The first Executive Liberal Arts Seminar I conducted was held August 6 through 13th, 1972, 60 miles southeast of Seattle, high in the Cascade Mountains at an isolated place called Lester, Washington.  Since then, these occasional seminars have been based upon the classical Greek ideal of a balanced life of physical, intellectual, and artistic activities, and the values of continual self examination and learning.

Goals and Intentions

From those values the seminar is intended to help professionals, ten to twenty years beyond their undergraduate degree, renew their knowledge of the liberal arts, and apply what knowledge exists to improve the quality of their lives by personally participating in regular physical, intellectual, and artistic activities.

In planning these seminars I have kept in mind that organized knowledge can be viewed from a variety of perspectives.However, given the information explosion, it seems to me that the best way to renew one's acquaintance with the social sciences is to look at real experiments as imperfect applications of the scientific method, rather than try to cover some broad domain.

Learning within the seminar is based upon the view that active learning is best, and that starting quality habits is the best way to establish those habits.

Why this seminar? Our democracy needs broadly educated, continually learning citizens--particularly those in leadership positions--since clearly, stagnated minds represent a retarding societal force.

What will happen? Ideally, participants will plan and begin individually designed programs of exercise, physical development, and weight control that can be continued.  They will acquire analytic tools needed to plan healthy meals.  They will acquire new insights into the fine arts.  And, they will participate in the replication of experiments that illustrate the advantages, limitations, and problems applying the scientific method.

The relevance of the physical portion of the program is realized when one considers that heart disease is one of the nation's major health problems.  Nearly a million Americans die each year from heart and blood vessel disease.  This number could be significantly reduced if people would engage in an individually planned and enjoyable physical exercise program.  While adults know this, they need help getting started.  This seminar will provide that help.

Intellectually in a society of constant change, large numbers of people who remain frozen in their ways of seeing things become a retarding force.  But too often, busy schedules persuade adults that they do not have time for continuing liberal education.  However, by taking this seminar, busy professionals make a commitment to continuing intellectual pursuits.

Likewise the arts represent a civilizing force that too often is ignored. And yet obviously those in leadership positions need to develop their sensitivities and perceptions. Thus we will participate in the fine arts.

Finally, no one should think that this seminar will be dull and laborious. Participants have found these seminars a wonderful educational experience, wherein they formed lifelong friendships.

I hope you too will enjoy this unique educational experience.

Objectives

Participants will knowledgeably examine their own physical, intellectual and artistic habits in order to apply knowledge of the liberal arts to the quality of their lives, as demonstrated by:

1.Formulating a plan and engaging in appropriate programs of exercise, physical development and weight control, as well as applying analytic tools needed in the planning and preparing healthy meals. (Cognitive, pyscho-motor)

2.Planning and engaging in individually appropriate programs for continued intellectual development. (Cognitive, Affective)

3.Planning and engaging in individually appropriate programs for participation in the fine arts. (Affective)

Previous Institute Texts

Alland, Alexander, Human Diversity.New York: Columbia University Press, 1971.

Fox, Edward, Sports Physiology.Philadelphia: Saunders College Publishing, 1979.

Galbraith, John Kenneth, Economics and The Public Purpose.Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973.

Graham, Otis, Toward a Planned Society: From Roosevelt to Nixon.New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.

Harris, Louis, The Anguish of Change.New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1973.

Johnson, Perry, et al., Physical Education.New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966.

Katch, Frank and McArdle, William, Nutrition, Weight Control, and Exercise.Boston: Houton Mifflin Company, 1977.

O'Toole, James, et al., Work in America.Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1974.

Skinner, B.F., Beyond Freedom and Dignity.New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971.

Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I., The Nobel Lecture on Literature.New York: Harper & Row, 1972.

Tolstoy, Leo, The Death of Ivan Ilych.1886.

Wheeler, Harvey, Democracy in a Revolutionary Era.Santa Barbara: Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 1970.

Wheeler, Harvey, The Politics of Revolution.Berkeley: The Glendessary Press, 1971.

Wildman, Louis, Educational Administration From A Liberal Arts Perspective.Portland: Institute for Quality in Human Life, 1974.

Come away to a lovely place and rest awhile.

Suggested References

Aristotle, Politics.

Augustine, St., The Confessions.

Bender, Thomas, Community and Social Change in America.New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1978.

Berman, Harold, The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition.Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983.

Burns, James MacGregor, Leadership.New York: Harper & Row, 1978.

Cervantes, Miguel de, Don Quixote.

Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Canterbury Tales.

Dickie, George, Aesthetics.New York: Pegasus, 1971.

Drucker, Peter, The Effective Executive.New York: Harper & Row, 1967.

Gardner, Howard, Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership.New York: Basic Books, 1995.

Gardner, John, On Leadership.New York: The Free Press, 1990.

Gassett, Ortega y, Mission of the University.Princeton University, 1945.

Heyer, Paul, Architects on Architecture.New York: Walker and Company, 1978.

Hofstadter, Richard and Metzger, Walter, The Develoment of Academic Freedom in the United States.Columbia University, 1955.

Homer, Odyssey and The Illiad.

Kimball, Bruce, Orators and Philosophers: A History of the Idea of Liberal Education.New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1995.

Kline, Morris, Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times.New York: Oxford University Press, 1972.

Levine, Lawrence, The Opening of the American Mind.Boston: Beacon Press, 1996.

Machiavelli, Niccolo, The Prince.

Madison, James; Hamilton, Alexander; and Jay, John, The Federalist Papers.New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House, first published in 1788.

Manchester, William, Douglas MacArthur.Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1978.

Neustadt, Richard and May, E., Thinking In Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers.New York: The Free Press, 1986.

Newman, John Henry, The Idea of a University.Longman, 1947.

Oates, Stephen B., Let the Trumpet Sound.New York: Harper & Row, 1982.

Oates, Stephen B., With Malice Toward None.New York: The New American Library, 1977.

Pascarella, Ernest and Terenzini, Patrick, How College Affects Students.San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Publishers, 1991.

Patterson, David, When Learned Men Murder: Essays on the Essence of Higher Education.Indiana: Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation, 1996.

Paulos, John Allen, Mathematics and Humor.Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980.

Plato, The Republic.

Rudolph, Frederick, Curriculum.San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1978.

Rudolph, Frederick, The American College and University.New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962.

Russell, Bertrand, A History of Western Philosophy.

Sergiovanni, Thomas, Moral Leadership.San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, Publishers, 1992.

Shakespeare, William, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Macbeth.

Sharkey, Brian, Physiology of Fitness (Third Edition).Champaign, Illinois: Human Kinetics Books, 1990.

Spence, Jonathan, The Gate of Heavenly Peace.New York: The Viking Press, 1981.

Steinbeck, John, The Grapes of Wrath.

Swift, Jonathan, Gulliver's Travels.

Thomas, R. Murray, Moral Development Theories--Secular and Religious.Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1997.

Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War.

Tocqueville, Alexis de, Democracy in America.

Twain, Mark, Life on the Mississippi.

Tyack, David and Nansot, Elisabeth, Managers of Virtue.New York: Basic Books, 1982.

Veblen, Thorstein, The Higher Learning in America. Huebsch, 1918.

Whitehead, Alfred North, Science and the Modern World.

Wildman, Louis, A Philosophy of Higher Education.Portland: Institute for Quality in Human Life, 1974.

Woodham-Smith, Cecil, The Great Hunger.London: New English Library, 1975.

Listening to oneself requires a place where one can hear oneself think. Working amidst the cacophony of a multiple-band dance floor, one needs a sanctuary to restore one's sense of purpose, put issues in perspective, and regain courage and heart. When serving as the repository of many conflicting aspirations, a person can lose himself in the role by failing to distinguish his inner voice from the voices that clamor for attention outside. Partners can help greatly, as can a run, a quiet walk, or a prayer to break the spell cast by the frenzy on the floor. We need sanctuaries.

To exercise leadership, one has to expect to get swept up in the music. One has to plan for it and develop scheduled opportunities that anticipate the need to regain perspective.

Ronald Heifetz in Leadership Without Easy Answers

This seminar is such an opportunity to regain perspective, and to enhance one's ability to lead rather than merely manage.

Suggested Assignment: Read Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych (1884-1886).

This disturbing short story asks us, What is most important in life? What should we mean to one another? When all is said and done, what do we wish to have accomplished?

Imagine that you have paid a lot of money for a ticket to a special game, concert, or dance. Under what circumstances would you be willing to change your plans? What are you willing to do for others?

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This course is an expression of faith in the usefulness of liberal education to American democracy.

