The habit of seeking: liberal education and the library at Berea College - The Library and Undergraduate Education

Library Trends, Fall, 1995 by Steve Gowler

BEREA COLLEGE AND THE LIBERAL ARTS

general education is not a smorgasbord curriculum from which a

student may select at random samples of tidbits. Its purpose is to

stretch and stimulate the student's mind, not stuff or entertain it.

All of the courses are aimed to aid a student in developing a coherent

and enlightened pattern of values, a personal ethic, and some

good standards of taste and discrimination, so that he can find his

way with a degree of sureness through a world of shoddy, shallow,

conflicting, unworthy and unjust claims upon his attention, his participation

and his loyalties. (Hutchins, 1963, p. 15)

This passage comes from a speech delivered to the Newcomen Society in 1963 by Francis Hutchins--Berea College's sixth president; son of Berea's fifth president, William J. Hutchins; and brother of the University of Chicago's Robert Maynard Hutchins. It expresses Berea College's commitment to liberal education, a commitment inextricably intertwined with its aim of carrying on "many forms of education at once-teaching the people how to get a living, and how to live" (Frost, 1937, p. 75), as a" earlier president of the college, William Goodell Frost, put it in his 1893 inaugural address.

Unlike many colleges that are the product of nineteenth-century social activism, Berea cultivates communal memory of its past and attempts to develop in a way that is consistent with its roots. Founded in 1855 by Reverend John G. Fee on land donated by Kentucky abolitionist Cassius Clay, Berea was dedicated to offering interracial education to students of' limited means. Those students came primarily from the mountains of' Kentucky and neighboring states, and shortly after the Civil War, the school explicitly identified this area as its primary field of service. Berea has tried to remain true to the leading ideas and principles of its founders. By design, 80 percent of Berea's students come from Kentucky and Southern Appalachia. Only students with low to modest family incomes are admitted. No tuition is charged, and every student is required to work at least ten hours per week in the college labor program.

Berea has always included vocational training among its courses of study. Today its majors include agriculture, education, technology and industrial arts, and nursing, as well as the standard liberal arts programs in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences. However, the option of majoring in a "practical" field does not allow a student to avoid a liberal education. From the beginning, Berea has had "a spade and a spelling-book in one hand, and a telescope and a Greek Testament in the other" (Frost, 1937, p. 76), and since the 1940s, all students have been required to take a course of general studies, a requirement based upon the belief that a liberal education is of fundamental value whatever one's occupation.

The library program described below is largely a function of the particular character of Berea College. It was shaped by the convergence of insights gleaned from the literature and practice of librarianship, sensitivity to the needs of Berea's students, and reflection on the nature of a liberal education. The idea that libraries are warehouses of books and magazines or clearinghouses for new information technologies misrepresents their symbiotic relationship to the communities they serve. The materials and services a library provides are sure to be inadequate and inappropriate unless they are developed in response to the mission and needs of the larger body. Of course, those needs, and perhaps the mission as well, may be manifold, resulting in a delicate balancing act on the parts of librarians so that time, energy, and resources are not squandered, thereby endangering the general well-being of the community.

Librarians should, of course, be lively participants in charting the course of their institutions, and they may initiate discussion on a wide range of educational and technological issues. However, they must guard against embracing and promoting the latest and greatest out of an unreflective fascination with novelty. Librarians abdicate one of their basic responsibilities if they are not sensitive to the defining characteristics and distinctive purposes of the communities they serve. To fail in this regard is to become alienated, ineffective, and marginalized.

THE NATURAL CONNECTION BETWEEN LIBERAL EDUCATION AND THE LIBRARY

There is no way of arriving at any sciential End but by finding it at

every step. The End is in the Means: or the Adequacy of each Mean

is already its End. Southey once said to me: You are nosing every

nettle along the Hedge, while the Greybound (meaning himself, I

presume) wants only to get sight of the Hare, and Flash--strait as a

line! he has it in his mouth!--even so, I replied, might a Cannibal

say to an Anatomist, whom he had watched dissecting a body. But

the fact is--I do not care two pence for the Hare, but I value most

highly the excellencies of scent patience, discrimination, free Activity;

and find a Hare in every Nettle I make myself acquainted with.