On June 17, 1997, the Boston Globe reported: "After months of wrangling over at least eight versions of the history and social sciences curriculum for the public schools, the state Board of Education yesterday finally settled on content guidelines . . . . Critics said the curriculum generally placed too much emphasis on world history in grades 9 and 10 and on the negative aspects of this nation's past" (Hart, 1997).

On June 15, 1997, the Boston Globe reported, "Environmental education, after two decades of dramatic growth in popularity, is feeling a backlash." Conservative, religious, and industry groups "argue that teachers_wittingly or unwittingly_are creating the next generation of environmental activists by convincing students that the Earth is worse off than it really is." Environmentalists say the real threat comes from "education programs underwritten by polluters and designed to improve their image" (Allen, 1997).

On January 17, 1997, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported on the tenth anniversary of the publication of The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students, by Allan Bloom. It reported that "both critics and converts credit Bloom with making the status of higher education a matter of public debate," and that it "quickly became a rallying point for political conservatives and academic traditionalists who believed that the humanities and social sciences were being overrun by trendy scholarship." Quoting Catherine R. Stimpson, director of the fellows program for the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, "It remains, I believe, the best-written of all the books that were reactions to contemporary culture." She says, "And despite its errors_and there are many, many errors_it is perhaps the most intellectually honest" (Leatherman, 1997).

American educators at all levels have found themselves buffeted for more than a decade by ideological discussion represented by these recent items. Ideology has become an issue in curriculum as the political balance has evolved, primarily involving interests in reestablishing older or former educational perspectives on culture and society. The root of the discussion, however, challenges the most fundamental thinking about education itself. Although the sciences are not immune, this discussion arises in primarily regard to education in the humanities, that portion of the curriculum devoted to exploration of the values, ideas, and cultures that dominate the present, and those that have shaped it.

While the conflict may rage at the surface, as moral and intellectual partisans parry for dominance and control, one might infer a confirmation that education matters. Or that this education matters. Arguments for the traditional liberal arts education, heavily engaging the traditional texts, include critical needs by leaders for sound judgement, and critical needs of citizens to make responsible democratic choices. Obviously there have always been many responsible citizens who lacked such study, as there have been many honorable and effective leaders without such credentials. At the same time, political interests seek to reduce government spending, and parents have become alarmed at the direct costs of a college education. It appears these two interests became linked, and these to others.

Engaging the battle are conservatives, the educational establishment, and those with a "third agenda" (Eaton, 1991, p. 180). The latter group might otherwise be called liberals, but the term bears a complex meaning in this discussion. Some refer to these critics as postmodernists, as revisionists, or as alternative educators. Within each camp there is considerable range and diversity, but the polar camps differ in some fundamental ways. They differ in their ideas about the nature of knowledge and authority, about the purpose of education, and about who should be educated.

This paper argues that the conservative perspective has risen in the national agenda for the time being, and it has provoked thoughtful self-examination on the part of the academy. It is, however, based upon an obsolete paradigm of knowledge, one which also corresponds to and reinforces conservative political perspectives. To embrace uncritically the traditional perspective is to increasingly inhibit cultural advancement by reinforcing non-dynamic ideas of knowledge in the culture. In the end, the culture will change, and higher education must define its relationship to it.

The history of the traditional liberal arts curriculum itself provides a context for an overview of the current debate. The arguments break down into themes of access and diversity, and ideas about Truth and knowledge. Consideration of policy choices regarding these competing perspectives requires prior commitments to particular purposes for higher education. Finally, this paper offers some observations and conclusions.

History and Definition:

The seven liberal arts, or the septem artes liberales first appeared in systematized form in the 400s. In the middle ages the artes curriculum was thought to represent continuity through the Romans of the Greek enkuklios paideia, meaning "general education," to be obtained prior to professional studies. The subjects included three grouped under language: grammar, rhetoric, and logic (or dialectic); and four grouped under mathematics: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. At the suggestion of Boethius about 500 AD, the language group became the "trivium" and the mathematics group the "quadrivium." At first the quadrivium was taught before the trivium to provide content, but by 1300 they had been reversed (Kimball, 1986, pp. 13-24, 47-51).

Bruce Kimball establishes some seven characteristics of the septem artes liberales curriculum as he follows it through the centuries. First, its goal is the training of a good citizen to lead society. Second, it prescribes values and standards for character and conduct. Third, it respects a commitment to those values and standards. Fourth, it relies upon a body of classical texts to provide the means to identify and agree upon what those values and standards should be. Fifth, it identifies as elite those who achieve greater merit by adopting the personal and civic virtues in the texts (among whom will be the teachers for they have the opportunity to truly study the texts). Sixth, it presupposes a certainty and ultimacy of learning, and there is no search for new knowledge. And seventh, these studies can be used to explicate divine texts (Kimball, 1986, pp. 36-53).

By 1300 there were some 20 universities. A true university was expected to have at least one higher faculty of law, medicine, or theology above the faculty of arts, and the arts degree was required for entrance to the others. Influenced by Thomas Aquinas, logic and mathematics dominated (quadrivium), while moral training and rhetoric diminished (trivium). Philosophy was elevated above all, and divided into natural, moral, and metaphysical division. A five-step program of education included the trivium, quadrivium, natural philosophy, moral philosophy, and metaphysics, in that order. Increasing emphasis on the graduate faculties reduced the importance of the classical arts education.