            If the United States is to be a democracy, its citizens must be free. If citizens are to be free, they
must be their own judges. If they are to judge well, they must be wise. Citizens may be born free; they are not born wise. Therefore, the business of liberal education in a democracy is to make free men wise. Democracy declares that "the people shall judge. "Liberal education must help the people to judge well. (Source: The People Shall Judge, a collection of readings compiled by the College of the University of Chicago, 1949, p. vii.)

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Educators have lost sight of the purpose of a liberal education--to foster the values of freedom and growth in students and, ultimately, to produce good human beings--writes William Cronon, a professor of history, geography, and environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Although most educators agree that a liberal education is important, they spend too much time bickering over course requirements and not enough time talking about the qualities those requirements should instill in students, he writes. Students' educational success should be a measure of how well they listen, read, write, solve problems, empathize with others, and participate in their communities, not how many credits they accumulate, he concludes. Writes Mr. Cronon: "All the required courses in the world will fail to give us a liberal education if, in the act of requiring them, we forget that their purpose is to nurture human freedom and growth."(http://www.pbk.org/american.htm, Autumn 1998 issue of The American Scholar)

Note:  The following is from: Murphy, Joseph, "Reculturing the Profession of Educational Leadership: New Blueprints," Educational Administration Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 29 (April 2002) 176-191.

The educational administrator Prof. Joe Murphy says we need:

Moral Steward

The metaphor of the administrator as moral steward takes on many forms . . . Moral leadership acknowledges that "values and value judgments are the central elements in the selection, extension, and day-to-day realization of educational purpose"  (Harlow, 1962, p. 67).

As moral stewards, school leaders will be much more heavily invested in "purpose-defining (Harlow, 1962, p. 61) activities and in "reflective analysis and ... active intervention"  (Bates, 1984, p. 268)  than simply in managing existing arrangements.  This means that persons wishing to affect society as school leaders must be directed by a powerful portfolio of beliefs and values anchored in issues such as justice, community, and schools that function for all children and youth.  They must maintain a critical capacity, foster a sense of possibilities, and "bring to their enterprise a certain passion that affects others deeply"  (Sergiovanni, 1991, p. 334).  They must view their task more as a mission than a job; "they must develop strong commitments to important things and model them persuasively" (Moorman, 1990, p. 101);  "The task of the leader is to create a moral order that bonds both leader and followers to a set of shared values and beliefs"  (Sergiovanni, 1989, p. 34).  Therefore, moral leadership means that tomorrow's school administrators must use their personal platform to "engage participants in the organization and the community in reinterpreting and placing new priorities on guiding values for education" (Moorman, 1990, p. 98) and in reconstructing "structures so that they celebrate the intended educational purposes of the school community" (Bates, 1984, p. 268).

At a quite practical and tangible level, leadership as moral stewardship means seeing the moral--the ethical and justice--implications of the thousand daily decisions made by each school administrator (Beck & murphy, 1994).  In its most comprehensive and concrete form, it means building an ethical school (Starratt, 1991) while meeting the "moral imperative to provide real learning opportunities to the whole of the student population" (Osin & Lesgold, 1996, p. 621).

Educator

..."the deep significance of the task of the school administrator is to be found in the pedagogic ground of its vocation"  (Evans, 1991, p. 17) and that a key to reculturing is changing the tap-root of the profession from management to education.   . . .   It requires, as Rowan (1995) has recorded, that leaders be "pioneers in the development and management of new forms of instructional practice in schools, and [that] they  . . . [develop] a thorough understanding of the rapidly evolving body of research on learning and teaching that motivate these new practices " (p. 116).  Because the challenge for educational leaders will be "to refocus the structure [of schooling] on some new conception of teaching and learning" (Elmore, 1990, p. 63), they will need to be more broadly educated in general and much more knowledgeable about the core technology of education in particular.  "Instructional and curricular leadership must be at the forefront of leadership skills"  (Hallinger, 1990, p. 77).  In a rather dramatic shift from earlier times, school and district administrators will be asked to exercise intellectual leadership not as head teachers, but as head learners.

Community Builder

The job of the administrator as community builder unfolds in three distinct but related dimensions (Murphy, Beck, Crawford, Hodges, & McGoubhy, 2001).  The first venue is with parents and members of the school environment.  Here the role of the administrator is to nurture the development of open systems in which access and voice are honored.  On a second level, the struggle is to foster the evolution of "communities of learning" (Zeichner & Tabachnich, 1991, p. 9)  among professional staff.  Finally, an unrelenting focus on the creation of personalized learning environments for youngsters is a central aspect of the community-building function of school leaders.   . . .

Their base of influence must be professional expertise and moral imperative rather than line authority.  They must learn to lead by empowering rather than by controlling others.  "Such concepts as purposing, working to build a shared covenant" (Sergiovanni, 1989, p. 33), and establishing meaning--rather than directing, controlling, and supervising--are at the core of this type of leadership:  Empowering leadership, in turn, is "based on dialogue and cooperative, democratic leadership principles"  (Bolin, 1989, p. 86).  Enabling leadership also has a softer, less heroic hue.  It is more ethereal and less direct:  "Symbolic and cultural leadership are key leadership forces"  (Sergiovanni, 1989, p. 33).  There is as much heart as head in this style of leading.  It is grounded more on modeling and clarifying values and beliefs than on telling people what to do.  Its goals include "ministering" (Sergiovanni, 1991, p. 335) to the needs of organizational members rather than gaining authority over them and creating "new structures that enable the emergence of leadership on a broad basis"  (Sykes & Elmore, 1989, p. 79).  It is more reflective and self-critical than bureaucratic management.

As community builders, school administrators must encourage "others to be leaders in their own right"  (Sergiovanni, 1991, p. 335);  they need to stretch leadership across organizational actors and roles (Spillane, Diamond, & Jita, 2000) to ensure that leadership is deeply distributed (Elmore, 1999).  They also need to demonstrate the ethic of care to all members of the larger school community (Beck, 1994).

Why Take Time To Use The Liberal Arts

To Reflect? Indeed, Why Reflect?

"Haste is the devil's work, the prophet warned. But the postmodern age is based on speed," writes the Islamic scholar Akbar Ahmed. "In particular, the media thrive on and are intoxicated by speed, change, news. The unceasing noise, dazzling glamour and restlessly shifting images of the MTV culture beckon and harass. Silence, withdrawal, meditation--advocated by all the great religions--are simply not encouraged."

Max Beckmann, the German painter who fled into exile from the Nazis and their industrial romance with streamlined speed and power, held a similar view. He advised a fellow painter to take long walks, avoiding "the motor car and the movies" because they "rob you of your vision."

Worried that the fast-forward fetish might unhinge the balanced rhythm of civilization, the Mexican poet and Nobel laureate Octavio Paz has condemned "the modern arrogance" which tends to see life only in terms of the velocity of time." Acceleration in time is very dangerous," says Paz. "We shouldn't forget that primitive societies, which don't possess the modern superstition of change, have endured for millennia while developed societies, after two or three centuries, explode."

Paz also links the idolatry of change and speed with the society of the spectacle. "The ancients had vision, we have television," he says. "We live tied to what is new, and it doesn't matter what it is as long as it is new. "Paz, too, recommends getting out of the fast lane by taking a stroll. "We must turn off the television, and go out for a walk, losing ourselves in the city or in our thoughts, touching the hand of a neighbor, questioning the child entombed within. To escape we need to be still and silent for a while, to stop being images, to become again what we are: men and women, blood and time."

Ivan Illich, the grand archaeologist of modern certitudes, hopes against hope that we can move out of an age where speed appears as a natural given. He seeks "an inner longing for quiet, a desire for otium vacari, which means fully aware, limpidly open, being purely present in the Now."

These voices are deeply at odds with the momentum of history, driven relentlessly forward by the ideology of innovation, competitiveness, productivity and ever-faster baud rates.

With the advent of cyberspace, the world is being further driven into fast and slow civilizations. For example, the computer-enabled revolution in "just-in-time" and "precision" logistics of Federal Express speeds direct delivery to customers by "substituting information for mass," thus eliminating the need for warehousing. How can that ever be reconciled with that snail's-pace world chronicled by Ryszard Kapuscinski in which "praying is more important than working"? How can a world where you must stop everything to pray five times a day bowing toward Mecca relate to the FedEx world where 130 planes full of anxiously awaited mail-order packages swoop down each night in Memphis at 90-second intervals?

