Reassert Critical Education: Toward a Cultivated Intellectual Humanism

The University of Southern California launched its World Bachelors in Business degree, due to begin in the Fall 2013 term. Students of this program will enter into intensive courses of study at three universities in three different countries. The benefits are obvious: a fuller knowledge of how business is done in different cultural environments, and a complete network of students and faculty around the world with which to launch a career. The program produces a candidate that is a great deal more qualified to operate in an international context than top Business majors at other top universities.

When these students develop into professionals, however, they will understand merely their chosen course of study. The globalized world—that fickle, jumpy world in which they live—will present them with broad, abstract challenges requiring critical thinking skills of various types, of types they may not have. The potential fallacy of building college graduates in this sort of mold is producing ‘doers’ who cannot think critically enough, and as a result, reducing the share of a developed society’s progressive resources. That is, the more specialized graduates that are produced without a liberal education, the slower a society will adapt, and the more susceptible it is to the negative effects of globalization and of its own deep-rooted inequities and imbalances. From a structural and personal point of view, it is imperative that educators reassert the values of a liberal education, and develop critical citizens that can cope with and positively influence the dynamic, unprecedented world society that they will face.

A liberal education in this sense refers, to education in the spirit of the classical liberal arts tradition, espoused by theologian John Henry Newman in his masterpiece in nine parts, The Idea of a University. As Martin Svaglic understands, Newman’s premise is the paramountcy of the liberal knowledge: the knowledge of “principles and relations rather than mere facts.” (Newman xx) The liberal ideal is old and continuously channeled through idealists seeking truth, the modest goal of “seeing life steadily and seeing it whole.” (Newman xxi) Newman’s ideal in particular was the compassionate intellectual: one who strove for intellectual achievement and improvement, but who retained a sense of humility toward and solidarity with his or her fellow human being. This ideal is referred to here as “intellectual humanism”.

The liberal education is intended to convey upon the learner general education and basic intellectual capacity. (Encyclopaedia Britannica) In Newman’s spirit, the liberal arts impart upon the learner the ability to think well. The medieval liberal arts were divided into the Trivium, consisting of grammar, rhetoric, and logic, and the Quadrivium, containing geometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy. Medieval universities were aimed at providing this base of general education to their students. Transferred to the modern context, the “liberal arts” refers to a balanced approach to education comprised of learning in the humanities, the physical sciences and mathematics, and the social sciences.

Newman’s liberal education becomes less persuasive in the present day, where pragmatism is hard to dispute. Simply put, why strive for the liberal ideal when one could build up an intellectual knowledge base and derive morals and virtues on one’s own, through natural life experience? The argument against this is the survival and success imperative toward building intellectual humanism. In being supposedly pragmatic, one is neglecting the essential broadening of one’s mind to be conscious of the interests and needs of human beings in general. The question to be answered, then, is whether globalization necessitates a humanist ethos? To transform that question into something answerable, does the state of global society today—the network of interactions between people worldwide—privilege a person with cultivated intellectual humanism? If so, there is a near indisputable need for the reassertion of the liberal education.

In the modern context, the liberal ideal can be seen as Keniston and Gerzon described “critical education.” In their words, “critical education deliberately tries to stimulate the student to reformulate his goals, his cognitive map of the world, the way he thinks, and his view of his role in society.” Globalizing forces will ensure that the collective arrangement of things will change. Therefore, it can be deduced that a model of critical education is appropriate in contemporary universities to achieve the liberal ideal. Discussing the modern place and form of the liberal education, former Harvard president Derek Bok argues that “a critical mind, free of dogma but nourished by humane values, may be the most important product of education in a changing, fragmented society.” (Bok 47) Bok’s discussion focuses on the development of a liberal education to stimulate critical inquiry skills. He notes that studies of the effect of an undergraduate education have shown minimal results in increasing critical thinking skills, but have shown comprehensive results in increasing a student’s knowledge base. This insight seems blunt, but clearly this shows that a reassertion of the liberal ideal is in order. Critical inquiry, or inhabiting a position in order to understand multiple perspectives and make a judgment on an issue with no clear precedent or answer, should be the focus.

