Liberal Education as a Cosmopolitan Project (original) (raw)
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The Unfinished Cosmopolitan as the Embodiment of the Paradoxes and Promises of Democratic Education
Discourses about human beings being defined by a process of continuous learning are not new. Attempts to describe life as encountering new experiences and making meaning out of them are steeped in old philosophical traditions. Enlightenment thinkers put this in terms of a teleological development of Reason. Dewey (1968) himself discussed the process of life (both inside and outside schooling) as a process of learning to solve problems. However, the last couple of decades have seen a shift in the discourses tying the act of learning to the process of living. The perception of a crisis of unprecedented dimensions presented by the increase in the speed of change in the conditions of life that are familiar (usually consolidated by the term globalization) has awakened anxieties about how to deal with said changes. Whereas the notion of crisis has always been a part of modern educational discourses and has been integral to all efforts to reform schooling -why reform if there is no impending doom?-, the compressed spatial and temporal dimensions of change have added something different. Current anxieties stem from the tension between, on the one hand, an imperative to be prepared for what is coming, and on the other one the acknowledgement that the speed in which changes are taking place barely provides time to understand the current state of affairs, never mind what is to come.
The Counter Narrative: Critical Analysis of Liberal Education in Global Context
New Global Studies, 2015
Scholars who study higher education describe globalization as an inevitable force in postsecondary systems and institutions worldwide. Resulting trends include massification, privatization, reduced public funding, competition, and unprecedented student and faculty mobility. In the last two decades, another small but important trend has developed: the emergence of liberal education (often called “liberal arts and science” or “general education”) in cultures where it has rarely existed before. Discourse about this phenomenon is overwhelmingly positive. Using critical theory to analyze this evolving global trend, however, provides a much-needed alternative perspective for policy and practice. In this article, I define liberal education and provide an overview of the current trend based on a 2013 empirical study. In reaction to a dominant economic framework that rationalizes the development of liberal education programs, I present several counter narratives related to history, students ...
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education, 2019
In the opening decades of the 21st century, educators have turned toward cosmopolitanism to theorize teaching and learning in light of increasingly globalized relationships and responsibilities. While subject to extensive debates in disciplines like political science, philosophy, anthropology, and sociology, cosmopolitanism in education has primarily been explored as a moral framework resonant with educators' efforts to cultivate people's openness to new ideas, mutual understanding through respectful dialogue, and awareness of relationships to distant and unknown others. Scholars have recently called for more critical cosmopolitan approaches to education, in which the framing of cosmopolitanism as a neutral, essentializing form of global togetherness is subject to critique and includes analysis of systems of power, privilege, and oppression. However, while scholarly efforts to articulate critical cosmopolitanisms (in the plural) are still in nascent form in terms of educational practice, recent work in other disciplines offer promise for forwarding such a critical agenda. In sociology, for example, a focus on cosmopolitics foregrounds the labor of creating a shared world through ongoing, often conflictual negotiations that take into account the historical and contemporary political exigencies that shape that process. A framework of cosmopolitics for educators, particularly as a counterpoint to liberal understandings of cosmopolitanism as a form of ethical universalism, will be explored. Such a critical approach to educational cosmopolitanism not only foregrounds the local, everyday actions needed to build connections with others and create common worlds-but also acknowledges the historical and sociomaterial conditions under which such actions take place. A cosmopolitical approach to educational practice thus recognizes multiplicity and contingency-the mobility that locates people and ideas in new relations can just as easily lead to prejudice and bias as tolerance and solidarity-but does so in an effort to understand how social, political, and economic structures produce inequality, both in the present moment and as legacies from the past.
The Counter Narrative: A Critical Analysis of Liberal Arts Education in Global Context
Godwin, K. A. (2016). The Counter narrative: Critical analysis of liberal education in a global context. New Global Studies, 9(3), p. 223-244.
Scholars who study higher education describe globalization as an inevitable force in postsecondary systems and institutions worldwide. Resulting trends include massification, privatization, reduced public funding, competition, and unprecedented student and faculty mobility. In the last two decades, another small but important trend has developed: the emergence of liberal education (often called “liberal arts and science” or “general education”) in cultures where it has rarely existed before. Discourse about this phenomenon is overwhelmingly positive. Using critical theory to analyze this evolving global trend, however, provides a much-needed alternative perspective for policy and practice. In this article, I define liberal education and provide an overview of the current trend based on a 2013 empirical study. In reaction to a dominant economic framework that rationalizes the development of liberal education programs, I present several counter narratives related to history, students and faculty, learning and teaching, access and elitism, and cultural hegemony. This article emphasizes the importance of critically analyzing new international higher education developments to increase the propensity for creating socially just policies and programs. Finally, I illustrate the implications for the global emergence of liberal education by suggesting that liberal education as a higher education philosophy could both reinforce and resist neoliberal practices.
The ways and means of liberal education
Conocimiento y Acción
This is the second of three lectures on the theme of Liberal Education and Human Freedom presented late in 2017 as a master class in Catedra Carlos Llano. The lectures were given at Universidad Panamericana’s campuses at Aguascalientes and Mexico City on successive weeks.
A Historical and Global Perspective on Liberal Arts Education: What Was, What Is, and What Will Be
Godwin, K. A. & Altbach, P. G. (2016). International Journal of Chinese Education, 5, p. 5-22.
Debates about higher education’s purpose have long been polarized between specialized preparation for specific vocations and a broad, general knowledge foundation known as liberal education. Excluding the United States, specialized curricula have been the dominant global norm. Yet, quite surprisingly given this enduring trend, liberal education has new salience in higher education worldwide. This discussion presents liberal education’s non-Western, Western, and U.S. historical roots as a backdrop for discussing its contemporary global resurgence. Analysis from the Global Liberal Education Inventory provides an overview of liberal education’s renewed presence in each of the regions and speculation about its future development.