What does this have to do with educational administration? Consider the life of the typical assistant or vice-principal--completely bogged down with administrative and clerical duties related to truancy, absenteeism, tardy students, and minor classroom disturbances. It is a life in constant motion. Grasping complexity seems a luxury a vice-principal can not afford. We have created a visible position wherein the occupant can not serve as a model of an educated human being who takes time for reflection, and makes careful decisions. Instead, the main pressures the vice-principal feels are to accelerate--to work with haste, which is, as the prophet warned, "the devil's work."

[The foregoing is largely based upon: Gardels, Nathan, "To Catch Up or Slow Down?" NPQ, Winter 1997, p. 2-3]

Making Time for Valuable Work

Kenneth R. Freeston and Jonathan P. Costa Sr.

[Educational Leadership, April 1998, p. 50-51.]

A school governance team devotes an afternoon to the issue of wearing hats in school. A principal observes a lengthy debate on whether teachers should be required to enter grades electronically. A superintendent sits for two hours while the Board of Education defines district policy on the use of paraprofessionals for supervision of the lunchroom.

These are everyday occurrences, right? Nothing to get outraged about.

Outraged?

In each of these "everyday occurrences," an educational leader invested previous time that did not serve the end value of learning.

That's outrageous.

Waste Not, Want Not

We are in an era of unprecedented deliberation about the use of time in public schools. With the public focused on educational costs and high expectations for academic performance, the pressure on educational leaders has never been greater 

This pressure has given rise to all manner of proposals for creating more time for school leadership: schedules that allow for meetings within the school day, longer school days, longer school years, and yearlong schooling. Education professionals have pursued these solutions as ways to create the additional time needed to address important educational issues. That might seem like a prudent strategy, but our research, observations, and practice over the past 10 years show that these efforts are essentially misdirected.

The issue is not how, or even whether, to find more time--but rather, how to use the time we have more wisely.

What is Value?

We can lead, teach, and learn better when we define value within our educational organizations and work to systematically increase the time we spend pursuing that value. In communicating this thesis, we need to arrive at a shared understanding of what value is.

William E. Conway has spent the last 20 years helping corporate leaders around the world improve their abilities at creating quality through the thoughtful use of time. He defines value as a product or service the customer would be willing to pay for. It follows, then, that the work that went into the creation of this value is value-added work, or work resulting in a value greater than the work itself. Conversely, energies spent on things that the customer would not pay for--errors, rework, problems, redundancies--is waste work. Conway adds a third category, necessary work, which includes things that an organization must do to function, but that have no direct value to the customer.

Conway found that, on average, companies spend a staggering 40 percent of their time doing waste work (until he intervenes). He noted that effective leaders in quality organizations do not allow waste to accumulate. They systematically teach their employees to eliminate waste and streamline necessary work in order to maximize the time spent on value-added work.

Teaching Is for Learning

What is value-added work for schools? When we began exploring this concept, we thought we had merely to transpose the idea of value into the context of schools. After struggling for a while on what we thought was Step 1, we realized we had skipped Step zero: to define what the primary goal of a school is. Business leaders have it easy when it comes to defining their primary goal. They sell stuff. With education, it may seem more ambiguous, but it is nonetheless certain: The goal of a school is to create learning.

When we've defined Step zero, Step 1 becomes much clearer, and we can define the activities of educational personnel according to Conway's concept of value. These definitions for a school principal, for example, would look something like this:

1.Value-added work is work that leads directly to learning. (Researching effective instructional practices; observing and supporting classroom learning; keeping professional dialogue focused on learning.)

2.  Waste work is whatever does not contribute directly to learning because it is work that could have been avoided if it had been done properly the first time.

(Correcting any mistakes of your own or others; dealing with teacher, parent, or student complaints; conducting a meeting without appropriate personnel present.)

3.  Necessary work consists of tasks that keep the school running but have no direct impact on learning.

(Signing purchase orders; supervising bus duty; ordering supplies.)

   Liberal Education and the Good Life  (Siena College series on the importance of a liberal education in the 21st century.)
    Theodore D. Nordenbaug
    Siena College

    Human beings are born with an innate potential whose fulfillment constitutes the realization of human nature.  We are not fully ourselves as persons until, through certain efforts and experiences, this potential has been realized.  Such potential could include physical and artistic skills; capacities for sensing and aesthetic appreciation; ability in language, communication, and calculation; an aptitude for the manipulation of information and for deliberation about action; the acquisition of knowledge about the conduct of human life; and facility in determining the right thing to do and believe, and the right way to live.  Within this general understanding of human nature, liberal education is the education that encourages and fosters the realization of these potentials.  Liberal education engages the highest human reality as a possibility, and brings it to reality.  Liberal education is "liberal" because it frees our innate natures."  (Staff of the Phi Beta Kappa Society)

    I have been assigned the topic: the meaning of liberal education.  The most I can do is offer a few reflections about that broad topic.  To get our bearings, we need look at some ideas about the purpose of the liberal arts.

Some Views of the Purpose of Liberal Education

    One view that no longer works ties liberal education far too closely to social class.  Writing in the last century, Cardinal John Henry Newman (who is always quoted on the subject) suggested that its primary purpose was to make a gentleman.  That is, to say the least, quaint.  Aside from the fact that it is not very inspiring to women, it belongs to the era when the sun never set on the British Empire.  Newman's characterization of the gentleman included ‘a cultivated intellect, a delicate taste, a candid equitable, dispassionate mind, a noble and courteous bearing in the conduct of life'–a good qualities all, but so bloodlessly expressed that they seem more like the requirements for admission to a London club than something likely to appeal to Americans who, in the spirit of Walt Whitman, like to indulge in a ‘barbaric yawp' every now and then.

    Mortimer Adler did somewhat better when he said that: ‘The liberal arts are traditionally intended to develop the faculties of the human mind, those powers of intelligence and imagination without which no intellectual work can be accomplished.'  True, but altogether too narrowly academic in tone.  Intellectual work is what professors do, not how most people would think of their work even if they use their brains to do it.  So Adler's language, if not his view, carries the undertone that liberal education exists to train an academic elite. 

    A more democratic approach is to argue that the point of a liberal education is to get a good job.  Not only is it indispensable preparation for the lucrative professions, but, it is claimed, the breadth of a good liberal education is superior in the long run to narrow technical training even in financial payoff.  it is probably true that people with a braod education and an ability to think have an edge in a world where people are likely to have to retrain for new careers seven or eight times in a working life, and whole occupations simply disappear in the ongoing creative destruction of capitalism.  But this is increasingly questionable in a time when the simplest, fixated chiphead may receive an entry level salary of $60,000 a year, a college dropout is the richest man in the world, and there are athletes who sign their names with an ‘X' whose multi-year salaries exceed the endowments of many good liberal arts colleges.

    There is a much deeper objection to it in any case.  While it is necessary to prepare for the work world, it gets things backwards to suppose that liberal education exists to help us make a good living.  It is really the other way around.  The point of making a good living is to have the time and resources to live a good life.  The point of a liberal education is to help us do that.

    Sidney J. Harris, for many years a columnist at The Chicago Sun Times, captured this paramount aim when he said: ‘The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's time.'  It appears that millions of Americans do not find their minds a pleasant place, so they spend most of their time being out of them.  The drug culture, which continues to flourish despite the farcical war on it, rampant alcoholism, the narcotic of TV, and the stress and depression that keeps the Prozac factories humming amply testify to this.  Well that is one way to try to make one's mind pleasant.  But it does not work very well in the long run because it is impossible to run away from our minds.  Minds are us.  Without them we are just blobs of protoplasm.  We are forced to spend our time in our minds, whether we like it or not.  So it is a good idea to furnish them well. 

    Harris might have made the same point by saying that the purpose of a liberal education is to make one's country a pleasant place in which to spend one's time.  There are all these other minds around, our fellow citizens, so even if you find your own mind reasonably pleasant, encountering some of the others may make your pleasure short-lived.  Many of these minds are in positions that make decisions that affect you.  And they may not be very well stocked.  A dumbed-down society is not a pleasant place to live. 

    So if you want a pleasant mind and a pleasant country, it just might be worth having a goodly number of liberally educated people around.  What will such an education look like?

The Seven Virtues of Liberal Education

    In the Middle Ages, there were seven liberal arts.  They consisted of grammar, rhetoric, and logic (called the trivium); and arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy (called the quadrivium).  That particular curricular configuration has long since disappeared over the horizon of history.  Rather than go up and down the aisles of the education supermarkets of today, picking out subjects that belong to liberal education, let me focus on some traits that I believe a liberally educated person will have.  I came up with seven, for the sake of continuity with the old tradition, which I call the seven virtues of the liberally educated.

