The first stage of our liberal education pedagogy seminar
MetroCITI MetroCITI ended today - 15 discussion-rich hours, during which we ten instructors and four researchers got to know each other, and started what will certainly be an energizing discussion spread over monthly meetings for the coming academic year. They'll be at once refreshingly general (since we're from all sorts of different fields and institutions) and helpfully grounded (since we'll be sharing experiences from the courses we're teaching). Three veterans of the program came today to share their experiences and their advice. I'm already sensing the possibilities of this space which they described, as a space for reflection, experimentation and collaboration.
I wasn't the only one left with one nagging question, though. What is meant by "liberal education"? The term, as I understand it, emerged a few years ago to replace the universally uninspiring "general education," the catch-all for things university students are expected to do outside their chosen majors. "Liberal education" adds some cadences of liberal arts, and also emphasizes the civic significance of the formation students receive in a well-delivered higher education setting. But still, what is it? One of my fellow participants asked the director of the program this question point-blank. She said she didn't know; she'd read lots of literature on it, none of it satisfactory. Our project is part of her attempt to get beyond discussions focused on curriculum and on educational philosophy. Perhaps what makes liberal education important can best be appreciated if we can observe it in the classroom.
Well and good; I'm on board. But of course I've just come back from China, where nothing called "liberal" would be welcomed, at least officially. I didn't have much opportunity to reflect on it while there, but the question of liberal education (or more generally liberal arts education) is close to my heart. I've thought for a while that its future must lie in engagement with the new constituencies and old traditions of Asia, especially India and China... but I confess my thinking was only on the level of curriculum and educational philosophy. What I found in China was a different kind of challenge. Universally valid education or western cultural imperialism?
My own accounts of what I try to do when I teach invariably gravitate toward the language of democracy: another no-go in PRC. Our director's work is grounded in American ideals of freedom and equality, too. (Liberal: liberty.) Is "liberal education" too narrowly American? One of my fellow seminar participants grew up in France; he thinks that may be so, too. I'm not backing away from my earlier formulations, not at all. But I was given pause by our director's pitch-perfect synthesis of statements by two US Secretaries of Education:
Anna Neumann, “Staking a Claim on Learning:
What We Should Know about Learning in Higher Education and Why,”
The Review of Higher Education 37/2 (Winter 2014): 249-267, 263
Her point in offering this was that there's precious little "liberal education" in these statements. I agree - I think this might describe the concerns of quite different governments, including that of the PRC.
So what does "liberal education" add, and is an education incomplete without it? Is it worth paying for for oneself, for others, let alone for every member of one's society?
I remember when I first went to China in 2012 and some students at Kunming University asked me what I thought about democracy. I often say something along the famous Churchillian lines - the worst system except all the others - but I think on that occasion I made it about the growth of knowledge: that the best ideas will come out if everyone has a voice, which will produce a better world for all of us. When I gave the faculty commencement address at Lang in 2006 I emphasized that our kind of seminar learning would make the world a better place because of the "democratic virtues" students developed by being in class with others and learning to expect to learn from everyone in the room. Education isn't just about individual development; it's a public good, and liberal education teaches us to see and value it as that.
What do I think now? I'm not sure. Do I think it's about making the world a better place? Yes. The whole world, and in the same way? Not necessarily... Stay tuned!
It's always a long day flying from the East Coast to the West. I was up at dawn to catch my flight, arrived in San Diego at a noon which felt like late afternoon, much later catching a platinum sunset over the Pacific! It's time finally to reset my watch, so far untouched thanks to China's 12-hour difference from New York.
Wednesday means I've been back stateside a week. The charms of New York, amply on view during the July Fourth weekend, have made way for the rest of the story. Yes, our subway runs 24 hours a day, but it can break down at any hour. Sure, our streets are full of all kinds of people, but more of them than you can bear to imagine live there.
But a year also isn't that much time, something borne home to me by the fact that some of the food in my larder is still good. The popcorn still pops, and, more surprising still, the natural peanut butter is still good, protected by the oil which floats on its top. (The other things in the photo are new.) Ein sonderbar Ding, die Zeit.
On Thirty-fourth street at Penn Station I found a China Daily - the only western language newspaper available in China (except for local spin-offs like Shanghai Daily); picked one up, too, at the "promo- tional price" of 25¢. But this is America: not far away was the more well-established Epoch Times, published by Falun Gong.
from the Brooklyn Green Market (above). And while my eyes still pop open at five, I'm moving steadily toward Eastern Standard Time. Today's highlight was - fancy that! - going back to church. Numbers were thin, it being the July Fourth weekend, but people were happy to see me. "Welcome home," said one!
Follow my gaze, about midway through today's thirteen and a half hour direct flight from Shanghai Pudong to New York John F. Kennedy. (I was sitting on the right side of the plane, looking southward.) I'd noticed that we were keeping company with the moon - full, or nearly full - only slowly leaving it behind as we flew along the coastline of Alaska. Above 
is my last glimpse of it, setting behind us. I didn't watch it fade from view because an unfurling glacier below caught my eye. And then, to the southeast, where our plane was headed, I saw the first light of a new day dancing on the peaks and edges of massive snow-covered mountains wading like ancient sea monsters in an ocean of cloud! 
(The largest may be Mount Logan.) My cellphone camera barely does them justice. But you get the idea. First light - gold, then peach, then cream, then white - on only the very highest points of mountains, sometimes no more than the thin line of a ridge, and all the more dramatic as the mountains' bodies below were dark green: it's summer!
For one going from steamy Shanghai to muggy New York Alaska's snow caps, however summery, are neither here nor there. But for one stretching out one July 1st - or perhaps grafting two - as he returned across the International Date Line to the Western Hemisphere after nearly a year away, it felt like a welcome home.
Just eight months! What can I say, besides sobbing about the non-existence of high speed rail in the US or the saga of the "Second Avenue Subway"? Perhaps ten months is long enough to start to get a sense of people's momentum/whiplash at China's staggering high-speed change.
learning how to maneuver the always unpredictable traffic at intersec- tions (and every point of every street is a potential intersection, with people shooting out of alleys, taxis U-turning, etc.), startling people with my yellow 雨皮 yupi bicycle rain poncho... Adieu, trusty steed!