In the late 1300s a flowering of literary culture in northern Italy fostered the teaching of Petrarch, who began laying the foundations of Renaissance humanism. He "largely ignored the interests of the schoolmen in philosophy, logic, and professional studies, resurrecting instead the literary model of ancient Latin rhetors with Cicero as his main guide" (Kimball, 1986, p. 76). These new scholars united around an educational ideal based on the classical literature of antiquity, particularly that of Cicero and Quintilian. The grammatical trivium again assumed a place above the mathematical quadrivium for these scholars.

The Renaissance humanists took the name studia humanitatis or studia humaniora, emphasizing grammar, rhetoric, poetry, and history, often combined with moral philosophy. Their committed purpose was to the continual refinement of the human personality, "advancing classical study for its own sake rather than emphasizing its instrumentality for the study of theology, and they cited the necessity of leisure for the pursuit of classical study" (Kimball, 1986, p. 78).

The university throughout Europe began to evolve in character during the early Renaissance. Particularly in the north, merchants and commercial entrepreneurs sent their sons to the universities for "polite learning." In addition, expanding demand for civil servants increased the value of education. During the 1500s and 1600s the new gentry all but evicted the medieval theological students in England and France. It was the gentry who had the leisure to pursue the classical writers, and refinement of personality and character through arts and letters was quite appropriate for the new student.

Kimball contends a new meaning for "liberal" came into use in the 1700s, meaning "free from narrow prejudice, open-minded," a conception he calls the "liberal-free ideal." Founding the conception in the writings of John Locke, he outlines the principal characteristics as: a) emphasis on freedom, especially from a priori strictures and standards; b) emphasis on intellect and rationality, and resulting in the "free thinkers" deplored by scholastics; c) critical skepticism, a manifestation of scientific thought; d) tolerance as a virtue, where it had previously been considered a sign of weakness, cowardice, or lack of commitment; e) egalitarianism, conflicting irrevocably with humanist considerations of man's place; f) emphasis on volition of the individual, directly confronting the ingrained approval for compulsion; and g) concern for individual growth, study as an end in itself (Kimball, 1986, pp. 119-122).

Kimball sees three different "liberal" studies in current use at the time of founding of the Colonial colleges: 1) a residue of the scholastic classical program, with emphasis on logic; 2) studia humanitatis, generally in deteriorated form and compromised by scholasticism, including a reliance on classical languages and literature taught by dry grammatical and rhetorical rules; and 3) liberal-free subjects, primarily natural and experimental sciences and modern languages (Kimball, 1986, pp. 123-124).

In their modeling of the English universities, the colonial American colleges transferred the humanist curriculum intact and maintained it through the early 1700s. It remained primarily a scholastic curriculum, with some strong humanist influences. This scholastic-humanist tradition was accommodated to Christian purposes. American academics gloried in exertion for its own sake. Laurence Veysey says, "For such educators, less pride was to be obtained in the display of well-honed, razor-sharp mental faculties than in the exertion of will which was required in the process of developing them." For some, it supported a sense of intellectual caste which they approved. Besides, life was governed by hard codes, they said, and students should learn to like them (Veysey, 1965, pp. 24-36). The report of the Yale faculty in 1828 is generally considered to embody this thinking, Yale generally representing the more conservative positions in educational thought in the Colonial and Federal eras.

The academic subjects of the "humanities" became clarified and labeled as such only in the twentieth century. Following the development of academic departments and disciplines, the humanities became what was left after separating out the disciplines in the sciences, social sciences, and applied and professional studies. By 1965 and the founding of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the humanities are defined as disciplines of: "language, both modern and classical; linguistics; literature; history; jurisprudence; philosophy; archaeology; comparative religion, ethics; the history, criticism, and theory of the arts"; and "those aspects of the social sciences which have humanistic content and employ humanistic methods" (Bennett, 1984, p. 206). These subjects confirm a strong connection to the original trivium and its aggrandizement by the followers of Petrarch and Erasmus.

The Current Debate

The current debate begins with the curriculum of the humanities, but it extends throughout the curricular structure. In the final analysis, almost all issues turn on implications of class. The principal concerns can be listed as:

Maintenance of cultural identity
Accessibility of ideas and learning to all groups.
The nature of Truth itself.
How knowledge is constructed.

Perspectives on educational practice underwent considerable revision in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The expansion of opportunity for higher education led to a search for new ways to address a new population. As with any major revision, explorations yielded variable results, and the measures of success were not themselves matters of universal agreement. While conservative and alternative perspectives competed for the support of the establishment, the discussion failed to gain a broad public airing. In 1981, however, Ronald Reagan became president and a conservative political agenda began to permeate the structures of American public culture.

In his introduction to a collection of essays on "political correctness," Paul Berman (1992, pp. 1-26) argues that the new approaches to education arise out of a flowering in absurdist and existential philosophy, primarily in France, he calls "'68 Philosophy," for lack of a name that is not overworked. He argues that the core thinking essentially opposed liberal humanism, and claims it argued that "Western-style democracy, rationalism, objectivity, and the autonomy of the individual are slogans designed to convince the downtrodden that subordination is justice" (p. 6). He interprets the collective trend in this group of philosophers as claiming free will is subordinated to "giant, hidden, impersonal structures," which are at their root the structures of language, because they control thought and social behavior (pp. 6-8). This, he says, arises from the period from World War I through the end of the Cold War, when the horrors of war induced a despair, a hopelessness for reason and humanism to manage the world and human affairs. From there, moral drift and purposelessnes began to permeate the culture. The result was radicals moved beyond the traditional political structures and built new ones around more limited issues, giving rise to identity politics.