There is a need for diversified education that sees knowledge as its own end, while recognizing the need for the development of professional skill.The liberal arts tradition emphasizes the development of the critical mind to think and learn, as opposed to progress in any substantive field. It is assumed that an individual will be mature enough after his or her education to specialize, succeeding in large part because of his or her very advanced skills in these areas. An argument for a liberal arts education in the modern world, where economic pressures induce heavy-handed pragmatism among the undergraduate populace, was made by T. Kaori Katao, a Swarthmore professor, at an a keynote address at the university in 1999. Her argument, most simply put, is that learning how to think is an invaluable asset to the modern human being, as it allows for increased creativity, adaptability, and inventiveness in addition to an increase in capabilities to be able to specialize in far-flung areas when necessary. The liberal mind, idealized by the Enlightenment, is the inspiration for this sort of learning.

The liberal ethos holds knowledge to be its own end, and further asserts that man can progress intellectually out of difference and conflict. (Newman xx) In her speech to Swarthmore College, Kitao’s positional tell was her reference to a “good humanistic college education.” Though general in tone, the concept to which she refers is particularistic. The humanistic curriculum spread throughout Europe in the 16^th Century, carrying the ideas of the Enlightenment to a new wave of wizened citizens. (Proctor 16)

Humanism in this sense does not imply dissolving one’s loyalties to the nation or the family, but merely an enhanced sense of the human condition that exists in everyone. In the words of Karavanta and Morgan, in a discourse on humanism in the modern context, “under the auspices of globalization, wherein the transformation of democratic nation-states, multinational corporations, and transnational currencies operates simultaneous to the proliferation of paperless peoples…the shared sense of the human is without doubt under extreme pressure.” (Karavanta and Morgan 2)

Not only does the humanism developed by the liberal arts education benefit the individual, but also specifically, it helps to tackle the society-level problems of globalization and identity formation. After the Cold War, international relations scholars became keenly aware of the challenge to come of globalization without the U.S.-Soviet Union dichotomy. In 1996, Samuel Huntington released The Clash of Civilizations, arguing that our central challenge would be a conflict between the seven civilizations he identified, spanning the entire world. Certain thinkers, especially in the more hawkish schools of international relations thought, have taken this to mean a literal conflict between nations inhabited by and characteristic of these civilizations. Regardless of what form this “clash” might take, Huntington’s premise is intriguing and holds a degree of truth: interaction between people of vastly different backgrounds will lead to some form of conflict. An education to cultivate intellectual humanism would not only impose the “moral imperative of ‘we must prevent violent clashes’,” (Schafer 1) but also on the positive side, would encourage the identification of people from all cultures with their others, without compromising the identities each person already held.

Globalization is a material and ideational phenomenon, and it is necessary here to apply the ideational theory of globalization to understand why the cultivation of intellectual humanism is so important. Ideational theorist Roland Robertson’s Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture focused on the ways in which a global consciousness developed. This cultural take on modernization is especially useful. In contrast, material-oriented theorists such as Immanuel Wallerstein focus on the structural-economic implications of rapidly increasing social interactions. Wallerstein is known for developing world-systems theory which, while illuminating in some respects, is too Marxist—in the sense that it focuses on political-economic dynamics—to be useful for an advocate of change on the individual level, such as is advocated here. Taking inspiration from Robertson, the idea that globalization is an autonomous cultural force means that the people of this world must be prepared to incorporate humans of all varieties into their society. The goal of the approach to education suggested here is to cultivate a culture of togetherness in addition to the complex weave of cultures that have developed over millennia.

Can, then, critical education in the liberal ideal build a healthy, cooperative global society? Martha Nussbaum argues that three capacities are essential to cultivate humanity in the modern world. Nussbaum puts forth (1) the capacity for critical examination of oneself and one’s own traditions, (2) the idea of world citizenship, or an ability to see oneself as a human being above all else, and (3) narrative imagination, or the ability to inhabit another’s position. Nussbaum’s three capacities show a clear demand for a reassertion of the liberal education to cultivate the humanism asserted here. Nussbaum’s position is contrarian against persistent intellectual obstinacy, and resistance to the ideal of critical thinking in general. Similarly, Bok argues, somewhat, against the idea that there is a universal moral value system that can be imposed upon students. This is now taken to be obvious. The world must go one step further, and argue positively that critical thinking in the liberal ideal is necessary to allow students to cope with the world that is developing before them.

