Common learning/general education

From Studyplace

Currently, in American colleges general education suggests a tepid effort to foster common knowledge, indicating a realm of study that differs from specialized education, largely preceding it. Such general education leads to distribution requirements, which aim to ensure a breadth of grounding for the undergraduate. The term gained its currency, however, the Harvard report (pdf) of the Committee on the Objectives of a General Education in a Free Society, and it originally there encompassed a much broader, more difficult concern. In the education of the whole public, of a free people, what objectives should pertain generally, throughout, as the overall, shared objectives? In view of these objectives for general education, how then should particular institutions define their objectives and implement an effort to attain them?

In practice, liberal education, an education worthy of free people, did not suit everyone, for it entailed prolonged study, which was neither affordable nor compelling for many. Thus, liberal education persisted as the special concern of institutions of higher education, and by no means all of them. Such a liberal education would suffice, ironically, only for the fortunate few who were fully free in a society where most were not. In modern democratic societies, where all were free participants in the commonweal, the public merited an educational effort, worthy of free people, that would encompass all persons in all walks of life — this would be the substance of "general education in a free society." Attaining it is not yet a done deal.

General Education in a Free Society