From Foucault and the Nietzschean theorists of culture (and from Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist) came the idea of looking at culture as a field of struggle for achieving political power. Also from Foucault came a focus on marginal social groups. From Marxism came the idea an impending beneficial social change. From Lacan and the Freudians came a focus on the erotic and on male domination. From the Third Worldist writers came an anti-imperialist variation on Heidegger's view of the regrettable intellectual tradition of Western civilization (p. 14).

This led to what Berman calls "race/class/gender-ism," which he admits has no authoritative definition. He contends that this perspective sees culture and language as the "giant hidden structures" that permeate and control our lives. The identity groups are infinite and are all engaged in a struggle for power, primarily against the established domination of "dead white European males." The DWEMs "have been using rationalism, humanism, universality, and literary merit to persuade other people of their own inferiority" (p. 14). Berman contends, however, that this is the fundamental radical position, and that for the most part, faculty take a much more balanced view. "They merely wish to remind everyone not to allow the central culture that does exist to fall prey to habits of bigotry or smallmindedness. Fundamentally they wish us to be more rational, not less" (p. 18).

The conservative critique blamed the approaches to education developed over the preceding two decades, for failing to educate students:

Conservatives believe that school improvement requires standardization, regimentation, and competition. Conservatives describe the educational crisis as one of the declining achievement of college-bound students that, in turn, will produce a shortage of skilled personnel needed by the economy. This achievement decline is, according to conservatives, the result of permissiveness and changes in attitudes toward authority and quality that can be traced at least in part, to the 1960s. Thus, conservatives seek reform by means of a return to academic basics and rigor. This would take the form of standardized pedagogy, core curricula, increased emphasis on testing and tracking, and reinforcement of the authority of school professionals.
(Eaton, 187)

This was the critique as put forth by its proponents, but detractors found the underlying perspective affected by positionality. They also challenged the implications for the nature of knowledge and the role of education.

The conservative critique tended to come most vocally, though not exclusively, from outside the academy, and the defense and alternative thinking remained largely within the academy. Gerald Graff (1992, p. 253) points out, in the media it is much easier to summarize and communicate the conservative position, relying as it does upon some fundamental common ground of experience. It is also easier to present a vulgarized version of a complex issue, and too few readers are prepared to critically evaluate the conclusions. Complicated and internally conflicted sets of inquiries and arguments come off as monolithic doctrine.

Henry Giroux also accuses conservatives of a kind of McCarthyism, using

. . . their influence in the press, in well-funded public symposiums, and through highly financed private think tanks to conjure up charges that academics who are questioning the relationship between the liberal arts and the discourse of power and citizenship are to be judged by their motives rather than their arguments.
(Giroux, 257)

Simplistic thinking is at the root of the rage over what conservative commentators have labeled "political correctness." George Roche, in attacking reform practices of postmodern education, provides what he considers to be the three main doctrines of political correctness (Roche, 1994, pp. 224-228):

There are certain ideas, issues, and actions that simply are unacceptable within the academic community, and it is educators' prime responsibility to 'reeducate' students so that they will automatically eschew the 'incorrect.'

All differences in ideas, values, and lifestyles are equally valid, and any attempt to prefer one over the other or to devote more attention to one than to the other is an act of prejudice. Moreover, the differences between people_between blacks and whites, men and women, rich and poor, Westerners and non-Westerners_are more important than the qualities they share in common. For that reason, questions of race, gender, class, and power are the real issues that govern human events.

'Truth' does not exist, and it cannot be taught. What has been passed off as 'truth' are merely the collective prejudices of the dominant ruling class and culture. Students must be shown how to 'deconstruct' what they think is 'true.'

This list neatly encompasses the main points of the discussion, and for many, both inside and outside the academy, not entirely unfairly.

Ronald Reagan assumed office in January, 1981, and the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983 opened the current discussion. The report of a panel appointed by Secretary of Education Terrell Bell, "characterized the public school system as so weak as to threaten the security of the United States." The report precipitated major initiatives for reform of public schools at the state and local levels, and public higher education began to draw attention as well (Spitzberg, p. 292).

It was appropriate that a new Secretary of Education William Bennett, who would also serve as the director of the National Endowment for the Humanities, should raise the banner of conservative reform. He began a call for return to fundamentals, and brought it into the media spotlight. "These fundamentals included greater attention on basic skills acquisition, a renewed emphasis on studying the humanities and the great books of Western civilization, and stronger calls for assessing student learning and development" (Haworth & Conrad, 1995, p. 192). In 1984, Bennet published To Reclaim a Legacy, advancing the conservative perspective on curriculum. Specifically it called for a "grasp of the major trends in society, religion, art, literature, and politics, as well as a knowledge of basic chronology; careful reading of several masterworks of English, American, and European literature;" a grounding in philosophy; and proficiency in a foreign language. (Bennett, 1984, p. 209) He goes on to complain about the abandonment of traditional knowledge:

Intellectual authority came to be replaced by intellectual relativism as a guiding principle of the curriculum. Because colleges and universities believed they no longer could or should assert the primacy of one fact or one book over another, all knowledge came to be seen as relative in importance, relative to consumer or faculty interest. This was accompanied by a shift in language. The desired ends of education changed from knowledge to "inquiry," from content to "skills"
(Bennett, 1984, p. 214)

One salvo became a focal point for the conservative discussion in 1987. That was Allan Bloom's book, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students. Bloom sought to re-establish a "great books" curriculum that focused on the classic texts.

He wants education to be confined to an academically talented elite. He wants education to focus on the pursuit of intellectual certainty, preferably the certitude of Plato. He questions the value of the feminist movement. He does not like the nature of the black student presence on college campuses in the 1980s. He finds faculty in general unduly influenced by the liberalism of members of the lower middle class, who were able to benefit from earlier educational opportunity in our society, earn doctorates, and become members of the professoriate. He is opposed to affirmative action".
(Eaton, 1991, p. 184)

Also in 1987, E. D. Hirsch published his book, Cultural Literacy. In it he argued that people need to have command of a certain basic cultural legacy in order to get on in the world.

