Chapter 3 - Purposes
In chapter three, Bok suggests that there are seven purposes of higher education:
1. the ability to communicate
• in writing and orally
2. critical thinking
• this includes quantitative methods
3. moral reasoning
• to develop a clearer, stronger set of ethical principals
4. preparing citizens
• this is an effort to help students become informed and active participants in a democracy
5. living with diversity
• students should learn to live and work effectively with other people and enter into fulfilling personal relationships
• for example, students should be sensitive to issues of gender, race, and sexuality
6. living in a more global society
• students should gain knowledge about international affairs, other countries, and cultures
7. breadth of interests
• colleges should encourage students to engage a variety of interests
• this will expand their capabilities and knowledge
• it will help them enjoy full and varied lives
• for example, students should explore various intellectual, artistic, and athletic pursuits
Discussion Questions
1. Do you agree with Bok that these are the most important goals of higher education? Are other important purposes missing from his assessment? In consideration of limited resources, should some goals receive more emphasis than others? If so, which ones are the most important?
2. To what extent does our Gen Ed program already subscribe to these goals?
3. To what extent does the university’s strategic plan facilitate or inhibit the development of these goals? (http://www2.mercer.edu/UPC/Future/default.htm)
4. In what ways might our heritage as a Baptist university facilitate or inhibit the development these goals?
5. In the previous chapter Bok discusses the differing perspectives of students and faculty. With this in mind, is there systematic evidence regarding the aims of Mercer students regarding their college experience? How might we incorporate student concerns into the development of our general education goals?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
This is a pivotal chapter. Bok lays out eight purposes for our universities and colleges. He will later devote one chapter to each purpose. Was it a Freudian slip on Fletcher’s part, that he did not include the eighth one (last, but surely not least) “Preparing for Work.”
At the end of the chapter Bok does adopt a slightly humble tone, when he refuses to “recommend with enough confidence” other worthy goals, for example judgment and wisdom, because they may be too difficulty to achieve. But otherwise he is very enthusiastic about what can be done to shape students by the faculty and the rest of the campus environment. And we should be ambitious also.
But at some point one has to draw a line, between what can and must be done, and the extras. In this modern world, there are some things a student coming to Mercer or a similar school needs: reasonable prospects for employment after school, increased general knowledge of the world, a better sense of purpose and personal confidence, a substantial kit of intellectual tools they will find useful in life, a sense that they have really learned “a lot” and didn’t waste their time in college. That is, they need to have those skills, perspectives and qualities that will enable them to have a good life by their own standards long after school is over. They may not know what kind of life they will wish to lead in the distant future, so general abilities are the most valuable; and those are the ones on Bok’s list, as I see it.
Still, it is rather presumptuous, in this day and age, for faculty who are getting on in years to think we know what those young people will actually need in their life. In past ages it was easier, but now? Given the rapid rate of change, and the ample evidence of our own fallibility, we should be modest in making our wish list: “How I will change my students for the better.” We should first take care of the sure thing, the easy lesson. Only then, if there is time and energy, should we try the tricky parts. So in my own field of physics, I first of all try to make sure every student leaves my class having actually learned some physics. I mean the basic “lay of the land” of the discipline. What does one want to accomplish? What does one do with equations and numbers and lab equipment to reach the goal? What kind of results can one expect? Along the way, I always look for spots where I can send deeper messages. Why are Newton’s Laws so different from the kinematical equations? What is energy? What was the real lesson of Einstein’s work? What are strange features of quantum physics really telling us about the deep nature of the universe? Are there really any lessons of a philosophical nature to be derived from the progress of modern physics? But it may be difficult for me to teach anything useful along these lines, so the deeper issues have lesser priority.
Sometimes I think some of my liberal arts colleagues think that it is so easy to teach the easy stuff that they don’t even have to think about it much, nor spend much effort and class time to achieve the result. Maybe they are just better teachers than I; maybe not. Instead, some seem to indicate that most effort should be directed at the really hard (and fun?) stuff, like character-building and instilling civic responsibility, and nurturing good judgment, and the formation of true goodness in their students. I think those are really hard tasks. Maybe some of them are impossible, in a non-authoritatian society such as we create on campus. So is it still worthwhile to pursue them? The real question is, how much time should we devote to these purposes? Certainly I cannot teach my engineering students about the mysteries of quantum physics and black holes and completely neglect the practical physics they need as professionals. But how much time could or should I spend on the fun stuff?
Bok has made a very good list of purposes in this chapter. How much time should we spend on one, rather than another? Can we rank them? Probably we will have different rankings amongst ourselves, and this affects or reflects how and what we teach. This is a good thing; that way our students have more choices and a more interesting intellectual environment.
1. I believe Bok did an excellent job in listing purposes to which we should be preparing our students. There are other important goals that while they are not lesser but are more difficult to write into the curriculum such as working collaboratively. We must not just consider the needs of our students, but rather the needs that we can affect in an academic environment. Bok humble admits in the end of the chapter that his list has been subjected to the constraint of what is achievable. It is this point of realism that we must keep in mind.
2. With the exceptions of communicating orally and living in a global society the Gen Ed program is doing well.
3. I see these goals as a means to better define who we are as a Mercer Community and can work to strengthen our ability to develop students in purposes (3)-(6),
4. In that Mercer has chosen to be Baptist in its heritage but not in its ideology or uniformly Baptist in its academic concerns the development of theses goals should not be inhibited. The Baptist heritage will affect the means in which we seek to facilitate these capacities to students, such as via Mercer on Missions.
5. Rather than attempt to discern what current or future students think they need in their academic experience it would be more insightful to determine what alumni believe was critically missing from their experience.
Post a Comment