Author Archive
This blog post was first published on July 21, 2011, on the George Mason University General Education blog. The author is Rick Davis, associate provost for undergraduate education at George Mason University.
It’s Orientation season again on our campus—the summer ritual (conducted on this particular day amid an Excessive Heat Warning) of welcoming our roughly 2,600 incoming freshmen and their parents with two days of information overload, placement tests, registration advice, fun and games, more and quite possibly better food than they will find in the fall, and my little bit about the liberal arts.
This blog post was first published on April 27, 2011 on the George Mason University General Education blog. The author is Rick Davis, associate provost for undergraduate education at George Mason University.
In Act 2 of Hamlet, Polonius comes upon Hamlet reading and asks him “what do you read, my lord.” “Words, words, words” – “what is the matter, my lord?” –“between who?” – “I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.” Hamlet’s sarcastic answer occasions from Polonius one of those Shakespearean phrases that has entered the lexicon as an all-purpose saying: “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.”
From this, we can extract two themes that may be relevant to tonight’s celebration.
The other day I was doing one of the things I love best about my job—singing the song of the liberal arts to a group of committed faculty about to embark on the challenging but rewarding process of general education assessment. Those of you in my vast readership who have been through the current process should feel free to comment and correct this notion, but the assessment folks and I have heard again and again that the creation of the course portfolio and the subsequent review and feedback have been, in the final analysis, a source of insight and not too onerous either for submitters or reviewers. So things were going swimmingly. Appetites were whetted. The sale was almost made.
But just then something a little different happened that set us to thinking a bit. A colleague offered the opinion, in a friendly enough way, that (and here I quote as best I can from memory) “general education just sucks the life out of our majors.” Vivid imagery! What did he mean? Is there any truth to it? We had a packed agenda and didn’t have time for a full exploration, but were able to discuss a couple of points, and here’s the kernel of the sentiment as I see it.
