ACTA in the News
Just a few questions
June 13, 2010
Paul Greenberg
Arkansas Democrat-GazetteDear Gentlemen,
It was wholly a pleasure to get your email offering me additional information about the continuing kerfuffle over the administration's attempt to rearrange/dilute its course requirements for an undergraduate degree at the University of Arkansas' campus at Fayetteville. For it's not every day I hear from the university's Managing Editor of Catalogs and the Manager of Media Relations. And, yes, I do have some questions about this reorganization of the curriculum. Such as:
1. If the chancellor and dean of the college of arts and sciences wanted to defend their positions, why wouldn't they write me directly rather than calling out the Public Relations brigade? It's been my experience that PR is the first resort of officials out to change their image, not necessarily their ways. Please disabuse me of so unworthy a suspicion.
2. As I understand your explanation, the chancellor and dean aren't out to change the core curriculum of the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences except in those cases where they are. (Can't argue with that.) And the only change the administration would make in the core curriculum—the courses required of every undergraduate—would be to remove the core. A minor detail.
Those requirements would be distributed among the approximately 45 degree programs or majors on campus, each of which would now have it own core. The old fixed menu would be replaced by cafeteria-style servings. Correct me if I'm wrong, and I'm confident you will even if I'm right, but doesn't this go against the very essence of a university?
Didn't universities used to be about a commonly shared core of knowledge and values? Wasn't the idea, and ideal, of a university a wholeness of outlook, a oneness, literally an integrity? From its formation in the middle ages, the university has been seen as a community of scholars and students united by their studies, not separated by their specialties. By splitting up the curriculum into 40 or 50 different core requirements, won't we wind up not with a single college of the arts and sciences, but a jumble—a collection of colleges instead of one? Won't the end result be a kind of department store of knowledge rather than a common search for wisdom? Will the end product still be a university, or just a multiversity?
Is this one more example of the "the barbarism of specialization" that Ortega y Gasett warned us against long ago in his prescient The Revolt of the Masses? Or as he put it, "We have today more scientists, more scholars, more professional men and women than ever before, but many fewer cultivated ones."
3. If the various departments really are happy with this new approach, why would at least one, that of mathematics, pass a resolution expressing its concern about the proposed changes? Its resolution pointed out that "identity, unity, collegiality and intellectual coherence in Fulbright College depend on the commonality... of its degrees," while "fragmented and differentiated core curricula fuel confusion as well as unhealthy and ill-founded competition for majors."
Why would the faculty of an academic department pass such a resolution unless the indispensable core of a liberal education wasn't in danger of being fractured? Or do you contend that this criticism of the administration's proposal is actually support for it?
4. By now the rationale for these changes has changed so often that it's not clear what it is at the moment. At first, the proposed changes were blamed on that ever-handy scapegoat, the State of Arkansas, and specifically the Legislature and Act 182. But after the governor's office, state Senator Sue Madison, and for that matter Chancellor David Gearhart himself addressed the issue, it turned out that Act 182 doesn't require all this core-splitting at all. The new law seems to have been the excuse for these proposals, not their cause.
Yet various members of the faculty tell me they're still being told that these changes aren't the administration's idea but the state's. Which is it today? And what will the rationale be tomorrow?
It was good of you to let me know that the university's provost, Sharon Gaber, would be happy to visit with me about any "academic issues at the flagship campus" next time she's in Little Rock. That is most kind of the lady. Please thank Dr. Gaber for me, and tell her to feel free to write us a letter to the editor or submit a guest article of her own. That way, we'd have everything in writing.
5. By now, as you can well imagine, I've heard from any number of concerned faculty about these proposed changes. Overwhelmingly, they doubt the official line and point out how inconsistent it's been.
Yet many ask me not to use their name for fear of retribution. ("I would respectfully ask that you not reveal my identity; those of us who have been outspoken about this are feeling quite vulnerable at the moment.") Why all this fear on campus? Isn't a university supposed to embrace the spirit of free inquiry and open debate? Is that to be changed, too?
6. One of my correspondents forwarded a memo dating back to 2007 and purporting to be from the office of the dean of the college of arts and sciences. To quote it only in part: "Good morning! Dr. Bill Schwab has an unusual request and an opportunity for you and your faculty to find a new home for no-longer-used books as you do some spring cleaning. The Chancellor's Residence, nearly completed, is in need of books to line the top shelves of one of its rooms. These books would be primarily (but not exclusively) for aesthetics, so any titles are appreciated ..."
I knew interior decorators bought books by the yard mainly for ornamental purposes, but I hadn't realized this is what the University of Arkansas has come to. Can this be an actual memo, or is it just a satire on the state of liberal education at the state's "flagship" university?
7. There's no need for you to apologize for not letting me know beforehand that Chancellor Gearhart was planning to submit a guest article defending these proposed changes to the curriculum; we were happy to carry it in our Perspective section. One of that section's functions is to provide a forum in its own modest way for a wide exchange of differing views—much as a university should.
In that spirit, the chancellor's reasons for dispersing the university's core requirements have drawn criticisms from some of the country's leading defenders of liberal education. Such as ACTA, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, and NAS, the National Association of Scholars. Our Perspective section has published such opinions, too.
We're told the university is making these changes in order to match those on other campuses. Sure enough, the university is catching up with some of the most prestigious schools in the country. To quote Anthony Paletta at Minding the Campus: 'Arkansas is indeed behind the times—it has been comparatively slow to eviscerate core curricula that most colleges destroyed long ago."
Can the administration believe that, because other universities are fragmenting their curricula, that's reason enough for Arkansas to follow their poor example?
This concludes my list of questions. For now. Thank you for inviting them from this
—Inky Wretch