Liberal Education Quotes



LEAP Wisconsin: an Implied History of the UW System’s LEAP Initiative through Quotes (or words to “leap” by)“Even as specific practices within liberal education are being reinvented and reinvigorated, the tradition itself is largely disguised from public notice. The educational innovations described above are heavily promoted by the academy but rarely described in campus promotional materials as "liberal" or "liberal arts" education. Students who participate in them may never even be told that they are engaged in contemporary forms of liberal education. Graduate students preparing to teach spend virtually no time considering their own role either in these innovations or in the larger traditions of liberal learning.Given this conspiracy of voluntary silence, there is very little public understanding or even awareness of liberal education, despite its enduring influence on both established and innovative curricula. Studies show that the public does not value it as named, even though the same public places high value on the outcomes-such as analytical judgment, social responsibility, and economic opportunity-to which liberal education leads. Campus leaders report that students also don't know what liberal or liberal arts education is and that many faculty are uncertain” (emphasis added).Carol Geary Schneider, Practicing Liberal Education: Formative Themes in the Re-invention of Liberal Learning (2003)“Why do we need to undertake this initiative now, during a time of fiscal crisis and declining state support for public higher education? Now more than ever, we need to be able to articulate for ourselves and our multiple constituencies the value, the currency, and the purpose of liberal education. The budget context demands that we clarify, respond to, and defend, if necessary, the public's questioning of our mission, our practice, and our product.”Rebecca Karoff, UW System Office of Academic Affairs, in Why an Initiative on the Currency of the Liberal Arts and Sciences Now? (November 2003)“[A] liberal education is quickly becoming the price of admission to a twenty-first century knowledge economy.” Barbara Lawton, Former Lieutenant Governor, Wisconsin, in her plenary address at the AAC&U Annual Meeting, January 2006“The modern university has become fragmented in its mission. It serves a number of competing constituencies, all of them understandably seeking their part of the economic pie. As a result, our students are often educated in a piecemeal fashion. They are apt to move from one course to the next with very little sense of continuity in the curriculum, or any awareness of the university’s broader mission. Yeats’ frequently- quoted line from the “Second Coming” seems especially appropriate in this context: “Things fall apart, the center cannot hold.” A liberal education offers a solution for this fragmentation. With its emphasis on the whole student, liberal education aims to encourage certain universally applicable learning outcomes. (…)The title of the conference—“Liberal Education: A Unifying Mission for the 21st Century University”—refers to a center which can hold, a center defined as the university’s commitment to certain broad learning outcomes as well as the humanistic, civic, and economic qualities that are at the heart of these outcomes.”This conference is intended to celebrate liberal education as an integrative force within the university.”George Savage, Associate Professor of English, UW-Whitewater, in his description of the November 2008 UW System conference on liberal education.“Simply put, for me, our Liberal Education Initiative is the academic quality component of the Growth Agenda. In education, quantity without quality is an entirely false promise. ?We won’t make that kind of promise to the people of Wisconsin. Instead, we pledge through this initiative that our students will graduate with a quality of mind that will enable their citizen leadership in a 21st century, globally-engaged American democracy.” Kevin P. Reilly, President, University of Wisconsin System, in his plenary address at the UW System conference on liberal education, November 2008.“Taken alone, the headline terms “Access and Completion” threaten to perpetuate what this association has long described as a ‘dangerous silence’ on the most fundamental question of all: what do college students need to learn and be able to do? “Quality must become the centerpiece of this nation’s intended investments in postsecondary attainment.”It should not be liberal education for some and narrow or illiberal education for others . . . Access to educational excellence is the equity challenge of our time.”Statement from the AAC&U Board of Directors, 2010“Access to Success takes its place—a leading role—in the overall transformative work of the Growth Agenda, alongside other System initiatives, including Inclusive Excellence and LEAP, to ensure equitable access to and success in the best educational opportunities our institutions have to offer. And it represents the System’s willingness to confront head-on the biggest challenges to public higher education, the country’s economic viability in the global economy, and the threat to American democracy posed by the continued stratification by race and income of the nation’s educational institutions.”Rebecca Martin, Former Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, addressing the Board of Regents about the UW System initiative to narrow the persistent achievement gaps between students from underrepresented populations and white students, October 2010 ................
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