My journey into international Liberal Education. (Featured Topic).

IN AUGUST 2000, as a consultant to the Aga Khan Humanities Project now underway at several universities in three newly independent states in Central Asia, I began a captivating journey. (1) My explorations into this interdisciplinary humanities project, which is revolutionizing higher education for many young citizens in that troubled region, converted me into an avid seeker: What else is happening in liberal education outside the U.S.? The partial answers I have so far discovered--in Korea, India, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates--have whetted my wonder and my appetite. Now that I am looking, I am finding opportunities to travel (to India, in January), to converse (with a visiting professor from Korea, for example, and with a new member of our philosophy faculty from an Indian university), to experiment (with an interactive Web site for students here and overseas to share ideas), and to share (through this article, for instance, or through conference papers and newsletters) what I have found.

Like Columbus, of course, I have found nothing that was not already there But these discoveries are giving me, and I hope others, new ways of imagining our own, home-grown American liberal education programs. Although this worldwide growth of liberal education may be stimulated in part by American energies and models, it rides as much on rich currents that are not native to us. As we have come to expect, non-American liberal arts programs often include or emphasize Western materials and pedagogical techniques. But just as often, and sometimes more often, in order to prepare their students, in their lands, these programs focus on their own regional histories, their own native arts and literatures, philosophies and religions, as well as on the recorded and historical accounts of neighboring states and peoples.

Central Asia

In that region where I began my journeying, eye-opening and admirable changes have recently been taking place in nearly a dozen, mostly public, universities in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. For five American consultants on interdisciplinary, core humanities education, the schedule began "Monday, August 14, 2000: Visit Rector Sadykov of Abai Almaty State University and meet with Aga Khan Humanities Project faculty." My fellow travelers were Susan Gillespie, the founding director of Bard College's International Institute on Liberal Education; Dr. Stephen Zelnick, at that time the director of the Intellectual Heritage Program at Temple University, and now Temple's vice provost for undergraduate studies; Dr. Tom Barfield, chair of anthropology at Boston University; and ACTC's Dr. Scott Lee, who is also an associate of the American Academy for Liberal Education.

Our trip, titled The Silk Road Project, was arranged by The Aga Khan Humanities Project (AKHP), (2) headquartered in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, and by J. Scott Lee, executive director of the Association for Core Texts & Courses (ACTC) Liberal Arts Institute at the University of Dallas, who had obtained a Mellon grant supporting our consultancy. Since 1997, Dr. Rafique Keshavjee, the director of AKHP, had been attending ACTC conferences. His encouragement of global connections between American core humanities programs and those being formed by AKHP in Central Asia finally bore fruit, as we five traveled widely and conversed deeply with our colleagues in that large and beautiful region.

AKHP's goal is to "orient students to cultural pluralism and the foundations of civil society in traditional culture" through a curriculum focusing on human diversity and human ideals; individuality and responsibility to community, society and the environment; understanding cultural creativity and decline; culture, innovation and applied reason; art and the human condition; and the relationship between the oral and the written tradition.

But, though our goals may be shared, I quickly realized a major difference: Our Central Asian colleagues more explicitly and viscerally comprehend the vital importance of the liberal arts to establishing and maintaining their new nations as strong and healthy democracies. The cultures of these newly independent states are deep-rooted and non-homogeneous. Many different peoples and perspectives have met--often violently collided--since ancient times in these Silk Road lands. And, since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the political and economic situation in Central Asian nations is exceptionally fragile. Thus, the university teachers and administrators with whom our team exchanged ideas are acutely aware of how essential it is that young adults receive a general education based in the liberal arts.

We in America share these goals for liberal arts education. This AKHP statement, taken from its Web site, sounds quite like, for example, my own public liberal arts university's Mission Statement.

