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Stress2801 REKINDLING MEANING IN UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION: INSTITUTIONAL CULTURE AND CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT Susan M. Awbrey, Ph.D. Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Associate Professor of Human Resource Development Oakland University ___________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT It is often difficult to engage mainstream faculty members in serious discussion about the importance of providing students with an education that not only develops a strong knowledge base but also develops the skills needed to make moral and ethical decisions and to undertake an active civic life. This paper examines three roots of faculty resistance to character education that spring from the Enlightenment thought that permeates academic culture. The purposes of the Enlightenment have become entangled in the minds of many faculty with the strategies and pathways later taken to achieve them. The paper suggests that faculty can mistakenly believe that they are defending cherished Enlightenment purposes by opposing character education when they are instead defending the paths that have been taken to achieve these goals. Separating Enlightenment purposes from the paths taken to achieve them can open a space for dialogue about purposes of education that the university community holds in common, whether new paths might be more effective in achieving these goals, and about the importance of educating whole persons to become effective citizens. The discussion is based on structured interviews with faculty groups at Oakland University. ___________________________________________________________________ It is often difficult to engage mainstream faculty members in serious discussion about the importance of providing students with an education that not only develops a strong knowledge base but also develops the skills needed to make moral and ethical decisions and to undertake an active civic life. Why is this so? Most faculty members appear to be individuals of strong character. So, why would they not support overt character development in their students? What appears to be a very simple question actually has roots that are very deep in the beliefs of faculty about the purposes of higher education. Advocates of character education often overlook the reasons for resistance within the mainstream university. Thus, in their enthusiasm, advocates also ignore the opportunity for genuine dialogue about the underlying beliefs and purposes that form and direct the organizational culture of higher education. It is by initiating such dialogue within the academic community that understanding, consensus, and long-term change can be achieved. It is the best way to insure that character education is undertaken in ways that become pervasive and permanent. Unfortunately, education that attends to the whole individual and to the total development of the person is no longer seen as the primary goal of higher education within research universities and in many comprehensive and even liberal arts institutions. Ellen Condliffe Lagemann (2003), dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, notes that a recent Carnegie report shows that university education has become more focused on technical and professional education than it was in the 1970s. She goes on to indicate that we are graduating students who are either narrowly focused on “vocational preparation” or who have attended “seemingly directionless programs of liberal study”(Lagemann, 2003, p.8). She implores us to remember that vocation means more than just a career. It “implies having a calling: knowing who one is, what one believes, what one values, and where one stands in the world (Lagemann, 2003, p.8).” In many places, and for some time, higher education has been failing in its mission to provide an education to students that establishes “one’s sense of direction, one’s knowledge of one’s self as an active, effective person and citizen” and that prepares students to “participate in the defining issues of our times”(Lagemann, 2003, p. 13). The advent of the research model for universities created a situation in which the subject matter that is taught and the quest for new knowledge are more important to many faculty members than the education of students (Boyer, 1990). Because faculty tenure rests almost entirely on research in many institutions, the process of teaching has become a distant secondary priority for many. Even then, the focus is on what is taught rather than on student learning. Since undergraduate students are seen as less likely to contribute to publishable research, their education is often relegated to a very low priority (Wilshire, 1990). Numerous authors have commented on the external economic and market pressures that have driven universities and their constituents into a demand for narrow career-oriented education. However, it is not just professional schools that have narrowed student education. Liberal education programs are not exempt. Liberal arts faculty often adhere to narrow specializations and fail to integrate subject matter in ways that foster understanding of the personal and societal relevance of what is being learned (Boyer, 1997). This is, perhaps, an aspect of the situation that is most often overlooked. It is also an important key to whether universities will be able to rekindle meaning within the undergraduate programs they offer. Without a strong voice from the liberal arts for a focus on the development of the entire person, universities will continue to move toward a market driven definition of education and liberal arts