    The first virtue is mastery of one's language.  The ability to read the best that has been written in it, to speak it and write it well, is not just a nice skill to have.  It is bound up with your very self.  For in a very important sense you are just what you can say.  Consider how language can determine the way we think of ourselves.  We used to give our opinions about things; now we are asked for input, a word that sanitizes human thought and makes it safe to feed into some computer database.  Or, we used to have the possibility of being enthusiastic or disgusted by things; now we are turned on or tuned off by them, as though we are simply switches that function in some large and incomprehensible piece of machinery, with no control over being activated and deactivated.  When you go to work, you are no longer a person but a human resource, on a par with all the other resources of the company, its operating capital, its plant, its inventory, and the like.  These twists of ordinary talk are probably not the result of some sinister conspiracy, but they are not innocent either.  They and many others like them reveal something about how our culture wants us to think of ourselves, and how we obligingly comply.

    Those who cannot write well or speak well also cannot think well.  They are for all practical purposes ogres, of whom W. H. Auden mused:

    The ogre does what ogres can,
    Deeds quite impossible for Man,
    But one prize is beyond his reach,
    The Ogre cannot master Speech:
    About a subjugated plain,
    Among its desperate and slain,
    The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
    While drivel gushes from his lips

These days drivel is gushing everywhere, and the only way to keep one's mind from being inundated by it is to know the language and use it well.  I put this virtue first because it is essential to all the others.

    The second virtue is a grasp of mathematics and science sufficient to know what a proof is and how to assess evidence.  This kind of knowledge offers protection from the myths and speculations masquerading as fact that are emanating with increasing frequency from the twilight zone of pseudoscience.  Beyond that, to be ignorant of the great achievements of science in our age is like choosing to put out one eye.  You do not really have to master the intimidating mathematics of physics to gain a sense of the significance of relativity theory or the puzzle about the collapse of the wave function in quantum mechanics.

    The third virtue is a sense of history.  We are not the first to pass this way; and all that is available to us was put here by the flood and sweat of those who went before.  The liberally educated are curious about how they lived, their laughter and tears, triumphs and tragedies, for what they thought and did has shaped us and our present possibilities.  Moreover, the past lurks in the shadows to grab us when we least suspect.  In Mozart's great opera, Don Giovanni, who arrogantly thumbs his nose at the past, cavalierly invites the stone statue of the man he has killed to dinner and is promptly carried off to hell as his past comes to get him.  It is not good to meet the past unprepared.  One way to look at 9/11 is to see it as a calling card from unrequited history, the work of a man who dreams of overcoming Arab humiliation by restoring the great Islamic empire of the middle ages.  So as we speed on into the future, it is wise to remember the lettering on the rear view mirror: OBJECTS IN THE MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR.

    The fourth virtue is a first hand appreciation of another culture.  Learning the language and literature of another culture enlarges one's horizons and increases understanding of one's own.  The best way to acquire this kind of perspective is to live abroad for a sufficient period that one is no longer a tourist.  such an experience provides two things of great educational value: the ability to see ourselves as others may see us, and the feeling that can only come from being a stranger in a strange land.  This is an especially important asset since anyone who is liberally educated will often feel like a foreigner in a land where people will trample you to get the last Beanie Baby.

    A personal appropriation of art is the fifth virtue.  If you have never had the experience of being possessed so completely by a poem that at that moment seemed addressed to you and no other, or been stopped in your tracks by a Van Gogh in a museum, or been transported beyond the ordinary world by Mozart's Requiem, or some other powerful music, you are not only not liberally educated, you are missing your life.  The power of art is in some ways very mysterious.  The heart of this mystery lies in the ancient doctrine of imitation, or mimesis.  Consider the blues.  How strange that singing about the sadness of life can have a healing or uplifting effect.  Tragedy operates in the same way to transform life's dark moments into beauty through the power of representation.  In any case, art reveals dimensions of our humanity that cannot be known in any other way.

    The sixth virtue, especially necessary in these times, is a sense of the intellectual boundaries.  The liberally educated understand that no single paradigm applies to everything.  There is a phenomenon of our time that might be called the fanaticism of specialization.  There is nothing wrong with specialization and it is unavoidable in any case given the vast explosion of knowledge.  But there is also a tendency for people with a particular expertise to extend its methods, principles, and paradigms beyond the area of its legitimate application.  Such people live in what G.K. Chesterton called ‘the clean well lit prison of one idea.'  Here is a story that aired on National Public Radio that illustrates a paradigm gone berserk:

    An American businessman was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked.  Inside the boat were several large yellow fin tuna.  The American complimented the fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.  The Mexican replied, ‘Only a little while.'  The American then asked why didn't he stay out longer and catch more fish?  The Mexican said he had enough to support his family's immediate needs.  The American then asked, ‘But what do you do with the rest of your time?'  The Mexican fisherman said, ‘I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos.  I have a full and busy life, senor.'  The American scoffed, ‘I am a Harvard MBA and can help you.  You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds buy a bigger boat.  With the profits from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats.  Instead of selling to a middleman, you would sell directly to a processor, eventually opening your own cannery.  You would control the product, processing and distribution.  You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then Los Angeles, and eventually New York City where you will run your expanding enterprise.'  The Mexican fisherman asked, "But senor, how long will this all take?'  To which the American replied, ‘Fifteen to twenty years.'  ‘But what then, senor?'  The American laughed and said ‘That's the best part.  When the time is right, you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich–you would make millions.'  ‘Millions, senor?  And then what?'  The American said, ‘Then you would retire.  Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play guitar with your amigos.'

    The seventh and final virtue on my list is the courage to pursue the big questions of life.  These are the questions that religion and philosophy traditionally try to answer.  Three of the biggest are: Who are we?  and Where are we?  and What is good?  What sort of world do we live in and what is our place in it?  Are we creatures of a creator or merely accidents of blind cosmic processes?  Do we have some special dignity and worth?  The answers to these questions will determine our outlook on an equally important set of questions, namely, how should we live our lives?  What are our moral obligations to others?  To future generations?  What does social justice require of us?  What is human happiness?  What is a good life?  It takes some courage to reflect seriously on these questions, because thinking can be painful.  But without working answers to these questions, we simply cannot life.  So for those who choose to evade them, something will fill the vacuum.  They are then likely to lead the lives that have been scripted for them by the consumer culture.  Whereupon they will be condemned to ride around with bumper stickers on their SUVs that ask: ARE WE HAVING FUN YET?

    These then are my seven virtues of the liberally educated.  They are not ornamental qualities, but essential to people who want a full life, who want to be all they can be, as the army promises, whether they choose to work as plumbers or professors.  If these virtues were more abundant, our minds and therefore our land would be a happier place.  As it is, we are stuck with what Walker Percy called the sadness of ordinary mornings.

 

    Liberal Education: Virtues, Ethics and Morality    (Siena College Series on the importance of liberal education in the 21st century)
    Harold T. Shapiro, President, Princeton University

     It may be useful to remember that in Plato's inquiry into virtue he came to associate it with goodness.  The emphasis is not simply on knowing the good, but doing the good.  It is, thus, not surprising that in the Republic, the concern with virtue comes to focus on justice and kindness.   (James A. Joseph)

    Over these two millennia, only two organizing ideas about the aims of a liberal education stand steady and clear.  One is the importance of achieving educational objectives that complement those of purely technical or narrowly professional training; such objectives include a better understanding of our cultural inheritance and ourselves, a familiarity with the foundations of mathematics and science, and a clarification of what we mean by virtue.  The other is the importance of molding a certain type of citizen.  In practice, of course, professional and liberal arts curricula overlap, and notions regarding the "right" type of citizen are in a constant state of flux...

    Closely related to the questions of what we mean by liberal education and what we hope to accomplish is the question of what responsibility the university has to provide its students with a moral education.

    Events over recent years have led many to feel that as a society we have lost our moral compass, that we are either uncertain about our values or willing to accept significant disparities between the values we espouse and the way we live our individual and communal lives.  Many also feel that our history, social institutions, and economic arrangements still provide very uneven possibilities for different individuals and groups–that our society is not as open and equitable as we would like to believe.  This demands that we take a more critical look at our values as a society–at what they are and how they should be applied.

    We live in a time when liberal democratic values are criticized for putting both too much and too little stress on the role of individual rights against the claims of tradition, social stability, and community.  Moreover, from many quarters in contemporary society one senses an increased concern over the lack of principled and responsible behavior in both public and private life, particularly with respect to the web of mutual obligations and understandings that should bind us together as a community.  Examples of irresponsible and unprincipled behavior are only too easy to identify, on campus as well as off.  Within academic communities, students, faculty, and administrators do not always exhibit a shared commitment to the values that sustain and enrich a community of learning, including such values as honesty, nonviolence, and the maintenance of thoughtful communication, even when we disagree.  It is also true, of course, that in a pluralistic world there will always be questions about whose moral values should dominate or how we should take into account the interests and commitments of others.  One of the resulting issues for universities is the place of moral education in the curriculum.

