Liberal Arts Education an Antidote to Polarization

MaryAnn Baenninger delivered the following remarks at her inauguration as the 14^th president of the College of Saint Benedict in St. Joseph, Minn. on April 22, 2005.

The 20^th century experienced the gradual elimination of time and space as barriers that divide people. Less than 100 years ago, most Americans did not have private telephones in their homes, the automobile had just begun to be mass produced, there was no commercial airline industry, television and computers did not exist, and much of America was not yet electrified. Faraway places were little more than exotic images, and, for most people, entirely unknown and out of reach. To connect far away places together required extraordinary resources of money, time and education, coupled with a sense of risk and a thirst for adventure.

Today, our students can instant message with their friends studying abroad, conduct sophisticated research on the internet, connect daily with their parents on cell phones, and watch global news unfold live on television – all from the comfort of their residence halls. Their access to people, places and information has no precedent in history.   In this sense, the world today is smaller than it has ever been, and my college, the College of Saint Benedict in St. Joseph, Minnesota, is as accessible as New York, London, Beijing, New Delhi or Dubai. Our founders could not have imagined in 1913 that our students and faculty would today represent more than 50 countries or that nearly two-thirds of Saint Benedict students would study abroad on six continents.

The faraway places of the past are no longer far away in the same sense. The elimination of time and space, and thus, geographic barriers, has created enormous opportunity, but it also burdens us with greater responsibility. Individual and organizational decisions made today in this country and at the most local level, can have immediate implications and consequences for people across the globe. Political, economic and corporate decisions and processes are available for immediate consumption, and are not the exclusive province of the elite. You no longer need to be well-off to be well-connected.    We are more globally interdependent than at any time in history.

Paradoxically, as our collective futures have become more intertwined, and as we have developed deeper common interests, our very knowledge of our differences as nations and as individuals, has increased.   We once found other cultures and other countries exotic at best.   Today, such unsophisticated knowledge of other cultures has become dangerous. It is true, indeed, that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, because it can breed hatred and violence.

As the new president of a liberal arts college, I reflect often on the role and place of the liberal arts in this new and vastly more complicated world. What are the imperatives of a liberal arts education in the 21^st century?

To think of a liberal arts education simply as a route of access to a conventional, albeit varied, set of ideas or defined set of skills and requirements grossly undervalues its significance. Learning in the liberal arts can provide a set of experiences and values that transcend the classroom and serve as a golden thread to unite us. Structured and delivered dynamically, the liberal arts provide the intellectual, social, cultural and spiritual tools our students must have to be truly global citizens and global professionals.

There are five key imperatives of a 21^st century liberal arts education: reflection, connection, inspiration, action, and openness.

Reflection

Mass communication and easy travel have made the world a closer but more complicated place. We are no longer safely removed from world events. Today we see through the eyes of the embedded journalist, getting raw information first hand. With more information available to us more quickly, it is imperative that we find the reflective ability to make sense of it, to develop well-formed ideas and informed opinions about what we see. More than ever, today’s liberal arts education is charged with teaching us how to reflect upon and understand our own cultural predispositions, how those beliefs affect the way we process information, and, in the end, how we relate to others through those beliefs.

Connection

Colleges and universities have long described themselves as places apart, as Ivory Towers. Indeed, as a society we have encouraged our students to expect college to be an incubator or cocoon of sorts where they prepare for but remain protected from “the real world.”

But the Ivory Tower has toppled. It is not that the substance of what we learned and thought within its walls is no longer meaningful, but rather, that it cannot be kept pure, static or isolated anymore. Information is remarkably close at hand and has the power to unite us over space and time in ways few could have predicted.

Inspiration

If the Ivory Tower has toppled, then we can no longer find refuge behind its walls. We belong to the surrounding new world and have important work to do there. As global citizens, we must respond – by daring to inspire change and by using our resources to breathe new life into the ideas and aspirations of our fellow travelers.    A liberal arts education must inspire and enable students to respond thoughtfully and creatively to the needs of people and communities near and far.

Action

Many would agree that the world needs liberally educated people, but to what purpose? We know that the liberal arts enrich our lives by making ideas accessible to us, but that is not enough in today’s world. We cannot simply prepare our students to take exams, to write papers, or to participate in class. We must prepare them to think, to create, and to lead in the big world around them. We prepare them to inspire others. We prepare them to act.

Openness

As we have created an increasingly homogenous mass culture and American Dream we have built a society that often limits access to unfamiliar things. You can travel this vast country and still eat at the same chain restaurant and shop in the same big box stores. Many of us are attracted to the comfort of such familiarity. Not unrelated is our national trend to be less open to dialogue with those who espouse a different political opinion or religious belief from our own.   Paradoxically, more information choices and outlets have not expanded our access to new viewpoints but instead have enabled us to reinforce what we already believe; there are FOX people, CNN people, and MSNBC people. Which one are you? Our recent national election illustrated this trend, and there is no indication it will reverse on its own. These puzzling simultaneous trends toward both homogeneity and polarization have created what social psychologists call “in groups” and “out groups.” People stick with those who are most like them and their own group and shun or exclude those who are in the “out group.” A liberal arts education by definition must provide an antidote to this polarization and encourage openness to ideas and experience.

How can liberal arts institutions respond to these imperatives?

We can begin by nurturing reflective processes that help our students to make sense of a complex world.   We must present our disciplines as dynamic, connected, changing entities, not static bodies of knowledge to be delivered. And we must immerse our students in multifaceted experiences so that they might better understand interconnections.

A friend of mine likens a good college experience to travel in a foreign country. You should soak in the culture, visit all of the important sights and venues, and then look for the back streets, the nooks and crannies, the experiences that are different and distinct from what you have always known.   Taste the food, listen to the music, and really connect with the people to find out what it is like to be someone else.

Today’s liberal arts education requires that kind of immersion. We cannot expect our students to change the world unless they first learn something about it. They must be active participants who reflect on the meaning of culture, on sameness and difference, and the potential of each new experience as an opportunity to learn. We must provide our students with opportunities to seek the best in themselves and to bridge the gaps that divide people from each other. That should be the gold standard of a liberal education.