programs will continue to lose status as more emphasis is placed on disciplines close to the market (Slaughter & Leslie, 1997). If personal meaning and relevance are to re-emerge in undergraduate education, it will be necessary to understand the reticence that mainstream, liberal arts faculty have for including values and issues of societal relevance in university education and to engage faculty in dialogue about the importance of educating whole individuals to become effective citizens. Oakland University has undertaken renewal of its general education program. As part of that process, over one hundred tenure-system faculty members were invited to attend structured, dinner dialogues about what constitutes the core values of a liberal education and what it means to be an educated person. A thematic analysis was done of the audiotapes from the discussions. In addition to faculty beliefs about important aspects of education, several sources of resistance to the inclusion of character education in the undergraduate curriculum were identified. Further research is needed. However, it is unlikely that OU professors, as a whole, are atypical of today’s faculty. The reluctance of faculty to embrace character or values education has many roots. Several factors that surfaced in the Oakland discussions appear to stem from the Enlightenment thought that still holds sway over much of academe in America. The Enlightenment captured the minds of 18th century thinkers and continues to have substantial influence over faculty. A movement has arisen that questions the Enlightenment perspective from many angles. There is much recent criticism of Enlightenment thinkers (Neville, 1992). They are blamed for everything from a Euro centric curriculum to burgeoning technology and environmental disasters. Elements of the critique of modernism have merit, but, in truth, Enlightenment thinkers themselves were people of their time who forged from their oppression a new pathway toward knowledge and freedom. It is the narrow interpretations of their work by those who came after and the paths that they developed and institutionalized which have failed us. The major reason faculty members are reluctant to stray from a belief in the Enlightenment is that some of its purposes are genuinely valuable. The Enlightenment idea of a perfect utopian state built on the foundation of reason and the idealization of European thought as universal truth have been rejected. However, the concepts of human rights, religious tolerance, and self-rule continue to have global appeal (Paul Brian, 2003, p. 5). Indeed, Enlightenment purposes underlie the belief systems of many faculty members. What follows is a discussion of three roots of resistance that make faculty skeptical of including values or character education in the university. Each of these roots is very old and very deeply embedded in the American psyche. To understand faculty resistance will require an awareness of the Enlightenment purposes that many faculty members cherish and the ability to disentangle those purposes from the paths later created to attain them. Purpose 1: Open Inquiry The first root of resistance lies in the replacement of religion by science in intellectual pursuit. The early history of universities is closely tied to religion. Many early universities grew from monastic roots. Enlightenment thinkers broke with this tradition because it became evident, even during the Renaissance, that the rules and laws of the Church were blocking the path of inquiry. Those who questioned were labeled heretics. If unwilling to recant their views, they were severely dealt with even unto death. (Finocchiaro, 1989) Hence, for example, when evidence showed that the earth was not the center of the universe, it was easier to put ‘epicycles on the deferent’ to try to make reality conform to the Church supported view than to recognize that perhaps God had a different plan than the one espoused by the Church. Enlightenment thinkers such as Descartes were not soulless automatons. Most were highly religious individuals who wanted to ensure that the pursuit of knowledge was an open process (Sutcliffe, 1968; Gaukroger, 1995). The new path that they forged was an important development and one that was necessary to advance learning and knowledge. However, those who came after chose a path that turned scientific inquiry into narrow reductionism. Although reduction sounds like the same process used in Descartes’ rational analysis or empirical inquiry, it is not. Whereas science sees an object as a whole that has constituent elements, extreme reductionism regards a whole as the sum total of its parts. This is a subtle difference but one that has profound implications. It means “the study of any phenomenon …becomes the study of the parts as the meaning of the whole [emphasis added] rather than of a whole as the meaning of its parts” (Smith, 1994, p. 3). This is a view that has been challenged by systems theory and by the recognition of the importance of complexity, self-organization, and interdependence (Corning, 1995). Polanyi (1968) attempted to move beyond the duality of holism vs. reductionism in his work Life’s Irreducible Structure. Nevertheless, debate continues in the sciences about different forms of reduction although it was scientists themselves who had a major hand in refuting the early, extreme form of reductionism. Beyond reductionist theories, logical positivists defined knowledge as that which could be verified through logic or experiment. They counted all else not as untrue but as meaningless. Thus, in this view statements about the existence of God are meaningless since they cannot be verified or falsified. But ethical