Silent Spring? - President's Message - public awareness and influence of liberal education - President's Page

Liberal Education, Spring, 2003

AAC&U's report, Greater Expectations: A New Vision for Learning as a Nation Goes to College, and the subject of the annual meeting represented in this issue, recommends that every student deserves a liberal education, one redefined to embrace and address the way knowledge is actually used in the world, including the world of work and civil society. It calls for a new synthesis between liberal and practical education throughout the educational experience: "Liberal education must. . . become consciously, intentionally pragmatic, while it remains conceptually rigorous; its test will be in the effectiveness of graduates to use knowledge thoughtfully in the wider world."

The challenges confronting today's education leaders, therefore, are two. The first is summoning the vision, the will, and the long-term commitment to coalesce innovations already flowering around us into more intentional, integrative, and powerful frameworks for student learning. And the second is the willingness to call these innovations what they are: a twenty-first century vision for liberal education.

The future of liberal education and the future of our core educational missions are one and the same.

CAROL GEARY SCHNEIDER