    One aspect of a student's moral education lies not in the curriculum but in the behavior of the faculty, staff, and administration and in the policies of the institution.  Students will observe how fairly and responsibly they are treated, what values are reflected in the university's rules and regulations and the ways they are administered, how the university treats its employees, how the university relates to the community, how faithfully faculty and administrators keep their promises, and how assiduously they defend the values of open and thoughtful debate that are central to a learning environment.  How tolerant are we of others' views?  How thoughtful is our feedback to students?  Is this feedback an exercise in judgment and honest criticism, or is it merely punitive?  Do faculty and administrators allow their individual liberty to overwhelm all other values?  Do we shock and patronize our students or awaken them?  Do our programs assist students in entering the world of internal speculation and reflective thought?  Students will be smart enough to discern if the university remains a symbol of enlightenment or an institution whose defining ambition is to sustain the status quo and its own special privileges.

    Questions about the role of ethics in the curriculum itself produce great uneasiness that stems mostly from a reluctance to establish any particular moral orthodoxy.  To put the matter simply, many faculty feel it is not appropriate for the institution to decide what ethics or whose ethics ought to be taught.  In my judgment this concern is valid, but it need not–and cannot–prevent us from taking other avenues (direct or indirect) to moral education.  If our curriculum offers students an opportunity to develop their capacities to identify and analyze ethical issue, to understand that it is important to continue to discuss important moral issues even when there are no ready answers, to recognize that we can learn from our disagreements in these matters, then a great deal is gained.  If the classroom experiences of students help convey an understanding that the capacity to choose is a critical aspect of being a moral person, a worthy objective is achieved.  If, in addition, students begin to focus on which constraints they will choose to accept in making ethical choices, the university will have made a major contribution to students' moral educations.  Complex moral reasoning is not a substitute for moral behavior, but it is a beginning, and if we unite this capacity with a commitment to democracy and concern for others, then much has been accomplished.

    We need an approach to moral education which will help students develop values that will enrich their lives as individuals and as members of society.  It should enable them to participate in a communal effort to find a balance between individual liberty, private property, market competition, and due process on the one hand and self-restraint and community obligation on the other ...

    In my view, universities must do all they can to ensure that students and faculty, and society at large, wrestle with the great questions of human existence.  Universities are not necessarily places to come for answers, but they are places that have an obligation to be sure that important questions are being addressed honestly, thoughtfully, and with full respect for the worth and dignity of all people.  They are also places that must try as hard as they can to exhibit, both by word and deed, an exemplary commitment to ethically informed principles, and to a set of values that enables them to meet their civic responsibilities.

[Source: Hersh, Richard, "Intentions and Perceptions: A National Survey of Public Attitudes Toward Liberal Arts Education," Change, March/April 1997, p. 16-23.]

Perceptions of a Liberal Arts Education

Parents and high school students have little or no idea what a liberal arts education is. Only 27 percent of parents, and even fewer high school students (14 percent), indicate that they are very familiar with a liberal arts education. On the other hand, a majority of faculty and administrators (70 percent) and business executives (54 percent) indicate that they are very familiar with a liberal arts education. Liberal arts college graduates were, not surprisingly, the most familiar (86 percent), whereas their university and specialty school peers had substantially lower familiarity (32 percent).

When asked to volunteer what a liberal arts education means to them, the respondents most often cited "providing a broad introduction to a wide variety of academic disciplines/well-rounded education. "But 44 percent of high school students, along with 19 percent of parents, were unable to give any answer at all. Only a small number indicated that a liberal arts education "teaches students how to think on their own."

26 Specific Goals of Higher Education

     Developing critical thinking skills

     Developing writing, problem-solving, and oral skills

     Developing problem-solving skills

     Developing strong work habits

     Computer literacy

     Adapting to new careers

     Exposure to the business world

     Professional school preparation

    Teaching technical skills

     Learning for learning's sake

     Developing basic skills in the sciences, arts, etc.

     Developing an appreciation for culture

     Learning foreign language skills

     Developing self-discipline

     Developing one's own ideas

     Learning to live on one's own

     Exposure to diverse ideas

     Learning time management

     Experiencing different cultures

     Developing a global perspective

     Making lifelong connections

     Teaching business-related skills

     Developing respect for others

     Developing tolerance for others

     Developing loyalty and integrity

     Developing citizenship

Most people believe you can get a liberal arts education anywhere--it's not unique. To find out how respondents viewed liberal arts education compared to other types of higher education, we asked them to rate which of the above 26 goals of higher education were best provided by either a liberal arts education or by any other higher education curriculum. Overall, stakeholders believe that the large majority of the goals of higher education can be achieved in any curriculum, especially writing and oral skills, professional school preparation, exposure to the business world, critical thinking, problem-solving, computer literacy, strong work habits, and time management. The only goals of higher education seen as being uniquely provided by liberal education are "developing an appreciation for culture," and "developing basic skills in the sciences, arts, humanities, and social sciences"--goals generally rated as less important by most stakeholders in this survey.

On a number of measures, business executives have greater faith in the effectiveness of a liberal arts education than do parents. We asked parents and business executives to rate the effectiveness of liberal arts colleges, universities, and specialty schools against each of the 26 goals of higher education. Both groups feel that liberal arts colleges perform better than universities and specialty schools in the following goals:

*  Developing basic skills in the sciences, arts, etc.

*  Developing respect for others.

*  Developing an appreciation for culture.

*  Developing loyalty and integrity.

*  Learning for learning's sake.

*  Developing citizenship.

*  Learning foreign language skills

*  Developing tolerance for others

However, parents believe universities perform better on the following goals, while business executives favor liberal arts colleges:

*  Making lifelong connections

*  Developing self-discipline

*  Exposure to diverse ideas

*  Developing a global perspective

*  Learning to live on one's own

With regard to all the other goals, no single type of school dominated the performance ratings.

Students and parents overwhelmingly believe the reason to go to college is to prepare for a prosperous career--but fewer than 40 percent of business executives agree.  The large majority of high school students (85 percent) and parents (75 percent) indicate that college is important because it "prepares students to get a better job and/or increases their earning potential. "Faculty and administrators and university graduates also offer "preparing for a career" as the reason to go to college a majority of the time (60 percent). But only 37 percent of business executives and 38 percent of recent liberal arts college graduates agree.

When pushed, most people agree that problem-solving, critical thinking, and writing and oral skills--abilities traditionally imparted by a liberal arts education--are, in fact, career skills, and are the most important goals of higher education. Using the 26 goals of higher education, respondents were asked to rate each on a scale of 1 ("not at all important") to 10 ("very important").

Given the earlier high priority accorded to "career skills," it is interesting to note the common agreement across all stakeholders on the list of most highly rated (80 percent or better) goals: problem-solving, critical thinking, and writing and oral skills, along with strong work habits, self-discipline, and a respect for others. Liberal arts educators have traditionally embraced these goals as central to a liberal education. The large majority of parents and business executives also view such goals as "exposure to the business world" (74 percent) and "teaching business-related skills" (68 percent) as very important, whereas faculty and administrators are more likely than others to view "developing basic skills in the sciences, arts, etc.," (73 percent), and "developing an appreciation for culture" (70 percent) as very important.

More than one-third of parents consider liberal arts education a luxury beyond their reach. Higher education overall is viewed as too expensive by six in 10 parents and half of all high school students (52 percent). Four in 10 parents feel that "an education is not a good value for the money."

Belief in the importance of college education is significantly lower among college and high school faculty and administrators than in society at large. Approximately nine in 10 parents (87 percent), high school students (92 percent), and recent college graduates (85 percent) say that it is very important that a student continue his/her education after high school. Most business executives (79 percent) agree. But only 62 percent of college and high school faculty and administrators share this belief, often declaring in focus groups that "many students are neither socially nor academically prepared for college work."

Summary

The findings of this national survey (administered by Daniel Yankelovich) suggest that the liberal arts are neither understood well nor held in high esteem by a critical segment of society. Parents and college-bound high school students have very little familiarity with the meaning or purpose of liberal education. An overwhelming majority of parents (75 percent) and college-bound students (85 percent) believe that the ultimate goal of college is to get a practical education and secure a first job.