statements too were relegated to meaningless status by this method. Thus, the emotional, spiritual, or ethical dimensions of human existence were considered metaphysical and irrelevant (Ayer, 1959). Personal interpretation, relevance, subjective meaning, and values became the taboos of modern society. In this way the logical positivists privileged mathematical and scientific language. However, flaws became apparent in their reasoning. For example, statements of promise, commands, and requests in ordinary language are also meaningless according to the verifiability principle of the logical positivists (Searle, 1976). Dogmatically reductionist methods turned out to be ineffective in analyzing moral, ethical and aesthetic questions. This absence of critically reflective methods for analyzing such concerns tended to leave a vacuum. Slowly through the work of scholars such as Goedel, Wittgenstein, Austin, Searle and others, deficiencies in the logical positivist view became apparent. But this was a very long process. Many years had passed since logical positivism arose in the minds of the members of the Vienna Circle in the 1920s. During this interval the privileging of scientific language became a habitual way of life in Western society. Unfortunately, the original Enlightenment purpose of open inquiry and the residue of the path that was chosen to pursue it have become tightly bound in the minds of many, including in the academy. Thus, for them, to question the privileging of science is to attack the purpose of open inquiry and raise the specter of irrationality. Beyond issues of method, Enlightenment thinkers also believed that reason could help us build a better world. This implies that knowledge is discovered to benefit humankind. The view that research is not pure unless it is divorced of application is another path that we have taken away from the original purposes of the Enlightenment. Purpose 2: Freedom of Religion and Belief A second root of faculty reluctance to include values in student education is the separation of church and state. Like the desire for open inquiry, this principle also grew out of oppression. Its purpose is to preserve religious freedom and democracy. Originally ratified in 1788, the Constitution of the United States is considered a great accomplishment of Enlightenment thought (Koch, 1965). Although the Constitution itself contains no language regarding religion, the First Amendment, approved in 1791 as part of the ten amendments known as the Bill of Rights, contains two clauses that deal with the issue of what the government is and is not allowed to do regarding religion: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” (Dreisbach, 2002, p. 1) But the phrase ‘separation of church and state’ arises from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists Association making clear his views on church-state relations. Jefferson wrote, “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.” (Dreisbach, 2002, pp. 1-2) The nation’s founders were steeped in Enlightenment thinking which opposed the dogmatism of the Church and the rule of the kings and the aristocracies they left behind. They adhered to the natural rights of man to be free of fear and religious prejudice. They viewed the celebration of man’s capacities as the best way to worship God through respect for his creation (Dreisbach, 2002.) This was an important development to insure plurality of belief and thought. It is reasonable to suppose that the Colonists and the framers of the Constitution worried about religious freedom because they had strong religious beliefs that had been oppressed. They did not create the separation of church and state to stamp out personal values. The wall is necessary to ensure freedom of belief. However, in many higher education institutions the separation is used as a taboo against general discussion about issues of the good – both personal and public. Our problem today is quite different than the one faced by the framers of the constitution and its amendments. There is now a need for dialogue about what to do since families and organized religion no longer seem to adequately fulfill the need for meaning and connection in people’s lives as they did during the Enlightenment and the early years of this country. How do we separate dialogue about issues of ethics and values from the desire to espouse one set of beliefs as the only true faith? A lack of discussion about issues of the good has led to a country beset by a world of corporate and government scandals and a generation of people longing for spiritual connection. Purpose 3: Equality of Education and Building a Better World A third root of resistance comes from a change in how education is viewed. In Europe and during the earliest days of our own country, education was viewed as the purview of upper class gentlemen. This education often consisted of grounding in the great books of Western culture. Values were not ignored in this process even if at times the result was a moralistic education rather than instruction in the skills of moral decision-making (Dewey, 1980, p. 359). However, it was not the content of the books by great thinkers that was problematic but the way in which they were taught. It was the belief that they were the only important voices to be heard, and the eschewing of practice or anything ‘worldly’ that made this education elitist. The purpose of providing students with opportunities to wrestle with the major issues of humanity and to explore the insight of great minds regarding these issues was a worthy one. As the right to vote was extended to African Americans and women in the United States, education became seen as a process for