There is a body of information needed by all of us to function effectively in society. We can determine what that body of information should be. Our failure, to date, to focus on educational content is harmful to students and society. Hirsch decries the teaching of skills at the price of emphasis on shared knowledge. . . . He attempts to persuade us that it is reasonable to determine the content of educational experience provided that one is flexible about change in content.
(Eaton, 1991, p. 185)

According to Hirsch, this cultural literacy is required to overcome the social determinism that confounds our efforts to bring about social justice.

A group of academics formed an organization in 1987 in support of the growing clamor for restoration of the traditional liberal curriculum. The National Association of Scholars now has 32 state affiliates, conducts national conventions, and publishes Academic Questions, a journal that challenges the alternative perspectives and attacks what it sees as political correctness (Rauch, 1994). In it's statement of identity the organization is "convinced that only through an informed understanding of the Western intellectual heritage and the realities of the contemporary world, can citizen and scholar be equipped to sustain our civilization's achievements" (National Association of Scholars, before 1997).

In 1988, there was a conservative critical feeding frenzy. Gerald Graff documents a series of events arising around an opinion piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education, in which Christopher Clausen, head of the English Department at Pennsylvania State University, wagered that Alice Walker's The Color Purple is taught in more English courses than all of Shakespeare's plays. (Clausen, 1988, xx) Graff cites stories in the New York Times and the Washington Post just prior to the comment, on the theme of the vanishing classics. Clausen's remark or its sentiment was then picked up in short order by the Wall Street Journal, a widely reported address by William Bennett, the New Criterion, Commentary, and Lynn V. Cheney, Bennett's successor as chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, in her report on Humanities in America. This provably false assertion became the catalyst for an outpouring of conservative concern for the condition of the literary canon for several months of 1988. It was eventually included as a warning sign in Dinesh D'Souza's 1991 text, Iliberal education: The politics of race and sex on campus. (Graff, 1992, pp. 245-247).

Maintenance of cultural identity and accessibility to all.

Perhaps the most salient element of the debate is the discussion concerning what is read and how it is taught with regard for the effect upon a diverse population of students. The critique suggests that the traditional curriculum is dominated by "dead white European males," and this fails to connect with the lived experience of those who are not living white males of European descent, and, it might be added, members of an educated class. Further, the perspectives, if unchallenged, reinforce the idea of inherent superiority of the white male European cultural legacy.

For those students who do not hold the cultural lineage of the white European tradition, the traditional liberal curriculum then becomes at best a trivializing of, at worst a constant assault upon their personal heritage and cultural legacy. It is understandable that as the non-white, non-European, proportion of our population continues to increase, the disenchantment with and evasion of the traditional liberal curriculum also increases. Conservative interests for indoctrination of all into a common traditional cultural legacy thus are viewed by many as culturally totalitarian, seeking to preserve class privilege for white European male interests.

School knowledge, [revisionist critics] argue, is instrumental for the reproduction of capitalist social relations and critical to the preparation for hierarchically arranged occupational and class structures. Schools transmit the discourse of domination. Indeed, the main function of schools are the reproduction of social division of labor (Eaton, 1991, p. 187).

For a specific example of this colonialist curriculum, Gerald Graff discusses how he has changed his teaching of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, in response to Chinua Achebe's critique.

What Achebe did convince me was that Conrad's assumptions about race are not, as I had imagined, simply an extraneous or nonliterary element of the novel but something that the novel's literary and aesthetic effort depends upon. It had obviously been far easier for me to suspend disbelief in Conrad's assumptions about race and to turn the story into purely aesthetic experience than it was for Achebe, for whom the way a novel represents black Africans could be truly a matter of life and death.
(Graff, 1992, p. 250)

Graff goes on to note that Achebe feels "Conrad's novel is not simply a disinterested work of art, but a text that played and may still be playing an active role in constructing the Western image of black Africa."

Women, in particular, have found themselves substantially invisible in discussions of cultural forces, and as the scholarship on women and the operation of gender in society has developed, feminist voices have become highly critical of the traditional curriculum. Peggy Means McIntosh says the political agenda for women must move into the academy.

Access to a sexist and racist curriculum is not sex or race equity. Women, now the numerical majority in college as in U.S. society, still learn from the curriculum that they are a marginal majority. Students who are told they have equal access to higher education sit in classes that day in and day out deliver the message that white Anglo-European males are more real than anyone else. Such courses do not give all students equal access to a sense of identity. They teach students to defer to white Western male authority and thus subtly persuade our future voters, policymakers, parents, and teachers to keep cultural and political power in the hands of those who currently have most of it.
(McIntosh, 1989, p. 288)

A final point about access and preservation of privilege has to do with where and how the liberal curriculum, in whatever form, is taught and how it is valued. To the degree it might be shown that an education in a liberal curriculum provides access to upper echelons of the social and economic structure, lack of it will serve to limit advantage or even social equity and justice. Possession of it will tend to preserve privilege. As indicated below, current trends suggest a liberal curriculum will become primarily available only at elite institutions.

The nature of Truth and how knowledge is constructed.