Financial considerations, preconceptions about colleges and universities, and their perceptions of what employers want often point families in the direction of sure-ticket schools that bestow prestige and, by implication, sure employment. The smart choice, they say, is a professional program tailored to specific jobs in business, computer technology, engineering, law, or medicine.

But only about 37 percent of business leaders agree. CEOs say they value the long-term outcomes of a college education--those that prepare one not only for a first job, but for along and variable career.

CEOs and human resource managers in our study told us they are looking for three clusters of skills: cognitive, presentational, and social.

Cognitive skills include problem-solving, critical thinking, and "learning to learn. "Special emphasis is given to moving up new learning serves rapidly in response to new challenges. This, employers say, requires the ability to see things in a new light and make sense of ideas in old and new contexts, the kind of intellectual agility and enthusiasm they perceive to be found in the traditional notion of a "liberal arts education."

Presentational skills include the ability to write and speak clearly, persuasively, and coherently about oneself, ideas, and data. The ability to communicate--to make sense of and present clearly what appears to others as information chaos across many disciplines--is crucial, say business leaders, if one is to advance in a career.

Social skills include the ability to work cooperatively with others in a variety of settings. Intercultural understanding, the ability to work with people regardless of race, gender, age, and so on, is also crucial. International experience and foreign language facility are considered very desirable.

These are the "well-rounded" and "practical" skills business executives want, and they perceive a liberal arts education potentially to be excellent "practical" preparation. Parents, however, reject what they perceive to be "charming" Ivory-tower liberal arts colleges (and their counterparts within large universities) that profess to turn out "well-rounded" graduates. Hence, an apparent "practicality gap" and a major challenge to liberal education everywhere.

Americans are applying cost-benefit analysis to all decisions and focusing on the bottom line, examining all expenditures in terms of "What do I get?" and "What's the payoff"?

Business is growing more international, more competitive, and more susceptible to technology-driven change. In such a climate, rigid specialists limited to one specific skill are quickly left behind. Graduates must be capable of independent thought, creativity, risk-taking, perseverance, and entrepreneurship, as well as be open to new ideas and willing to express an unpopular point of view. They must be comfortable with different cultures and possess foreign language aptitude.

Americans seem to be operating in a narrow framework of "vocation" versus "learning for learning's sake," an understandable but false dichotomy.

[Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 20, 2008, A3.  The material is by Daniel H. Pink, the author of A Whole New Mind.]

Six Abilities that Matter Most in the New Economy

*  Design: "Design literacy has become an indispensable as knowledge of spreadsheets today.  Design is a way to solve problems.  (As an example, Pink pointed to new, color-coded prescription bottles that highlight the most important factor in preventing medical errors--the name and dosage of the drug.)

*  Story:  "Facts are everywhere, and they are free.  What matters more is putting them in context and delivering them with emotional impact."

*  Empathy:  This is a skill that is difficult to automate and outsource.

*  Play:  The ability to bring humor to serious tasks.

*  Meaning:  Life is about meaning, not just accumulating "stuff."

*  Symphony:  Most people tend to think of successful leaders as focused.  "The opposite ability--the ability to step back, see the big picture, and connect the dots--is more important."

A liberal arts education should develop such abilities.  Otherwise, college graduates will be skilled only in routine work.  That may help them on an assessment test, but when that routine work is automated and outsourced, it won't help much on the lifetime-earnings side of the equation.

Mindful Awareness

Dr. Dan Seagul, Psychiatrist, UCLA

The following variables are all controlled by the pre-frontal cortex of the brain, and pertain to what might otherwise be called desirable "reflective" habits:

(1)  Regulating your body.

(2)  Tuning into others

(3)  Displaying appropriate emotional balance (not too much or too little emotion).

(4)  Demonstrating response flexibility (not being impulsive, but more reflective).

(5)  Exhibiting fear modulation (being appropriately fearful when there is actual danger).

(6)  Showing empathy (considering the points of view of others).

(7)  Displaying insight (possessing appropriate perspective on one's own feelings).

(8)  Behaving morally (thinking about and behaving in accord with the larger social good).

(9)  Having intuition (anticipating situations).

[Source: "In Praise of Creativity" (The Inaugural address of Reed College President Colin Diver, in Reed, Nov. 2002, 5-9.]

    We all know that Reed is deeply committed to the ideals of liberal education.  But what do we really mean by a "liberal" education?  That question is usually answered by focusing on the negative--that is, by identifying what liberal education is designed to liberate us from.  By this account, a liberal education is designed to free us from the bonds of ignorance, prejudice, hasty judgment, or sloppy thinking.

    But what about the positive side of that question?  What does a liberal education liberate us for?  My counterparts at some colleges would say: We educate students for moral, intellectual, or spiritual leadership.  Some would perhaps emphasize service to the community, or the shaping of economic or social structures.  Others would answer more simply--in a fittingly libertarian spirit: Our job is to enable our graduates to live happy, fulfilling, and productive lives, whatever they choose to do.

    What do we liberate minds for?  How should Reed College answer that question?  Reed, of course, is a complex and evolving organism that serves many purposes and speaks with many voices.  So, most of the answers that I have just given would be included in a complete account of Reed's ambitions.  But I would emphasize one answer that is not on the list that I just reviewed: and that is creativity.  As I see it, Reed College should be devoted centrally, and fundamentally, to developing in its students a capacity for creativity--that is, the capacity to make genuinely original and valuable contributions to human knowledge or human society.

    That Reed should set for itself such a task is hardly surprising, given its history.  After all, the college was born during a time of unprecedented creative ferment.  The works of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Schonberg, Eliot, Joyce, Wright, and dozens like them were challenging understandings that had ruled the Western worlds of science, art, and literature for centuries.  A world-view built on assumptions of continuity, objectivity, harmony, and perfectibility suddenly found itself forced to confront disturbing ideas like atonality, cubism, deconstruction of texts, cultural and moral relativism, quantum discontinuity, radical uncertainty, interchangeability of mass and energy, physical and temporal relativity, biological determinism, and the behavioral determinism of unconscious urges and suppressed sexuality.  In a statement that has come to be seen as a birth announcement for the age of modernism, Virginia Woolf once famously declared: "In or about December 1910, human character changed."  The very next fall, Reed College threw open its doors, defiantly proclaiming its own discontinuity from the clubby consensus that had ruled the Eastern Establishment for decades.

    Ninety-one years have passed since that moment.  By Eastern Establishment standards (to say nothing of European standards), Reed is still in its adolescence.  And so, it is perhaps not surprising that Reed remains faithful to the rebellious spirit of its founding generation.  For those who believe that history is destiny, that history of iconoclasm is reason enough for us to continue to place creativity at the center of our focus. 

    With due respect for the determinists, I believe that we can choose our destiny.  We should valorize creativity, not because we are predestined to do so, but because we choose to do so.  And we should choose to do so for both instructional and intrinsic reasons.  Viewed instrumentally, creativity is the engine of our economy and our culture.  Ours, for good or ill, is a society built on ideas, on discovery, on change.  We at Reed can best repay that society, for its investment in us, by producing people and ideas that enable society to progress--to solve even its most intractable problems, and to realize even its most elusive dreams.

    To me, the pursuit of creativity finds even greater resonance for intrinsic reasons.  The act of creation is, for most people, the highest attainment of human striving.  In Abraham Maslow's formulation, the act of creation is the means to, indeed virtually synonymous with, self-actualization.  In religious belief, the act of creation can be seen as an expression of one's divine nature.  To create is to touch God.

    If I am right that Reed College should foster creativity, how should it carry out that task?  That is a difficult question to answer without understanding the roots of human creativity.  Serious study of creativity in the artistic, intellectual, and scientific realms dates back only about half a century.  Over that time, the subject of creativity has been investigated by cognitive and behavioral psychologists, historians, sociologists, economists, literary theorists, and aestheticians.  Not surprisingly, the findings of these researchers are diverse, often divergent, and only with difficulty translatable into prescriptive terms.

    Still, when one reviews the literature, a number of themes emerge that provide a framework for thinking about the conditions and traits that correlate with creative achievement.  I would like, briefly, to talk about two conditions--mastery and versatility--and three traits--passion, curiosity, and playfulness.

    Virtually all creative individuals have been masters of at least some domain.  As Louis Pasteur said: "novel ideas come to the prepared mind."  Economist Herbert Simon argues that creative problem-solving requires a "skill at searching spaces of possible ... solutions in a highly selective manner, [recognizing] familiar patterns ... that give access to bodies of knowledge, stored in memory."  Echoing the findings of other commentators, Simon argues that it takes at least 10 years of sustained effort to acquire sufficient mastery to make major contributions to a field.  Even Mozart had been publicly performing and composing music for 10 years before he produced his first genuine masterpieces.  Of course, he began at age four!  I'm sorry to break the news: but, all of us--even you undergraduates--are over the hill.

