A review essay: General and liberal studies

Abstract

The question: If educators no longer feel sure about what an educated person is, then why do programs professing to develop such an individual continue to exist?' posed by John A. and Virginia Scigliano, captures the puzzling contradictions one soon encounters in reviewing the recent literature on general and liberal studies. In spite of this lack of consensus on what constitutes an educated individual, proponents of and programs for general studies continue to survive. The waning influence of such studies has a long history, attributed, in part, to the lack of a defensible rationale for general and liberal studies. In recent times the most articulate rationale for general education is presented in the post World War II Report of the Harvard Committee entitled General Education in a Free Society. Bound in a red cover, the influential has rarely been surpassed in its reasoned insights into the tasks and problems confronting American education in the modern world. The Report of the Harvard Committee sought to establish a rationale for a generally educated public in a democratic society. Accordingly, the Redbook asserts that education should achieve two objectives: first it must help young persons fulfill the unique, particular functions in life which it is in them to fulfill, and it must fit them so far as it can for those common spheres which as citizens and heirs of a joint culture, they will share with others. 2 The American system of education should seek both diversity and unity throughout the curriculum in order to prevent the studies of even one student from being atomic or unbalanced or both.3 The Redbook clearly identifies the educator's task, though it remains as elusive as ever. Today, as in the post war years, the search continues for some strong, not easily broken, framework through which our educational institutions may fulfill