Several critics have characterized alternatives to the traditional approach to curriculum, as postmodern ideas. While postmodernism has evolved over the last 20 years with little more clear meaning than any other historical paradigm of thought, the term does have applicability to this discussion. Arguably, the primary difference between modernism and postmodernism is the matter of control. Modernism, from Corbusier's Radiant City forward, has been dominated by a rigid, almost militant unity. It arose as a reaction to a century of Victorian and Edwardian excess of detail, and the postwar disorientation and disarray. In art, this meant the artist was in control of the aesthetic transaction. If we are to believe Berman (1992, pp. 6-19), the seeds of postmodernism were the existential voices of the counterculture through the modern era. In the last two decades, postmodernism has evolved as a reaction against modernism's unity and control. It seeks to open up work to interaction and random connections, and to juxtapose disparate elements in a dialectical fashion to stimulate new insights and experiences. It respects the aesthetic transaction as dynamic and recognizes the participation of the respondent in the final meaning of the work.

In the discussion of curriculum, the conservative voices are clearly the modernists, seeking to unify and control the ideas regarding culture that are transmitted to the ensuing generation. There is an objective Truth, and it can be known. "From this perspective, knowledge is viewed as a series of lawlike, absolute, universal truths that exist independent of, and external to, the knower." (Haworth & Conrad, 1995, p. 195). Those seeking an alternative are clearly postmodernists, as they recognize the contribution of the learner to what is learned and the knower to the knowledge. Truth is not objective, but must be constructed through a conversation of the knowers.

Paulo Freire suggested the traditional view resembles a bank where teachers make intellect deposits of knowledge in the student. This gives rise to two problems: "first, teachers assume that there is a universal canon of thought to be taught; and second, because a predefined school of knowledge is available, teaching is often little more than a one-way transaction where teachers neutrally deposit knowledge into student "savings accounts." This banking approach "anesthetizes" and "attempts to maintain the submersion of consciousness" in students (Haworth & Conrad, 1995, p. 197).

The new voices and alternative educators view knowledge as a social construction. "In this other, more contingent approach to knowledge, the interaction between the individual and his or her cultural context is critical to what is_or is not_considered knowledge," and the scholar must articulate these multiple Truths "through reflexive inquiry that recognizes the dynamic interplay between the researched and the researcher" (Haworth & Conrad, 1995, p 196).

In 1970, William Perry published his text on Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years, a decade-long study of Harvard male undergraduates. He determined nine positions of intellectual and moral development, the first two of which are:

Position 1: The student sees the world in polar terms of we-right/good vs. other-wrong/bad. Right Answers for everything exist in the Absolute, known to Authority whose role is to mediate (teach) them. Knowledge and goodness are perceived as quantitative accretions of discrete rightnesses to be collected by hard work and obedience (paradigm: a spelling test).

Position 2: The student perceives diversity of opinion, and uncertainty, and accounts for them as unwarranted confusion in poorly qualified Authorities or as mere exercises set by Authority "so we can learn to find The Answer for ourselves"
(Perry, 1970, p. 8-9)

These positions bear a high degree of correspondence to the fundamental perspective of the conservative curriculum. Knowledge and Truth are to be grounded in authority, and there are "right answers," to be either revealed or discovered. Perry's argument suggested the educational purpose of moving students to later positions. Clearly, conservatives are concerned about students becoming stuck at the relativistic midpoint:

Position 5: The student perceives all knowledge and values (including Authority's) as contextual and relativistic and subordinates dualistic right/wrong functions to the status of a special case, in context.

Perry's final four positions have to do with the individual developing a value orientation toward the alternative perspectives, finally arriving at a commitment, one which is incorporated into one's identity as an individual. Thus, it puts the individual in control of her or his understanding and actions, arising as they do from personally experienced commitment rather than derived from an authority external to one's self (Perry, p. 9-10). Revisionist educators seek alternative approaches that assist the student in developing this "nonfoundational" knowledge and development toward commitment.

Kenneth Bruffee differentiates between foundational and nonfoundational knowledge. Foundational knowledge is derived from authority, while nonfoundational knowledge occurs as a product of the conversation of a knowledge community. He points out that each knowledge community has its own language, and fluency in the language defines membership. "Language" and "conversation" are not strictly linguistic phenomena, but cognitive engagement among members of the knowledge community. He goes on to contend that the practice of teaching is that of acculturating others to that conversation. While conservatives believe that "the scholar's task is to act as a detached observer in the pursuit of truth and knowledge" (Haworth & Conrad, 1995, p. 195), Bruffee sees the authority of the teacher today as resting on her or his intimacy of membership with a given knowledge community, thereby enabling the richest conversation. This "nonfoundational" basis for authority differs from the "foundational" bases which generally derive from proximity to great minds, great things, incontestable methodologies, or God (Bruffee, 1993, pp. 128-129).

James Banks provides a knowledge typology, in which he identifies a) personal/cultural, b) popular, c) mainstream academic, d) transformative academic, and e) school knowledge. He describes mainstream academic knowledge in terms of the conservative perspective, "the traditional Western-centric knowledge in history and the behavioral and social sciences." Transformative academic knowledge is aligned with challenges to the mainstream, and these "facts, concepts, paradigms, themes, and explanations" coexist with those of the mainstream. Both are vying for expression in school knowledge (Banks, 1993. p. 275).

Banks contrasts mainstream and transformative knowledge:

An important tenet of mainstream academic knowledge is that it is neutral, objective, and was uninfluenced by human interests and values. . . . Transformative academic scholars assume that knowledge is not neutral but is influenced by human interests, that all knowledge reflects the power and social relationships within society, and that an important purpose of knowledge construction is to help people improve society.
(Banks, 1993, p. 279)

Banks argues that school knowledge primarily reflects mainstream academic knowledge.

Indeed, Graff points out that the curriculum, the canon, is ever evolving. But he notes that the changes begin at the edges, and occur over time.

