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JERRY GAFF Remarks at Kutztown University October 7 & 8, 2003 JERRY GAFF
Remarks at Kutztown University
October 7 & 8, 2003
I am very pleased to be at Kutztown University to talk about a topic very near and
dear to me: undergraduate general education. A few years ago I spoke to a system-
wide conference here in Pennsylvania, and it is good to learn about one campus in
greater detail. When Linda Goldberg called and told me about your initiative to
restructure general education and invited me to visit today and tomorrow, it was
easy to accept.
Today and tomorrow morning I intend to do four things:
1.

Discuss a new and richer concept of general education;
2.

Highlight changes in the relationship between general education and
professional education;
3.

Offer a list of curriculum trends; and
4.

Tell a story about how general education helped vitalize one institution.
Before we plunge into these serious topics, lets acknowledge that change in colleges
and universities is difficult and uncertain. Academic folklore holds that it is easier to
move a cemetery than to change a curriculum.
Irving Kristol, the social critic, asserted that colleges and universities are the social
institutions most resistant to changewith the possible exception of the Post Office.
A young professor was quoted in a 1911 book on the curriculum as saying, The
progress of this institution will be directly proportional to the death rate of the
faculty.
Frederick Rudolph, the academic historian, observed: The professor was an
optimist. College faculties by the late 19th and early 20th centuries had developed
an authority that made the course of study a jealously guarded compound of special
interests. By then, it seldom mattered who died.
Despite the folklore, change does occur in the academy, and the last two decades
have been a particularly fertile time for fresh thinking and experimentation with
alternative approaches. One change important to your initiative is in the concept of
general education.
The term general education admits of no simpleor singledefinition. A
heuristic one offered by an earlier report from an association (AAC&U) (Task
Group on General Education, 1988, 1) is the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that
all of us use and live by during most of our liveswhether as parents, citizens,
lovers, travelers, participants in the arts, leaders, volunteers, or good Samaritans. While avoiding advocacy of any particular content, this definition has the advantage
of inviting individuals into a conversation, so that a group such as a college faculty,
can determine what are the essential knowledge, skills, and attitudes for students to
acquire. If agreement can be reached, then the group can assess the adequacy of the
existing curriculum to cultivate such qualities, or devise a curriculum that would
more intentionally nurture those attributes.
Such a conversation about the ends of education takes place today in a climate of
serious public concern about the quality of education. The concern centers on the
curriculumat least at the college levelbecause the debate focuses on what
students should know. The concern is not primarily about students being competent
specialists in biology, philosophy, or sociology, for instance. It is that students do not
possess the marks of a generally educated personthat is, having such qualities as a
broad base of knowledge in history and culture and mathematics and science, the
ability to think logically and critically, the capacity to express ideas clearly and
cogently, the sensitivities and skills to deal with different kinds of people,
sophisticated tastes and interests, and the capability to work independently and
collaboratively.
Indeed, a new concept of general education seems to be emerging at a large number
of institutions that have analyzed undergraduate education. I want to draw a
contrast between two quite different concepts. The old idea equated general
education with breadth and, in an institution organized around academic
departments, involved a sampling of courses from the broad array of academic
disciplines. The method of securing breadth was by means of distribution
requirements, and students were typically given a great deal of latitude to choose
among alternative courses within broad domains of knowledge, such as the
humanities, social, and natural sciences. Usually all courses designated by a
department met the requirements. These courses were usually introductory level,
and were regarded as a foundation on which specialized study would build. Such
a program required little administrative coordination, simply a registrar to verify that
requirements were met. Faculty members tended to view teaching such courses as
unwelcome service to students who were concentrating in other fields, and
students were advised to get your distribution requirements out of the way, so you
can get on with more important work in your major. Each of these elements is
part of an old, and increasingly discredited, way of thinking about general education.
A new concept is emerging from conversations among faculties about the qualities
of an educated person and the redesign of their curricula. One after another, college
faculties are concluding that general education must be much more than breadth
and simple exposure to different fields of study. Collectively, they are deciding that
students should:
Receive a generous orientation to the intellectual expectations, curricular
rationale, and learning resources of an institution;

Acquire specific skills of thought and expression, such as critical thinking
and writing, that should be learned across the curriculum and imbedded
within several courses;
Learn about another culture and the diversity that exists within our own
culture in terms of gender, race, ethnic background, class, age, and
religion;
Integrate ideas from across disciplines to illuminate interdisciplinary
themes, issues or social problems;
Study some subjectsbeyond their majorsat advanced, not just
introductory levels;
Have an opportunity near the end of their course of study to pull together
their learning in a senior seminar or project; and
Experience a coherent course of study, one that is more than the sum of
its parts.
Surely, study of various disciplines is important, but distribution requirements are
increasingly seen as a minimalist definition that is not sufficiently rigorous for the
demands that students will face in their lifetimes. A more robust concept is needed
to raise the quality, stature, and frankly, the value of general education.
However defined at an institutionand there is much variationthe new concept is
full of educational purposes beyond that of breadth. A loose distribution system,
which maximizes student choice within broad categories, is inadequate to guarantee
that all students acquire this kind of general education. Some prescription, whether
specific graduation requirements or guidelines for certain kinds of courses (such as
writing intensive) is necessary. Courses offered by departments must be reviewed
by an institution-wide committee to assure that they meet specific educational
criteria. A great deal of coordination among departments, faculty members, and
students is necessary to foster coherence. That is why many institutions with
reformed general education curricula create new administrative positions; a director
of general education is needed to see that purposes are addressed and coherence is
achieved.
Rather than seeing such intentional courses as demeaning service, faculty
members tend to view them as special opportunities to teach the most fundamental
ideas, methods, and perspectives of their disciplines to students who may never take
another course in the field. Such important courses obviously cannot be gotten out
of the way; they are essential to the educational enterprise. And a more useful
metaphor than a foundation may be a scaffolding, a structure that exists
alongside a major and provides a context and framework for erecting that edifice.
This new concept is a richer, more purposeful, and more demanding idea of general
education. Although many of the educational purposes can and should be addressed
in academic majors, this new concept gives far more substance and stature to
general education. It demands a better balance with the major. Indeed, as the late Ernest Boyer reminded us, Rather than divide the undergraduate experience into
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