creating the effective, informed citizens needed to support democracy. There was a shift toward the view that education is for the masses. Over time, people came to question the canon of the great books and the lack of diverse voices within it. The purpose of creating equality in education and the movement toward plurality led to new models of liberal arts education based in the disciplines rather than a single canon. However, these discipline-based paths have been plagued by fragmentation, specialization, and the loss of coherence and relevance (Gaff, Ratcliff, et al. 1997). CONCLUSION The purposes of open inquiry, preservation of freedom of belief, a desire to provide students with an integrated view of the world including the ability to grapple with its issues, and education based on equality are some of the major beliefs underlying the Enlightenment, American democracy, and the academy. If we are to have any real discussion about new pathways for reaching these goals and educating whole persons to become effective citizens, it is important to recognize that these are the purposes that many mainstream faculty members believe they are defending when they oppose character education. Student affairs professionals are aware of the need to facilitate student development, to foster leadership, and to enhance student awareness of social issues through service. Thus, student affairs professionals and liberal arts faculty should be natural allies. Ironically, faculty members often see the development of student character as an assault on intellectual values and Enlightenment purposes. Dialogue is needed to engage faculty and to identify the purposes that are common. It is not the purposes but the pathways taken to achieve them that have produced a loss of meaning and relevance, that loss is becoming a crisis for our universities, our citizens, and our country. The very methods we are using to pursue our purposes are sometimes taking us farther from them. The percentage of people voting in the U.S., our understanding of cultures different from our own, scandals within our capitalist system, and increasing detachment from civic life are signs that we need to rethink the way we educate our citizens and the role of character development in that education—not as indoctrination but as the ability to think critically about moral issues, ethical decisions, and the ultimate concerns of society. REFERENCES Ayer, A.J. (Ed.) (1959). Logical positivism. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press. Boyer, E.L. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate. Princeton, NJ: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates. (1997). Reinventing undergraduate education: A blueprint for America’s research universities. Menlo Park, CA: The Carnegie Foundation. Brians, P. (2000). The enlightenment. Retrieved July 17, 2003 from http://www.wsu:8080/~brians/hum_303/enlightenment.html Corning, P.A. (1995). Synergy and self-organization in the evolution of complex systems. Systems Research, 12 (2), 89-121. Dewey, J. (1980). Theory of the moral life. New York: Irvington Publishers, Inc. (Originally published 1932). Dreisbach, D.L. (2002). Thomas Jefferson and the wall of separation between church and state. New York: New York University Press. Finocchiaro, M.A. (1989). The Galileo affair: A documentary history. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Gaff, J.G., Ratcliff, J.L., & Associates. (1997). Handbook of the undergraduate curriculum: A comprehensive guide to purposes, structures, practices, and change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. Gaukroger, S. (1995). Descartes: An intellectual biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Koch, A. (1965). The American enlightenment: The shaping of the American experiment and a free socieity. New York: George Braziller. Lagemann, E.C. (Spring 2003). The challenge of liberal education: Past, present, and future. Liberal Education, 89 (2), 6-13. Neville, R.C. (1992). The high road around modernism. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Polanyi, M. (June 1968). Life’s irreducible structure. Science, 160, 1308-1312. Searle, J.R. (1976). Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language. London:Cambridge University Press. Slaughter, S., & Leslie, L.L. (1997). Academic capitalism: Politics, policies, and the entrepreneurial university. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Smith, G.L. (1994). On reductionism. Retrieved August 8, 2003 from http://smith2.sewanee.edu/gsmith/texts/ecology/OnReductionism.html. Sutcliffe, F.E. (1968). Introduction. In R. Descartes, Discourse on method and Meditations (pages 7-23). London: Penguin Books. Wilshire, B. (1990). The moral collapse of the university. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. BIBLIOGRAPHY Dr. Susan Awbrey is Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and an Associate Professor in Human Resource Development. Her scholarly focus is on organizational change in higher education, its philosophical roots and psychological dynamics. She has numerous publications and national presentations. In 1995 she was selected to receive a prestigious American Council on Education Fellowship in leadership and management which she completed at University of Massachusetts Amherst. Dr. Awbrey has been a member of the Oakland University faculty for twelve years. She is former chair of the HRD department and has served as a member of the provost office for seven years. Prior to coming to Oakland, she served on the faculties of the University of Illinois, Michigan State University, and The University of Texas. |
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