. . . [T]he most striking changes have been at the edges of the curriculum, in the elective courses, where new texts and topics have been overlaid without altering the shape of the curriculum as a whole or the bread-and-butter requirements, which remain dominated almost as much as they were a half century ago by the likes of Shakespeare, Austen, and Dickens.
(Graff, 1992, p. 248)

Ultimately the idea is to create new knowledge, something the conservative curriculum fails to foster. If knowledge is revealed or discovered, there is no creative role. However, knowledge which is socially constructed is constantly in a process of creation. Henry Giroux refers to this process as "critical pedagogy."

Central to the development of a critical pedagogy is the need to explore how pedagogy functions as a cultural practice to produce rather than transmit knowledge within the asymmetrical relations of power that structure teacher-student relations. There have been few attempts to analyze how relations of pedagogy and relations of power are inextricably tied not only to what people know but also to how they come to know in a particular way within the constraints of specific cultural and social forms.
(Giroux, 1992, p. 261)

Within the conservative camp, there is little need for active and involved pedagogy except insofar as it means revivifying the classic texts.

"Given that the aim of a college education is to exercise, condition, and strengthen the intellect, the pedagogical element of the traditionalist's epistemology becomes important only insofar as it more fully engages students in the content of their inquiry." (Haworth & Conrad, 1995, p. 195).

Examination of the current perceptions of purpose of higher education.

One thing that becomes evident in the discussion of the canon, is a diversity of opinion on the purpose of education itself. What is the relationship of the institution to society, and what is its responsibility? To what extent do student choice and public will to fund programs affect the mission and purpose of higher education?

The conservative perspective argues the purpose of higher education is primarily cultural transmission and indoctrination. This can, of course, be implemented to large groups at fairly low cost. The alternative educators believe higher education should be a place for examining culture and critiquing for improvement. This cannot be implemented to large groups, and demands highly prepared and artful faculty, both of which are more expensive. Many students, as well as industry, see higher education as a training place for a technical workforce. This, too, may be expensive, but it can be offset by partnerships and contributions from industry. It is this last choice that may finally limit the scale and effect of any resolution of the liberal curriculum.

In a six-volume report issued in 1947 and 1948, a commission appointed by President Truman examined higher education. In a clear statement of purpose for higher education the report said:

The social role of education in a democratic society is at once to insure equal liberty and equal opportunity to differing individuals and groups, and to enable the citizens to understand, appraise, and redirect forces, men, and events as they tend to strengthen or weaken their liberties.
(Gallagher, 1993, p. 121)

There were three explicit goals:

1. education for a fuller realization of democracy in every phase of living
   
2. education directly and explicitly for international understanding and cooperation
   
3. the application of creative imagination and trained intelligence to the solution of social problems and to the administration of public affairs. (p. 121).

The report also endorsed a common core of learning: "A society whose numbers lack a body of common experience and common knowledge is a society without a fundamental culture; it tends to disintegrate into a mere aggregation of individuals." This would provide "the values, attitudes, and knowledge, and skills that will equip him to live rightly and well in a free society" (p. 121). As John Gallagher points out, D'Souza, Bennett, Bloom, Hirsch, and Cheney all saw the traditional study of the classics as the route to this common knowledge and cultural experience (p. 125).

Writing on behalf of the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education in 1973, Clark Kerr set out the main purposes of higher education in the United States:

The provision of opportunities for the intellectual, aesthetic, ethical, and skill development of individual students, and the provision of campus environments which can constructively assist students in their more general development growth. The advancement of human capability in society at large.
The enlargement of educational justice for the postsecondary age group.
The transmission and advancement of learning and wisdom.
The critical evaluation of society_through individual thought and persuasion_for the sake of society's self-renewal. (Kerr, 1973, pp. 185-6)

In an addendum penned in the early 1990s, Kerr gives a qualified report card on two decades of operation under these purposes. He says performance on the first mission has been superior. He thinks improvements are possible but results have been positive in the educational advancement of the society at large. Kerr acknowledges current efforts to improve educational justice, but notes it as the least accomplished purpose. For the transmission and advancement of learning and wisdom, Kerr expresses concern for the developmental growth of students. Finally, higher education's performance "has been most uneven, most controversial, and most in need of clarification in the area of assistance in the critical evaluation of society" (p. 205).

In a well-prepared report by the Education Commission of the States on Making Quality Count in Undergraduate Education, one looks in vain for consideration or discussion of the missions of higher education. The report summarizes a series of focus group meetings with various groups of stakeholders. It dismisses research, focusing on student learning, and lists several desirable student outcomes:

Higher-order, applied problem-solving abilities.
Enthusiasm for continuous learning.
Interpersonal skills, including communication and collaboration.
A strong sense of responsibility for personal and community action.
Ability to bridge cultural and linguistic barriers.
A well-developed sense of "professionalism"
(Education Commission Of the States [ECS], 1995, p. 6-7)

The report lists the number one concern for students "is the return they are likely to obtain from investing in higher education. . . . [S]tudents placed first priority on 'what happens next.'"(ECS, 1995, p. 12). In other words, a concern for jobs.

Running through the discussion of purpose in higher education is the conflict of the practical knowledge tradition with the traditional theoretical perspective of the liberal arts. Early twentieth century leaders often railed against the linkage between higher education, and business and industry. Even research at the service of industry was suspect. From Cardinal John Newman in 1852, to Alfred North Whitehead in the 1920s, to Robert Hutchins in 1936, to Thorstein Veblen in 1957, and to many other commentators, undergraduate education has a higher purpose than preparing people for jobs. Nevertheless, there is today a troubled relationship between the liberal and professional missions.