    To become a master one must immerse oneself in the history and literature of one's field of study.  One must understand how knowledge has built up over the centuries like layers of sedimentary rock, how the search for knowledge has so often led down blind alleys, only rarely lurching into fertile pathways.  Newton famously attributed his success to the fact that he "stood on the shoulders of giants."  It is probably more accurate to say that the true creator stands on the shoulders of a few giants and a throng of midgets.

    A four-year course of undergraduate study cannot instill mastery in any intellectual or aesthetic discipline.  But it can instill the foundation for mastery, and an understanding for what the achievement of mastery requires.  I can think of no better way to start this process than by requiring undergraduates to immerse themselves in the formative period of Western thought.  Reed's introductory humanities sequence has famously served this purpose.  The sequence has, of course, evolved over time and will continue to evolve.  But my hope is that it will always serve as an epistemological foundation--as a living model of the process by which human society, through ceaseless investigation and reflection, has built up the layers of knowledge and understanding on which the next generation of creators must stand.

    An even more important instrument for leading students toward mastery is the structure of departmental majors.  Undergraduate programs around the country have relaxed major requirements, often substituting a horizontal smorgasbord for vertical structure.  Reed has resisted that trend, and I hope it will continue to resist it.  Mastery requires immersion, sequence, structure, coherence.  Reed should maintain its historical focus on the classic academic disciplines.  It should set the bar high for satisfying a major within one of those disciplines.  It should approve of interdisciplinary programs only if they build on a strong disciplinary base.  And it should remain stubbornly committed to basing curricular structure on faculty consensus about the organizing principles of a discipline, rather than the shifting tastes of the educational marketplace.

    If mastery speaks to depth, versatility speaks to breadth.  Creation is, almost by definition, the act of seeing an old problem through a new lens, of finding a principle that gives coherence to an otherwise incoherent jumble.  Arthur Koestler talks about the "biosociative" powers of creative individuals--that is, their ability to see connections between two previously unconnected ideas.  We know precious little about the magical process of making a creative leap.  But we do know that, in order to leap across a chasm, one must know what is on both sides of that chasm.  Few creators have mastered more than one field, but most have acquired at least a working familiarity with methodologies, assumptions, and ideas drawn from other fields.  Charles Darwin, for example, was an avid reader of geology, zoology, botany, embryology, economics, and anthropology.  He claimed that his breakthrough insight into the mechanism for natural selection came from his so-called "recreational" reading of Malthus's "Essay on the Principle of Population."  Ironically, Darwin misread Malthus!  But no matter Darwin was, thank heavens, a biologist, not an economist.

    An undergraduate education tries to accomplish this objective of breadth through various devices, most significantly its distribution requirements.  Because the Reed faculty has just completed a yearlong discussion of distributional requirements, I take my life in my hands talking about this subject.  Fortunately the college's distributional system does assure at least a reasonably high degree of methodological breadth.  But I worry that too many students still graduate from this college without ever having grappled seriously with two essential vehicles for liberating the creative process: first, the framing of a hypothesis that can be expressed in mathematical terms and tested through statistical analysis; and second, the act of producing, and submitting to criticism, an original work of literary, artistic, or musical expression.  The scientist who has never tried to write haiku or the literary critic who has never tried to estimate a confidence interval has, by that fact alone, constructed her capacity for breakthrough insight.

    I characterized the three traits conducive to creativity as passion, curiosity, and playfulness.  By passion I mean what the cognitive psychologists call an affective connection to one's field of study--not just an intellectual interest, but an emotional attachment that can drive someone to almost obsessive extremes.  As the mathematician Henri Poincare put it: "The scientist does not study nature because it is useful: he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful."  Or, in Einstein's words: creative achievement in science requires a "state of feeling akin to that of the religious worshipper or of one who is in love."

    Curiosity is linked to that kind of passion, yet it is conceptually distinct.  Creative people experience blinding insights, but they recognize them as insights precisely because they have an almost insatiable yearning for understanding.  This quality, so natural in children, often declines with age.  Somehow, creative adults manage to preserve this quality--what George Santayana called "second naivete,"  or what Erich Fromm called "the willingness to be born every day."  Answers come to creative people only because they ask questions.  It's like the story of the poor man who wanted desperately to win the lottery.  One day in frustration he called out: "God, why don't I ever win the lottery?"  A voice thundered back from the overhanging clouds, "BUY A TICKET."  
    Playfulness is a quality observed in many creative people--most obviously in those who, like Einstein, have a whimsical or childlike personality.  But even notoriously dour creators, like Beethoven and Freud, had playful minds.  A related concept in the literature on creativity is the capacity for visualization.  "All this inventing, all this producing," wrote Mozart, "takes place in a pleasing, lively dream."  Rudyard Kipling's formula for creative writing was simple: "Drift, wait, and obey."  (Incidently, from what I can tell, Kipling's formula seems to have a strong following on this campus.)

    Creators in every walk of life, from physics and mathematics to music and poetry, report that original ideas first manifest themselves in nonverbal form, sometimes as visual images, inchoate thoughts, or pure emotional feeling.  Robert Frost once said that a poem "begins in delight and ends in wisdom."  Without that capacity for nonverbal delight, there would have been no "Mending Wall," no "Birches," no "West-Running Brook."  And, by extension, no Sacre du Printemps, no Demoiselles d'Avignon, no Totem and Taboo, no Ulysses, no uncertainty principle, no double helix, no E=MC2.

    One would suppose that passion, curiosity, and playfulness are qualities that a college can do little to instill.  They either arrive with the incoming students, or they do not.  Fortunately, those qualities arrive in great abundance on this campus each fall, drawn here by some magnetic force that few of us fully understand, but that all of us deeply appreciate . . .  Well, most of the time.

    Still, there is much that a college can do to nurture and reinforce such qualities.  The most obvious way is by exemplifying them.  To provide an environment that nurtures creativity in students, we must have an environment that nurtures creativity in the faculty and staff.  Reed has been blessed with, and must always maintain, support, and encourage, a faculty that exhibits passion for its work, the courage to ask the seemingly unanswerable questions, and the playfulness of mind that opens doors to unexpected answers.  Likewise, we as a college must never be content to look in the same old places for answers to the same old questions.  Whether the issue relates to campus planning, curricular structure, student services, admissions recruiting, or investment policy, we need constantly to ask, not how Princeton would do it, but how Einstein would solve the problem; not how Amherst would solve the problem, but how Robert Frost would solve the problem.

    But there is more that we can do, much more.  An education for creativity is an education of inquiry, of search, of ceaseless questioning.  We boast about our conference method of teaching and our thesis requirement, and with good reason.  But we must, all of us, every day, examine the reality that lies behind the mythology.  In the end, there is only good teaching and bad teaching.  Every method of teaching--lecture, problem-solving, role-playing, conference--can be done well or badly.  Our approach to teaching must be always to stimulate students to challenge assumptions, justify conclusions, and formulate testable hypotheses.  Every day in every class, students must be encouraged to muse, to ponder, to wonder, to test, and to defend. 

    Likewise, the senior thesis requirement must always be seen for what it really is--not the caboose at the end of a four-year long train, but the engine that drives virtually everything else in the curriculum.  Our job is to transform high school graduates into people who can formulate a genuinely original and challenging research question, who can then investigate that question against a background of both disciplinary mastery and methodological diversity, and who can open their minds to the possibility of inspiration.

    I wish I could guarantee that there is, somewhere in this audience--or over there in the library--a future Virginia Woolf or Igor Stravinsky, Marie Curie or Niels Bohr, Martha Graham or Mahatma Gandhi.  But of course I cannot.  The privilege to achieve creative genius will be afforded to only a few.  Invisible genes and blind luck will have a lot to say about which few.  Yet, if we look at the Achievements of Reed graduates, we see hundreds of people who, by their ingenuity and insight, have made lasting impact on our world.  We see graduates who have invented the compact disc and the oscilloscope, who have made pioneering contributions to conceptual art, beat poetry, punk music, and mime theater, who have created computer virus-protection and ind-amplifying software, who have synthesized cancer-fighting drugs and articulated the structure of repressor molecules.

    So, if we do our job right, we will wake up some day, years from now, and realize that it was someone in this audience--or in the library--who found the last piece in the puzzle of voice-recognition software.  It was someone in this audience who learned how to repair damaged neurons.  And, maybe, it was even someone in this audience who showed the world how the engine of capitalism can be yoked to an ethic of caring.

