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As
the great medieval universities engaged in the rediscovery of the once-lost
knowledge of ancient Greece, seven traditional liberal arts emerged: They
involved language, music, and reasoning but also included what we would,
today, call mathematics and science. It is not the particular fields that
mattered, though. Success of liberal arts education was measured not by
a student’s mastery of subject matter. That was only a means to a
more fundamental purpose: transformation of the student herself. Liberal arts education — then and today — is education that “liberates from the tyranny of one’s own experience.” The “liberal” means “liberating.” The logic is fairly simple: We can only know the world around us by applying certain concepts, definitions, and assumptions. To understand something involves an act of intellectual creation, not mere empirical observation. It is unavoidable. Yet, all of us arrive with assumptions, definitions, and concepts that we have unconsciously and uncritically absorbed from a multitude of sources. If, in contrast, we critically examine and consciously choose the concepts and definitions we will use, personally, to know the world, then that is the “liberation from the tyranny of our own experience.” So, let me turn to how we at UW-Green Bay approach the liberal education ideal — how we aspire to transform rather than to merely teach students. Interdisciplinarity is the inharmonic term we used to use, and the idea is relatively simple: Understanding that is deep, complete, and supportive of effective action requires examination from multiple perspectives. Today, we describe it as “connecting learning to life.” All universities, through what they call general education, try to provide students with multiple perspectives. We take a step beyond at UW-Green Bay. The traditional approach is “multidisciplinary.” Subjects are examined within the frameworks of established disciplines. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaTOP OF NEXT COLUMN |
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Our
approach differs. Synthesis is sought by bringing together concepts of
multiple disciplines to seek understandings that would not be possible
within the limitations of any of the contributing disciplines. A whole
is sought that is greater than the sum of the parts.
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