The traditional liberal curriculum does in fact have a career value for many, even today. It provides training in the cultural knowledge required for service in the upper echelons of government and industry, just as it did for Renaissance clerics, public servants, and merchant sons. Just as they were required to have the leisure for such non-practical study, so today the curriculum may become provided primarily to those who, regardless of funding, can demonstrate the merit and afford the time to study at elite institutions.

A sampling of the public statements of purpose by a variety of New England institutions demonstrates a continuing emphasis on liberal education, regardless of type or purpose of the institution. They also show a conflicted relationship between the liberal perspective and more applied learning. The historically traditional institutions follow the Renaissance model of completing liberal arts studies before beginning professional studies. They list preparation for graduate training as a primary mission.

As might be expected, Yale declares primacy for learning for its own sake. "The principles and values of liberal education are powerful here. Knowledge is sought as a good in itself as well as for its usefulness," according to president Richard Levin (Levin, 1994, p. 1). Harvard suggests students don't really need any professional preparation at the undergraduate level:

Although Harvard's academic programs are not "pre-professional" in the sense that they provide vocational training, Harvard students find that they are very well-prepared to enter their chosen professional fields or graduate programs. . . . While some students select fields of concentration commonly associated with certain careers, many discover they can concentrate in areas of intellectual rather than professional interest and still be superb candidates for jobs and graduate schools.
(Official Register, n.d. p. 10)

Boston College also argues that its undergraduate program is preparation for further training:

It is not necessary, or even desirable, that a degree from the College of Arts and Sciences, by itself, provide all the training needed to perform a specific job. However, it should provide preparation for graduate study in the major field or a related field. It should also furnish sufficient breadth of information and exposure to methods of inquiry so that, either alone or with additional training . . . the student might effectively prepare for any one of a wide variety of careers, perhaps for one not foreseen while the student is in college.
(Boston College, 1993, p. 16)

Boston University and Tufts, both of which have extensive professional programs, make more general claims. At Boston University, an "essentialist" curriculum in the College of Liberal Arts suggests a conservative posture, consonant with the public positions of its president John Silber.

The College of Liberal Arts is an academic community of students and faculty involved in the discovery, evaluation, and transmission of essential knowledge. Through study of the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences, young men and women prepare to lead fulfilled and examined lives, and to assume roles as creative and contributing members of society.
(Boston University, 1994, p. 41)

Tufts University mission provides a broad statement with which all may feel comfortable:

The mission of Tufts University is to offer undergraduate, graduate, and professional students a rigorous education that provides them with the knowledge and intellectual skills they will need to be responsible, productive members of society.
(Bulletin of Tufts University, !993, p. 9)

A similar approach, attempting to cover all bases, can be seen in the Bridgewater State College mission:

Through strong undergraduate and graduate programs in the arts, sciences, and professions, Bridgewater State College liberally educates its students to think critically, communicate effectively and act responsibly within a context of personal and professional ethics.
(Bridgewater State College, 1996, p. 4)

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, clearly a school emphasizing professional preparation, uses the liberal curriculum as an enhancement of its professional perspectives:

MIT's educational program seeks to develop in each student that mastery of fundamentals, motivation for learning, and intellectual discipline and self-reliance which is the best foundation for continuing professional achievement. MIT also tries to provide a liberal as well as professional education so that each student acquires a respect for moral values, the duties of citizenship, and the basic human understanding and knowledge required for leadership.
(Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, n.d., p. 11)

Massachusetts College of Art, in its somewhat defensive way, shares MIT's approach, using the liberal curriculum to enhance its primary professional mission:

The broad educational scope of the college's curriculum is based on two fundamental beliefs: that art and design must be held in high esteem by our society, and that the visual arts, with a strong core of general education, are comparable to the liberal arts in offering their practitioners a quality education.
(Massachusetts College Of Art, n.d.)

Finally, Hampshire College was established in the 1970s as an innovation to respond to the inadequacies of the traditional structures of undergraduate education. Its mission is focused upon students and a non-vocational curriculum, but it is clearly outside the conservative epistemological tradition:

Hampshire's primary mission is to graduate men and women with the skills and perspectives needed for understanding and participating responsibly and creatively in a complex world. It fosters such an education through close student-faculty collaboration, self-initiated and individualized programs of study, a strong multidisciplinary curriculum, and critical inquiry at every stage of the student's work, including an understanding of the multicultural nature of our world and the necessity for responsible leadership within it.
(Hampshire College, n.d., cover)

What these samplings show is that almost all baccalaureate institutions feel they derive academic credibility by reference to a liberal arts undergraduate curriculum. The elite traditional institutions cite it as doctrine, and one completes the curriculum before moving on to professional studies in a graduate school. Institutions with a more professional primary focus in undergraduate programs invoke the liberal arts perspective to lend cachet and academic validation for their educational efforts.

Researchers have begun to report that a new emphasis on practicality in the culture has stimulated colleges toward developing a practical dimension for liberal arts curricula. Institutions have moved self-consciously for fiscal reasons to salvage undersubscribed liberal arts programs (Scott, 1992, p. 145). There are in fact calls for colleges to do a better job of ensuring that graduates can make application of the skills developed through liberal learning.

