A LIBERAL VISION FOR EDUCATION

By Mavarine Du-Marie

BSc (Open), Dip Soc (Open), Cert Hum (Open), Cert Bus Stud (Open), Cert HE Soc Sic (Open).

Date: 18th July 2020

In my liberal vision for education I believe it should make use of the foundation that it was built upon, and the phase of institutionalism and moved forward beyond the entanglements of bureaucracy to really come into the next stage being that of innovation.

As it is stated that having a Liberal Education means that it is a multi-disciplinary approach to education and that it is the vehicle for driving change by constructive disruption. And in education that liberal framework is used to expand on the pure (theoretical) and applied (practical) academic work that make up the humanities and other subjects. If it is not, then we have lost sight of our liberal vision for education. As it was argued by Professor Arrowsmith “…if humanists do not have the courage to speak out on the imagination and humanistic intelligence (which means, among other things making intelligent statements about value), than they are not humanists at all but merely technicians …” (Steinberg, 1974) And I believe that we have become technicians because of liberal economic factors being the main political party focus since then and at present.

For having a Liberal Education system of education which provides students the choices to which courses are available for them to take is should be the only factor on what is valued and what is liberal, we have focused far too much on ‘choices’ that we have lost sight on that which is varied and responds to the discovery and explorations the student needs to make in the 21st century and beyond.

There is no entrepreneurial spirit in education, there is no wonderment of experimentation and there is no expansion of the mind in the education system.

What happened in the history of education? Education as a humanistic vision was around during the Renaissance period and was holistic in terms of what was deemed necessary for giving structure to society. But by the Industrial Revolution all that changed, and there was the economic emphasis which drove the need of product and productivity and that included humans being part of the resource for this to occur.

This view of education became a means to an end which also became the norm and standard by which education was delivered and maintained. Even though there were attempts to bring back the soul of a liberal education most have been met with the barrier of status quo and politicking to keep the educational system in this state of mediocrity.

So how can we bring about a Liberal Education that exists beyond just choosing a few courses and that the liberal part done, then the rest of the education progress is turned over to a labour-intensive program for the benefit of the privileged.

And according to Michael Fried (May 2020), there has come about the talk amongst the colleges and universities in the UK of constructive disruption in higher education and the untethering from traditional academic schedules and the importance of innovation.

Therefore, I propose changes during the periods of education when pupils are at the age of boredom, when everything around them is boring, and everyone one else is getting on their nerves in puberty. This age being between 13 and 14 years old to be factual. This is when it is ideal to suspend the ‘educational system’ and make it to be an ‘educational project’ for a period of time, say four to six months which is not teacher-led and where the educational system is suspended.

This is because as an educational project it has an approach of letting the student guide the progress rather than teacher-lead. As well as project-based learning really engages with the student and later on it becomes into it own as a core career skill (with reflection) the best approach to learning how to learn and it also delivers on the promise of ‘realising a potential’ because potential must be made real.

We must as liberal democrats still carry on with the constructive disruption of the educational system or else mediocrity sets in which holds us back from innovation. As in an article written by Tom Borrup (2018) about creative disruption in the arts, he has stated about David Harvey, who “…describes how neoliberalism has spawned oppositional movements. He advocates that the central objectives of these movements “must be to confront the class power that has been so effectively restored under neo-liberalization” (Harvey 2006, 145) and is what constructive disruption is about for a liberal democrat: change and restoring.

This vision is about having a foresight to change for the good of all and for those who have the vision to see what is needed to be done, and not shy away from our civic duty to bring about not just hope or a promise to deliver, which just being constructive does, we need to look beyond and look at constructive disruption as a planned intentional enabling construct.

Therefore, we must build into it the immense creativity residing within students in education and beyond, as this breaks down the barriers to progress.

We must as liberals take a real stand for a liberal education that is rooted in tradition but moves with the times, as to become meaningful that it is once again respected globally that it can be beneficial to the global challenges that the coming generations will face, that is one of adaptability. As without adaptability many will be left behind to the whims of politicking which is not the bread and butter of political ideology.

And a last thrust of my vision for regarding education is: “make a new modern liberal education that works for tomorrow.”

REFERENCES

Steinberg, Erwin R. (1974) “Applied Humanities?” College English, vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 440–450. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/375571. Accessed 19 July 2020.

Fried, Michael, (2020) “Constructive Disruption in Higher Education,” blog article, published online by ITHAKASR, https://sr.ithaka.org/blog/constructive-disruption-in-higher-education/ [accessed 19 July 2020]

Tom Borrup (2018) Creative Disruption in the Arts—Special Issue Introduction, The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society, 48:4, 223-226, DOI: 10.1080/10632921.2018.1497392 [accessed 19 July 2020]

___________________________________________

NOTE: I wrote this article piece for the booklet 2020 Liberal Democrat Education Association but it was rejected on three counts: not being a mainstream ‘constructive’ liberal and secondly for being too academic for the general reader, and thirdly the editor refused to acknowledge its existence. So I made the decision to publish it here.