Recent debates at Tufts have raised the important question of what role education for active citizenship plays in a liberal arts education. Webster's dictionary defines "integral" as "necessary for completeness, essential." With this in mind, then, I argue in favor of education for active citizenship as indeed integral to a liberal arts education.
Objections to education for active citizenship can be traced to platonic ideas about the superiority of contemplation and universal, fixed principles of learning. Education in this sense aims to rise above daily concerns. It is elevated and disconnected from the world in which people work and live.
In contrast, education for active citizenship aims to connect learning and knowledge to pressing issues of the day. An argument in support of education for active citizenship can be found in the writings of Francis Bacon, who argued that the dualism between "superior," pure knowledge and "inferior," applied knowledge is false.
To Bacon, theoretical knowledge must be validated under real-life conditions, lest we cannot know if that knowledge reflects "truth." In this view, knowledge and learning that is disconnected from practice, separate from daily concerns, and cut off from real-life problems cannot be valid.
A more direct rationale for education for active citizenship lies in the work of the early 20th century American social theorist John Dewey. Dewey's rejection of Plato's dualism invokes a deep connection between democracy and learning.
In Dewey's view, both democracy and learning are advanced when learners engage with real-world problems, formulate new knowledge to address those problems, and reflect critically on the results and learn from them.
A quality liberal arts education should include a variety of elements, all of which are valuable. Education for active citizenship must be among those elements - not as an "extra," not as a diversion from intellectual pursuits, but rather, as an integral part of those pursuits.
The challenge and excitement of focusing one's mind on active engagement with the problems of today's world are as necessary to a liberal arts education as familiarization with the ways of thinking of different disciplines, critically reading "the classics," and coming to appreciate the joys of quiet contemplation.
While we must continue the conversation about our goals for learning at Tufts and the place of various elements in those goals, let us not create polarizations among us that serve no worthwhile purpose.
Susan Ostrander is a professor in the department of sociology.