Industry appears to ask higher education to provide a combination of various curricula, including a new "business skills" category. Once the connection between a traditional baccalaureate education and the working world was more or less limited to the simple possession of a diploma. Preference began to run to those with with stronger preparation in general areas of study, then in specific areas of study. Today, employers seek some liberal arts education for judgement and decisionmaking, highly developed learning in a relevant field for core knowledge, and skills in the behaviors and activities of the business community. On June 1, 1997, The Boston Globe reported: "Recent college graduates are entering the workplace with razor-sharp academic skills, but come up short on the everyday business and negotiation skills needed to succeed in their first job." A survey by the Collegiate Employment Research Institute "found that new college hires met many of the employer's expectations, especially in the skills learned in their respective fields of study. But the survey also revealed that technical graduates lacked presentation and interaction skills and were poorly prepared to take on leadership responsibilities." Non-technical graduates needed help in "goal-setting, handling conflict and criticism, and understanding workplace values." Neither were prepared "to write project proposals or negotiate general business environments" (Weinstein, 1997).

The skills requested are particular applications of skills developed in service to broader liberal learning, such as critical thinking, written and oral communication, cultural understanding, and self reflection. Until recently the baccalaureate education had never been framed in terms of insuring that students brought this learning to bear in application to the workplace. Pressure to include more training in this application of liberal learning to life is relieved at the expense of time spent in the liberal curriculum, because the major field of study is part of the pressure. Institutions in which student motivation for baccalaureate study is most closely connected to career entry will likely experience the greatest pressure to reduce the liberal curriculum.

In studying the phenomenon, Barbara Ann Scott concludes that ultimately, the liberal arts experience will be an elite one.

The expansion of vocational and applied studies at the lowest tiers, together with the concentration in the highest tiers of more theoretical and rigorous liberal arts programs, compounds the polarization between top and bottom. Increasingly, as we have seen, higher learning becomes the curricular monopoly of the elite colleges and universities, while 'lesser' institutions devote themselves to more standardized, trivialized, and vocationalized programs.
(Scott, 1992, p. 149)

Where it is elsewhere not required, evidence should show non-elite students tend to elect more applied subjects, in the interests of obtaining more immediate economic gains upon graduation.

Observations and conclusions:

On September 13, 1996, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that a survey of faculty by the Higher Education Research Institute at University of California Los Angeles shows "Years of conservative attacks on 'political correctness' in academe do not appear to have swayed many professors. They are less and less convinced that Western culture should be the cornerstone of the university curriculum." Twenty-eight percent of the 34,000 faculty surveyed called it "essential" or "very important," a seven-percent drop in six years (Magner, 1996). The academy is evolving and changing.

Beyond the academy, there will always be a political dimension to education and the question of what is taught. There will always be healthy discussion between conservative and progressive critics within the academy. From time to time, that discussion will rise to the fore on a national agenda, as it did in the 1960s and again in the 1980s. The conservative position by definition is defense of the established paradigm, and the loudest voices are likely to be those with the most to lose through change. The conservative critique becomes the test of a new idea, providing a hurtle that requires a measure of social power to overcome. It provokes reassessment of purpose and mission, and forces the industry to reevaluate its practices. It brings into the open questions of privilege and empowerment. Positions and practices become clarified, and priorities are redefined.

Education cannot help but respond to the larger patterns of the culture we inhabit. Even the traditional liberal curriculum of today is not the same as one found in 1940 or 1900. Further, our curriculum is not taught everywhere, even within the European sphere. What we have is uniquely American, and shaped through interaction with our own cultures. As such, it understandably emphasizes the dominant culture. Yet it is American, and connects with the experience of Americans. We cannot escape the discussion of creationism, and we cannot escape the discussion of ideas that lie at the root of our social psychology.

Yet the very progress of evolving knowledge is relentless. We have begun to swim in a sea of information and knowledge, so much so that a new figure called a "knowledge manager" has appeared in corporate America (Leonard, 1997, p. D1). We can neither control knowledge nor access to it, nor can we control the ebb and flow of ideas as they blow across our land. Our perspectives on knowledge must also grow and change. Today we know a great deal more than yesterday, and yet less than tomorrow. Knowledge has become a truly dynamic quantity. We also know a great deal more about how people learn, how judgement is developed, and how new ideas are constructed. Clearly the conservative perspective fails to respond to contemporary insights about intellectual growth and development (Perry, his supporters and critics), or about the nature of knowledge itself and how it is created (Bruffee, Giroux, others).

One of the five missions of the institution, according to Clark Kerr, is educational justice. The conservative voices have failed to demonstrate convincingly that the traditional liberal curriculum enhances that end. In fact, to the degree it discourages and disenfranchises those who are not members of the white-European male club, it also works against social justice. As the portion of our population who do not belong to the club grows, its tenure as the arbiter of culture must increasingly come under challenge. What must inevitably happen is the evolution of a culture of diversity, the shape of which cannot yet be known, for it will ever be a work in progress.

A new culture will emerge. Will higher education evolve with it? Will the American liberal curriculum evolve as well? The liberal curriculum must become a relevant and important component of education, or it will cease to exist except at exceptional institutions. Students will make other choices and select other schools or other programs if it cannot become vital to their lives, or if they don't feel it serves their needs. While students understand they may not know entirely what is best for them, they find little value today in being forced to "take their medicine" in an obsolete curriculum.

Higher education has two options in the face of the sea change in our national demographics. It can resolve to participate in and shape the evolving cultural paradigm, performing the research and developing new practices to lead the development of society for its collective betterment. It can work to construct and inculcate a cultural legacy of inclusion, and to continue to expand knowledge and Truth through dialectic and critique. It can also dig in its heels, forcing the old molds forward, exacting compliance with its obsolete, Eurocentric, rationalist standards, and provoking the hostility, rejection, and rebellion of those most in need of learning. Inevitably, some institutions, and some programs within institutions, will pursue each path.

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