In this regard, the recommendation to reassert the liberal education to cope with the cultural dynamics of globalization is an endorsement of cosmopolitanism. The goal of a cosmopolitan is a global moral and political community. (Shapcott 7) van Hooft points out that the cosmopolitan ideal is a realistic goal to some and a utopian vision for others. (van Hooft 141) Nevertheless, the idea of a community implies that there is basic recognition of those in the social unit as equal and distinct from others.

The global community might be developed with policy instruments by state elites or by market forces, but for the idea of the community to take root, it must be propagated in the education of the citizenry. Cosmopolitan theorists such as Martha Nussbaum and Kwame Anthony Appiah espouse a view of general education that is tantamount to cultural education:

…that students should be exposed to as full a range of different civilizations, cultures, and artistic and intellectual traditions as possible to help students expand cognitive horizons, recognize both the diversity of human communities and our shared essential humanness, and better navigate a world increasingly diasporic and interconnected. (Ferrero 30)

This prescription develops a community with the all-important notion of tolerance: coexistence and autonomy at the same time. True tolerance requires critical understanding of oneself and his or her surrounding community. This pure cosmopolitan approach to education, the same cosmopolitanism advocating for “world citizenry”, only works if those students understand how to think. Universities do incorporate diversity into their curriculum, but it is useless without the intellectual foundations provided by a focus on knowledge as its own end.

Benjamin Barber’s “Jihad vs. McWorld” is the quintessential piece on the cultural conflict that results from the rapid social change initiated by globalization. A phenomenon focused on by scholars of globalization and conflict and identity, such as Barber, is the rise of religious fundamentalist movements as a reaction to the cultural change coming from globalization. What can be taken away from Barber’s argument is that some force needs to initiate a process to strongly encourage cosmopolitanism throughout the world. Parochial institutions would not survive in a world conscious of and empathetic with fellow human beings at some significant level. Moreover, the goal of an education in Newman’s tradition is implicitly to eradicate parochialism and to bring about an inclusive society.

Charles O. Lerche draws a generalization about globalization and conflicts, indicating that conflicts are the result of quickening global change. In order to help societies and individuals adjust to this change, there is a need for “new thinking about old questions.” Lerche links this problem to Mark Ritchie’s concept of “globalism,” or “the belief that we share one fragile planet whose survival requires mutual respect and careful treatment of all its people and its environment.” That mutual respect and careful treatment would have to occur virtually without an analogue, as social movement, technological improvement, and political change have never occurred on this scale before. Without taking the idea of “globalism” as far as to recommend the movement toward a single global polity, one must see the importance of developing critical thinking skills as a means toward a genuinely cosmopolitan global society.

Discussing humanism, cosmopolitanism and a liberal ideal requires a caveat: these are not to be taken as the stigmatized versions of these terms. The postcolonial critique of classical humanism comes from a critique of the hegemony of western values, which are sometimes equated with humanism. The usage of “humanism” here is not one that implies the eventual dominance of the western culture or the capitalist economic system currently dominant in the global economy. Charles McGrath argued that, “no one can agree any longer on what constitutes a basic foundation. In the humanities, a sizable faction believes that the great books are in fact the bad books – symptoms of sexism, imperialism, and generalized Western myopia and self-regard.”  McGrath’s point reveals a potential disturbing obstacle to the reestablishment of the liberal education in the modern world. To prevent this, educators need only to understand that the liberal arts are based in providing a comprehensive knowledge foundation that exposes students to different ways of thinking.

This much is clear: globalization is a dialectical process, involving intrusions into established cultural structures and impersonal changes in personal and cultural identities. As such, one must hope and push for a dialectical process in which cosmopolitanism reigns triumphant. Indeed, the world into which we are unswervingly moving privileges one with cultivated intellectual humanism. That World Bachelor in Business would do well to pick up a dual degree in the Liberal Arts, or at least to take his or her general knowledge requirements seriously. As there is a push toward greater education in the United States and around the world, let that education be of the liberal tradition. Developing capabilities is one approach, but developing cooperative consciousness is infinitely more valuable.