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Liberal
Education and Social Responsibility
Jane Buck, President of the AAUP
11-15 June 2003
The phrase "liberal education"
is a pleonasm; unless it is liberal, what we provide is not an education,
but mere vocational training. The purpose of an education in a democratic
society is to prepare individuals to be discerning, rational citizens
capable of evaluating the relative merits of competing claims in order
to participate meaningfully in society. This view is hardly new.
According to one ancient historian, the first surviving explicit
written reference to liberal education dates to the fifth century B.C.
Stesimbrotos of Thasos, referring to a successful military commander,
said that he lacked a literary education and any "liberal and distinctively
Hellenic accomplishment."
Athenian democracy depended upon the free exchange
of ideas among free men. Women and slaves were, of course, excluded
from formal participation. And the free exchange of ideas depended upon
rhetorical skill, defined not merely as oratorical ability, but the
ability to analyze a problem and propose a solution. A liberal
education, designed to allow access to political forums, was afforded
free men, and technical skills were provided to slaves.
The medieval liberal arts curriculum included
rhetoric, grammar, and logic (the trivium) as well as geometry, arithmetic,
astronomy, and music defined as a division of mathematics (the quadrivium).
Contemporary notions of a liberal education usually include the humanities
and the natural and social sciences. In establishing the National
Foundation for the Arts and Humanities, Congress included in its delightfully
circular definition of the humanities: "Language, both modern and
classic; linguistics; literature; history; jurisprudence; philosophy;
archeology; the history, criticism, theory, and practice of the arts;
and those aspects of the social sciences which have humanistic content
and employ humanistic methods."
For over two thousand years, a common thread
in the definitions of a liberal education has been the primacy of language.
Isocrates in 380 B.C. argued that a liberal education is manifested
above all by skill in speech. To this day, both formal and informal
measures of aptitude and achievement rely heavily on verbal indicators.
In initial encounters in the classroom and in job interviews, we make
impressionistic assessments of a person's competence based on linguistic
fluency. Formal measures, such as standardized tests designed to assess
both verbal and quantitative aptitude and achievement, use words to
pose their questions, and respondents must use language to answer them.
The term academic marketplace, which once referred
to a place where ideas were freely and vigorously debated, has acquired
a literal and venal meaning. Aware of the power of language to
frame perception, the coroporate hucksters who increasingly set the
terms of both political and academic debate, have appropriated and distorted
the vocabulary in profound and radical ways. They would have us
cease to be professors and students engaged in a collegial enterprise
leading to a critical and informed citizenry. Rather, they would
have us be purveyors of canned packets of information to so-called customers
who are, too often, unaware of the degree of their exploitation.
A genuine education can be earned only by students committed to learning
with the guidance of a faculty who, protected by tenure, are free to
explore challenging and often unpopular notions.
Although overt attacks on tenure have subsided, the growth in the numbers
of both part-time and full-time faculty hired off the tenure track is
evidence of the magnitude of the fraud being perpetrated on students,
their parents, higher education, and society by academic institutions.
In the name of flexibility, and faced with financial crises, too many
colleges and universities rely on hiring both part-time and full-time
faculty off the tenure track and inflating the requirements for tenure
to such an extent that few can meet them. The fastest growing component
of new faculty hires is full-time, non-tenure-track. In
the last decade, depending on how one views the data, between 52% and
55% of all new full-time faculty hires were off the tenure track. Part-time
contingent faculty now teach more than half of all courses in some disciplines.
All too often, the tenured faculty are complicit in perpetuating the
problem. It is too easy to look the other way as our contingent,
part-time colleagues are exploited when their exploitation allows us
the luxury of taking sabbaticals and teaching only upper level courses.
When we recommend tenure and promotion only for junior faculty who have
published more than we have, who have virtually perfect student evaluations,
stellar service records, and the potential to be stars in their field,
we are guilty of fostering a misplaced elitism. The pressure to pursue
safe research, that is, au courant and publishable; to obtain outstanding
evaluations from students; and to demonstrate collegiality by accepting
onerous committee assignments is a real, if subtle, threat to academic
freedom, meaningful shared governance, and the quality of the education
we provide. It also serves as a deterrent to attracting recruits to
our profession. How can any rational person expect highly qualified
individuals to pursue graduate degrees at great personal and financial
expense only to obtain underpaid, temporary positions with no hope of
promotion or expectation of job security? Other professions that offer
greater rewards for similar effort will skim off the best and brightest.
There are a few scattered and hopeful signs that a backlash is beginning.
Students and their parents, forced to take up the financial slack as
endowments shrink and state legislatures cut budgets, are taking a more
critical look at the composition of faculties. They are understandably
resentful when many, if not most, faculty are so marginalized that they
are not listed in the faculty telephone directory, do not keep office
hours because they do not have offices in which to hold them, and are
forced to lower standards in order to receive the glowing student evaluations
that serve as the sole basis for the renewal of their part-time contracts.
In response, there are budding initiatives to convert part-time contingent
positions to full-time tenure-track ones and to compensate part-time
contingents on a pro-rated basis and to include them in the governance
structure of the institution. When students realize that many of their
professors are living at or near the poverty line, the message they
receive is that education is a cheap commodity.
We teach, not only by exhortation, but by example. We must support efforts
to provide equitable working conditions for all members of our profession
regardless of their tenure status and to make our campuses welcoming
to women and minorities. We are not always right when we speak
out, but we are always wrong when we do not.
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