    That vision is ambitious.  But it is hardly fanciful.  It is, after all, a simple extrapolation from our adolescent past and our invigorating present.

    So, I conclude in the obvious way: In the spirit of creativity, that is to say, mastery, versatility, passion, curiosity, and--most of all playfulness, let the future--and the party--begin.

Schedule

Monday (5 to 9 p.m.)

     Introductions

    A History of the Idea of a Liberal Education

    The Role of the Liberal Arts in Professional Education

    Slides on Previous Executive Liberal Arts Seminars

    Physical Education

    Keep track of your physical activity and nutritional input.

    Five Groups Plan Dinner Snacks For Seminar Members

Tuesday (5 to 9 p.m.)

    Dinner snack (Group #1)

    Social Science: Survey Research

    Economic History: The Irish Potato Famine

Wednesday (5 to 9 p.m.)

    Dinner snack (Group #2)

    Mathematics: Models

Thursday (5 to 9 p.m.)

    Dinner snack (Group #3), Discussion: The Death of Ivan Ilych

    Music: Aesthetic Education

Friday (5 to 9 p.m.)

    Dinner snack (Group #4)

    Arthur Miller: The Crucible

Saturday (9 to 5 p.m.)

    Dinner snack (Group #5)

    Technology: Toolbook

Final

Requirements

Each seminar member is required to fully participate in each session and keep a reflective journal on the week's activities, which includes specific items, such as an exercise and nutrition log for the week.

Grading (For those taking the course for credit.)

    Participation which promotes seminar goals         40%

    Journal                                                                40%

    Final                                                                    20%

Independent Study Alternative

An important feature of this course is the interaction between participants. It should truly be a seminar. Nevertheless, some aspects of the course can be completed individually, followed by intensive discussion. Here is how we can do that:

1.  Lecture and seminar discussion on the history of the idea of a liberal education

2.  Independent reading on the Role of the Liberal Arts in Professional Education.

3. Seminar discussion of the Role of the Liberal Arts in Professional Education (at a second seminar meeting).

4.  Lecture and seminar discussion on healthy physical and nutritional habits.

5. Seminar participant self-tracking of physical activity and nutritional input over a 2-week span.(Progress report at a second seminar meeting; final report with concluding seminar journal.)

6.  Lecture and seminar discussion on the principles of survey research.

7. Seminar participant design of a survey of high school students on their understanding of higher education.

8. Independent viewing of a video on the Irish Potato Famine, or reading of Cecil Woodham-Smith's book, The Great Hunger.

9. Lecture and seminar discussion on mathematical models.Seminar participants complete exercises as described in the syllabus material. (Second seminar meeting.)

10. Lecture and seminar discussion of aesthetic theories. (Second seminar meeting.)

11. Seminar participants read the Crucible and Socrates' Apology and Crito and write a brief paper comparing these classic works.

12. Lecture and seminar discussion on "Toolbook" authoring software. (Third seminar meeting.)

13. Seminar participants identify "hotword" candidates in Socrates' Apology and Crito and write several explanations for the identified hotwords.

14. Seminar participants program a "hotword," using the Toolbook authoring language. 

15. Seminar participants complete a take-home final.

ACCOMMODATIONS FOR DISABILITIES

Bakersfield, Santa Clarita, or Hanford Participants—To request academic accommodations due to a disability, please contact the Office of Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) as soon as possible.  Their office is located in SA 140, and they may be reached at 661-654-3360 (voice), or 661-654-6288 (TDD).  If you have an accommodations letter from the SSD Office documenting that you have a disability, please present the letter to me during my office hours as soon as possible so we can discuss the specific accommodations that you might need in this class.

Antelope Valley Participants—To request academic accommodations due to a disability, please contact the Office of Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) as soon as possible.  Their office is located in Bldg. 200, and they may be reached at 661-952-5061 (voice) or 661-952-5120 (tdd).  If you have an accommodation letter from the SSD Office documenting that you have a disability, please present the letter to me during my office hours so we can discuss the specific accommodations that you might need in this class.

Rights and Responsibilities of Students

Academic Integrity

            The principles of truth and integrity are recognized as fundamental to a community of teachers and scholars.  The University expects that both faculty and students will honor these principles and in so doing will protect the integrity of all academic work and student grades.  Students are expected to do all work assigned to them without unauthorized assistance and without giving unauthorized assistance.  Faculty have the responsibility of exercising care in the planning and supervision of academic work so that honest effort will be encouraged and positively reinforced.

            There are certain forms of conduct that violate the university's policy of academic integrity.  ACADEMIC DISHONESTY (CHEATING) is a broad category of actions that involve fraud and deception to improve a grade or obtain course credit.  Academic dishonesty (cheating) is not limited to examination situations alone, but arises whenever students attempt to gain an unearned academic advantage.  PLAGIARISM is a specific form of academic dishonesty (cheating) which consists of the misuse of published or unpublished works of another by claiming them as one's own.  Plagiarism may consist of handing in someone else's work as one's own, copying or purchasing a pre-written composition and claiming it as one's own, using paragraphs, sentences, phrases, words or ideas written by another without giving appropriate citation, or using data and/or statistics compiled by another without giving appropriate citation.  Another example of academic dishonesty (cheating) is the SUBMISSION OF THE SAME, OR ESSENTIALLY THE SAME, PAPER or other assignment for credit in two different courses without receiving prior approval from the instructors of the affected courses.

            When a faculty member discovers a violation of the university's policy of academic integrity, the faculty member is required to notify the CSUB Dean of Student Life and CSUB Student Conduct Coordinator and the student(s) involved.  A course grade of 'F' may be assigned or another grade penalty may be applied at the discretion of the courses instructor.  Additional academic sanctions are determined by the student conduct coordinator.  Academic sanctions may include disciplinary probation, suspension, permanent expulsion from the university or from the California State University system, administrative hold on the release of records, and withholding a degree.  Disciplinary probation shall be noted on the student's formal academic record only for the duration of the probationary period.  Disciplinary suspension and expulsion are a part of the student's permanent record.

            The student may pursue a formal hearing or make a settlement agreement with the student conduct coordinator.  CSUB Dean of Student Life and CSUB Student Conduct Coordinator shall conduct an investigation, confer with the faculty member, students and any witnesses identified, and review all evidence.  The student is entitled to a formal hearing scheduled by the CSUB Dean of Student Life and CSUB Student Conduct Coordinator, in which the evidence of the alleged violation shall be presented before an impartial Hearing Officer (appointed by the President) and the student shall be present to provide an explanation or defense.  The Hearing Officer shall submit a written report to the President containing the findings, conclusions, and recommendations.  Alternatively, a settlement agreement may be made with the CSUB Dean of Student Life and CSUB Student Conduct Coordinator.  The settlement agreement will specify the academic sanctions, the length and terms of disciplinary probation or suspension, and the conditions the student is expected to meet in order to remain in good standing (e.g., training or regular meetings with the CSUB Dean of Student Life and CSUB Student Conduct Coordinator).  All sanctions are reported to the instructor reporting the incident, the student's Chair, and the student's Dean.

            Any repeated violation of academic integrity shall result in more serious academic sanctions.  Normally, this will include suspension or expulsion from the university with a note on the student's permanent record.

Academic Freedom

            Freedom to pursue truth and to achieve personal and intellectual development is essential to CSUB's community of scholars.  The University is firmly committed to such freedom for both students and faculty.  Academic freedom is the University's guarantee of freedom of expression by all students and faculty under the First Amendment.

            For the achievement of academic freedom, a necessary condition for such pursuit is an acceptance of the spirit of inquiry and appreciation for diverse ideas, viewpoints, cultures, and life-styles.  Acceptance must be demonstrated not only in the classroom but in all other areas of the campus.  The achievement of academic freedom, however, must occur within a respect for law and the protection of the opinions and dignity of others.

Civility and Respectful Conduct

            The classroom is essential for the achievement of academic freedom, the pursuit of truth, and the development of students.  Because of its importance, students are expected to exhibit respect for the views of others, the professionalism of the instructor, and the goals of academic freedom whenever they are in the classroom.

            Faculty are obligated to recognize and respect student diversity, ideas, perceptions, and opinions.  At the same time, faculty have a fundamental responsibility to maintain the integrity of the learning environment.  When confronted by unreasonable disruption in the classroom, faculty are expected to initiate actions to correct such conditions.  Such actions may result in disciplinary action ranging from removal from the classroom to formal disciplinary sanctions, including probation, suspension, or expulsion.