Think of pedagogy and education theory the same way you would consider the potential within a box of LEGO bricks. Kids love building things with those stick-together shapes. Along with their children, many parents, I assume, enjoy fitting LEGO bricks together as well. It is almost ordained that our purpose in being alive is to put stuff together. That is simply what we do throughout our lives. Pour the contents of a LEGO kit onto the kitchen table after dinner and children’s imaginations take over. Whatever is in the kit is what a child has with which to work. The more pieces available, the greater the possibilities. If given a dozen blocks of LEGO, a child has limited options. If given a thousand pieces, the opportunities are well-nigh endless. The conclusion is apparent: more promise presents itself when more building blocks are available.
As you doubtless know, LEGO sets come in hundreds of configurations. A few sets designed for adults have over 5000 pieces. But most assortments for children have far fewer pieces and are designed to make just one or two small objects. With enough pieces, one can construct the Eiffel Tower or the Taj Mahal. Or just about any palpable object one’s imagination can bring forward. But the most accessible sets allow for far less ambitious projects and are prescriptive in that all the pieces are meant to make, say, a truck or a small house.
I shouldn’t get too carried away with this LEGO analogy, but it applies neatly to the building blocks available in education, especially higher education. Doesn’t everyone have an idea about what constitutes a proper education? Probably because we all have had life-changing experiences with schooling, we naturally have strong opinions about what works or what doesn’t. In the past, college students would pick their classes like patrons at a smorgasbord feast, a little of this and a little of that to make a toothsome meal. That free choice method does not work so well anymore because more often than not students are given the plat du jourmenus to fulfill their majors. They are given a LEGO set, if you will, and told exactly how to put it together. Here you go, kiddo, follow these instructions and you will have a replica of the Lunar Rover Vehicle. All good if one wants to build another LRV, but what if one’s dream is to create something for which no instruction sheet exists? What about the student whose dreams reach beyond the ordained grid?
Education kit makers are making generous cuts in college catalogues. Pressures from business interests and politicians to scrub away programs that do not promise immediate career prospects triggered recent actions among higher education administrators and trustees to eliminate liberal arts courses in favor of occupational programs. One sees a global climate change in curricula across the nation’s colleges and universities. The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, in fact, is in the process of eliminating majors in philosophy and political science. And that is just a start. All traditional liberal arts and humanities — including history, English, German, French, Spanish, and sociology, along with art, art history, and music history— presently will be axed. Mr. Gradgrind (a character in Dickens’s novel Hard Times) and his kind are steering curricula to favor, shortsightedly, what they consider pragmatic and profitable enterprises. In doing so, they set aside the educational fulfillment of the individual student in favor of collective materialistic needs. These decision-makers see education as the engine of economy rather than the driver of human potential. They also politicize their choices, believing, I suppose, that those decisions are for the common good. The humanities and all its cousins are, for the moment, left waiting outside the figurative walls of school.
Certainly, the decline of liberal arts offerings may be overstated, for data-driven STEM educational programs have proven compatible if not enhanced by their counterpart programs in the arts. We need balance in our educational structures. Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic—foundational building blocks have always been where we start in a child’s education. No handwringing need take place over an academic drift, for the powers that make curricula decisions come and go like flu seasons, and the value of the humanities will always support Pope’s pronouncement, “The proper study of Mankind is Man,” even if now we find our Man (or Woman) tapping at a cell phone while surfing the Web.
Preparing students for careers as engineers, software designers, computer systems analysts, business security analysts, and related positions that require heavy emphasis on math and science is both a practical and necessary goal of higher education. That, however, does not mean that humanities offerings should be removed from college catalogues or devalued when advisors assist students in planning their academic schedules. Those subjects that prepare students to explore and understand human experience, to solve problems not math related, to learn about the values of different cultures, to recognize the influences of history and politics, and to empathize with the human condition—these matters must be part of a balanced education system or we risk further dysfunctions of government as well as the crumbling of the pillars of our civilization.
In some ways, educators face conflicting interests in designing well-rounded programs for students. The “cookbook” approach to education limits choice but delivers consistency and evidence-based results. The opposite approach emphasizes discovery and experimentation beyond prescribed formularies. Students should have choices. Faculty should have choices. Administrators should have choices. But too often politicians, community policy-makers, and powerful business interests, people who have not been in a classroom in years, make the consequential curricular decisions.
Talk to ten people, and you will get ten different views on what students should learn in college. The danger here comes when we only listen to one view, only empower one choice.
Which brings me to a memory I cannot shake. Years ago, I visited The Art Institute of Chicago while attending a national convention for English composition teachers. Somehow, I managed to find myself listening to a talk given by an art historian. I’ve forgotten most of what was said that afternoon, but I recall vividly what he proposed: mandatory art history and art appreciation classes for all K-12 students. Never happen, I thought then, and I know now more than ever such a requirement would meet with derisory titters and immediate rejection. But I also know that students deserve a well-rounded education, which ought to include the study of aesthetics.
If we believe, as I think we do, that scientific investigation sharpens a student’s quantitative understanding of the properties of the world, then shouldn’t we also expose students to aesthetic appreciation that highlights a student’s qualitative understanding of the world? Critical thinking is central to all useful teaching and learning.
When dealing with images and notions, philosophies and histories, students need lots of choices. They need a full kit, all shapes and sizes of bits and pieces with which to construct their world.