more important than ever—and that’s what a liberal arts education, which exposes you to a range of perspectives, can help provide.”

A New Conversation

Cognizant of a variety of forces that are reshaping our educational institutions and the questions that are being raised about the nature of education in our country, the Corporation has embarked upon an effort to launch a national dialogue about the role of liberal learning in our changing world. Toward that end, in November 1999, the Corporation convened a panel of 25 leading educators from across the nation along with Corporation staff to discuss the issue. The essay, Carnegie Challenge 2000: Liberal Arts Education for a Global Society, arose from that day-long meeting. The paper is intended to serve as a starting point for further exploration of how to integrate liberal learning into the undergraduate experience of all students, regardless of their ethnic background, gender or other individual characteristics.

In the Challenge paper, written for the Corporation, Carol M. Barker,

former Senior Associate of the Corporation and now Vice President, Programs, Nellie Mae Foundation, states that “the goal of an undergraduate liberal arts education is to provide students with knowledge, values and skills that will prepare them for active and effective participation in society.” Liberal learning, which is generally recognized as embracing the arts and humanities as well as the sciences, enables students to join the ranks of thoughtful citizens who have the capacity to learn, to make judgments and to communicate effectively in a way that enriches the human experience.

The need for a liberal education is also underscored by a fast-paced complicated world that requires the best of its citizens. From a social perspective, our democratic society depends on citizens who share and sustain a commitment to common values within cultural diversity and a dynamic economy. What seems to follow, then, is a societal need to educate citizens in a way that enables them to make sound judgments about issues of great human consequence emerging from scientific discovery and technological developments.

The Corporation’s Challenge paper also argues for preparing students to function in a multicultural, global society and in a world where national borders may sometimes blur. The capacity to understand and communicate with people from other countries and backgrounds is increasingly important in a world where culture, business, science and politics are developing on many levels in many places all at once.

The goal of the current Carnegie Corporation initiative is to assess the role of liberal learning and how to best integrate it into the undergraduate educational experience. It is the first such large-scale attempt to address the issue since 1945 when a Harvard University faculty committee published General Education in a Free Society. The report, which is known colloquially as “The Redbook,” reflected and condensed a ten-year national debate about liberal learning.

At the time “The Redbook” was published, only 20 percent of high school graduates pursued college studies. As we have seen, the picture of the two-year and four-year college enrollment has changed radically, generating a compelling need for a contemporary equivalent of that report.

Next page: Carnegie Corporation has awarded the first of a series of grants aimed at helping to reframe liberal learning.

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