In 2009 Liz Coleman, then president of Bennington College in Vermont, gave a talk at a TED conference on the need to reform higher education. Her speech was inspiring and heart felt and in it she talked about her personal struggle with the lack of passion within the liberal arts programs in a country that is known to be the home of liberal arts. Coleman's proposal was to change the liberal arts in to a cross disciplinary study with a focus on public service.
To follow up, TED.com interviewed Coleman in 2014 to discuss the Centre for the Advancement of Public Action. http://ideas.ted.com/liz-coleman-on-why-higher-education-needs-to-embrace-messiness/
Since her TED talk in 2009 Coleman has successfully reformed the liberal arts program at Bennington College and created a program that "puts action and civic engagement at the centre of it's curriculum. The courses focus not on answers but on how to think critically and solve complex, real-world problems." (par. 3, Jacobs, 2014)
I believe that Liz Coleman's idea to educate people on civic action is brilliant and should be the future of higher education around the world. We are faced with unimaginatively large and problematic global issues and in Coleman's words:
If you really want to be effective, you have to stand there and take it in and learn and figure out and bring the resources that you bring to other things. You need to do it with other people — don’t try to do it alone.
You can’t settle for drops in the bucket. It won’t do to wrap up your garbage, it won’t do to send the contribution. Those are all fine, but it’s not going to make a huge change. It’s just not. It’s going to take all you’ve got. (par. 21, 2014)
No comments:
Post a Comment