Some of my concerns have already been expressed in earlier letters; others have not. They fall into three categories:
A. THE POLITICAL CONCERNS: USG faculty and many administrators
throughout the state are tired of curricular matters being determined
from the top down. This is occurring currently in three ways:
1. The decision to revise the CORE was made without substantive
representation of or consultation with the academics who teach the CORE.
2. The two main framework parameters of “achieving system-wide
competency expectations” and having a “strong global emphasis” were
decided without substantive representation of or consultation with the
academics who teach the CORE.
3. The Board of Regent’s and Chancellor’s own academic advisory
committees, composed of academics who teach the CORE, were not a part
of the review which apparently exists and affirms that the current core
is inadequate, the ensuing discussion which led to the decision to
revise the existing core, or the additional curricular decision that
the new core be competency-based and globally-oriented.
I respond politically to these political concerns by signing the
proposed petition. In the realm of politics, votes appear to be the
bottom line. So, I simply encourage faculty to voice their vote
whatever it is. And if faculty don’t vote or voice their concerns, then
they should have less justification in complaining later that it was a
top down decision. By default, top down decisions will automatically
(and justifiably) occur when those who are down do not make or even
voice other decisions during the political process at the right
political moments. One of those right political moments heavily weighs
on the USG faculty NOW.
B. THE PRAGMATIC CONCERNS: USG institutional administrators (many Deans
as indicated by one letter below) and many faculty throughout the state
are extremely worried about the practical problems that will be created
by the substantive shifts in resources that are likely to follow from
decisions and parameters made by committees who are not DIRECTLY in
dialogue with those who are most familiar with the variety and
diversity of each of the USG’s individual institutional academic
landscapes and the existing curricular flora in those landscapes. Their
worry is that rearranging the core academic garden is not the best way
to encourage strategic goal-two growth. Rearranging the core garden is
much less of a factor in growth than watering and figuring out the
right kinds of fertilizers to add, in the right proportions, to the
right places. On the other hand, a rearranged core academic garden does
look new and bigger to the public even if the student and faculty
vegetation are well aware they are receiving the same old fertilizers
and therefore are no newer or bigger than before. The larger question:
Do we want the core academic garden to APPEAR improved or do we want it
to BE improved?
If the plethora of pragmatic concerns don’t lead to the above larger
ACADEMIC question of what would constitute real improvement in our
CORE, then all pragmatic concerns are circular. It should be well-known
and well-observed by now that pragmatically observed problems will
always call forth pragmatically proposed solutions which will in turn
create other pragmatically observed problems leading to other
pragmatically proposed solutions ad infinitum. The only way to make
sense of this infinite circularity (generally called “progress”) is by
affirming a non-pragmatic, non-political ACADEMIC END for which
institutional practices, including curricular reform, serve as a MEANS.
If we academics do not reflect on or decide on this ACADEMIC END in its
entirety because of either political or pragmatic concerns, then it is
clear that all the Universities of Georgia are primarily a SYSTEM of
means leading to other means which lead on to other means WITHOUT END.
C. THE ACADEMIC CONCERNS: The two core framework requirements of being
competency-based and globally-oriented are proposed as the new goals of
a core education, but these two suggested ends are really MEANS. To
suggest that a core education be conceived of in terms of competencies
is to mistake the means for the ends. Self-knowledge is not a
"competency" or "skill". Being a good human being or even a good
citizen is not a competency. Being good at something does not equate to
being good. Performance standards are not human standards. Some might
argue the global society doesn't want complete human beings anymore,
only performers competent in certain fields to fill whatever functions
society requires regardless of whether such functions are genuinely
helping humans live well as humans. This is the world pressuring
education to serve worldly goals when education should be pressuring
the world to serve educational goals. Education is clearly succumbing
to the pressure from the world far more than the world succumbs to
pressure from education.
Self-knowledge is at least mentioned in proposed model B, but both
framework models A and B tend to suggest that education is a means to
the end of adapting students to a “global” environment by training them
to be problem solvers which is all very efficient and practical, but
not the real end of a core education. “Critical thinking”,
"problem-solving”, “skills”, “abilities”, “capacities”, or
“COMPETENCIES” ARE NOT THE ENDS of a core education, no matter what we
call them. They are means, or perhaps by-products of a process aimed at
an end. A core education entails such means, but is not reducible to
such means.
I would hope that academics can all still agree that it is the mark
of an educated person to be able to distinguish the means from the end.
A core education is not supposed to be only or even primarily a means
to political stability, economic growth, or globalization. A core
education is the END that provides meaning and value to the means and
competencies it entails. If academics do not figure out a way to affirm
a core education’s intrinsic value, then it is destined to become a
slave to the global environment. The first step to this affirmation is
the rejection of any models or descriptions of a core education that
suggest it is either solely or primarily a MEANS without reference to
its intrinsic value. The current core models and framework requirements
sell the intrinsically valued “soul” of higher education into the
endless global system of means. Pragmatic politicians, economists and
much of the general public appear not to believe in the intrinsically
valued “soul” of higher education, but ACADEMICS do still believe in
this intrinsic value. If we do not find a way to preserve education’s
“soul”, then it will be sold to the highest bidder, buried in political
committees, efficiently chained to utility, repeatedly assessed and
re-described until it no longer recognizes its own intrinsic value when
looking in the mirror.
To these academic concerns, I respond by requesting that ACADEMICS
step forward wherever possible to defend a core education’s intrinsic
value – her heart and soul. Moreover, discussion of REAL improvement to
the core should begin with reflection, discovery, and a developing
communal sense of what a core education’s intrinsic value is PRIOR to
identifying the many extrinsically valued means (skills, abilities,
competencies) and PRIOR to questions of what can and cannot be assessed
or quantitatively measured. The means and the mechanisms for assessing
the means SHOULD NOT determine what the TELOS of a core education is.
Intrinsically valued human, all too human academics should.
Finally, having said all this, let me finish with one potential point
of agreement with the Chancellor’s office. If these decisions, (a) to
revise the core and (b) to require framework parameters that eclipse
the intrinsic value of a core education, have not been made already,
then I would agree with the Chancellor’s presumed intent to prompt us
academics to take a long look at ourselves in the mirror. For this is
precisely what a review of the core curriculum is – us looking at
ourselves in the mirror and wondering what we all add up to in the
minds of our students. But, we must be allowed to freely look in this
mirror and see what it there, see what is not there, and see what
should be there – not what predetermined political decisions and
pragmatic framework parameters tell us should be there. Genuine core
self-reflection requires this academic freedom, many academics, and
time. The appearance of core review, on the other hand, requires much
less.
Dr. Erik Nordenhaug
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Armstrong Atlantic State University
This opposition blog and petition were begun by some USG faculty as soon as the USG Core Curriculum Initiative became public in early March, a nervy exercise of academic freedom and First Amendment rights. Since the official survey was left open until at least May 4, its faculty responses could not be read and considered by anyone involved before that time. So this blog and petition became the only public expression of USG faculty opinions about the Initiative. All of the USG faculty owe its editors very much indeed.
---An Anonymous Professor