In AKHP, this essential education centers on an interdisciplinary core humanities curriculum directly aimed at the public good. The project's core texts are drawn from a variety of cultures, spanning East and West, opening students' minds to a wide array of connections and conflicts and calling upon them to write about, talk about, and imagine new ideas. If these students--these future national and world citizens--can attain or even just intellectually engage the goals of AKHP, then their homelands will be better equipped to deal well with the vicissitudes handed them by "outrageous fortune," local and global.

AKHP's idealistic and highly practical task is a hard one. Conversing with each university's rector (president) and its faculty about intent, content, and pedagogy, we learned about some of the difficulties they face. First, their curriculum is highly ambitious, including study of core texts in an interdisciplinary humanities course divided into six themes: 1) Human Diversity and Human Ideals; 2) Individuality and Responsibility to Society and the Environment; 3) Understanding Cultural Creativity and Decline; 4) Culture, Innovation, and Applied Reason; 5) Art and the Human Condition; and 5) Oral and Written Traditions.

AKHP faculty and students, accustomed to the old Russian pedagogy of "I lecture, you learn," have understandable difficulty converting to a discussion-based program; the faculty still are debating how best to intertwine guided conversation and lecture. Frequently, in AKHP classes students are called upon to role-play, or to sing, or to dance their own people's dances, or to learn the dances of others. This is a far cry from the higher education of their parents--those few who had that opportunity. Since the experiment seems strange to many teachers and many families, community support of a student's AKHP education is by no means assured.

Textbooks are scarce, substantially compounding the difficulties faced in this new program. Usually, the teachers have to provide the students with summaries of the texts they are studying. As Steve Zelnick stated upon return to his own campus, "[The] approach was pre-Gutenberg in its methods. The teacher reads to students from books they can't have about other books they don't have" (Zelnick 2000). Multiple affordable copies of the books they need simply are not available.

Teachers in these universities are expected to provide twenty-eight student-contact hours a week, and are paid five dollars a month--the cost, there, of a new pair of shoes. And, although the hand-picked and thoroughly trained AKHP teachers are assigned a somewhat lighter load, their continuation in higher education clearly depends far more upon selfless dedication than upon a wish for ease or status.

In the universities we visited, we found no luxuries. Although AKHP classrooms we were shown had adequate furniture, and some even had computers, the universities' facilities were generally insufficient and in disrepair. Few hallways had sufficient light bulbs. Despite all this, however, AKHP has undeniable and enviable bright spots. Chief among these are the students' own reactions to their new education, as I found in the diaries they have kept as a course requirement. The most valuable souvenirs I have from my Central Asian odyssey are copies of several of these diaries and their translations into English from Russian by Professor Sharofat Mamadhambarova. The immediacy and cogency of these young voices stuns me. At first--as is the case, I realize, with my own freshman students--these young men and women find the project's heavy assignments and novel pedagogy uncomfortable.

At Khorog State University in Tajikistan, for example, Kirgizbekova Rosa, writes, "The best [thing] I like [is when the teacher] shares his opinion with us.... The material [is] very difficult to understand." As they learn and grow, however, the students' reactions become more confident, independent, inquisitive, and mature--like this one, a reaction to a class discussion of art, from a student named Kroatov at Technical University in Dushanbe, Tajikistan:

Art is a large theme and it is not strange [that] the human being has been creating art for thousands of years and it's impossible to feel from two to three hours of these lessons how to discuss everything about art. The theme itself of course is wonderful, because we come to know about imitation, interpretation, and innovation. What interesting words these are! And indeed the genius painters could relate to any of these [words]. Freedom in art. I think it is correct that there is always a fight for an idea, a vision/intention. That is the same as thinking. Cogito ergo sum. I think that means I exist. It means that art also always exists.

That powerful statement provides evidence that in Central Asia, in these newly independent states in the Silk Road region, traversed for so many centuries by so many cultures, young minds are once again becoming adventurous, highly imaginative, more curious, and more knowledgeable about the wider world. This student, like many represented in the diaries from AKHP, is pondering what he has learned, a habit that, once acquired, can supply lifelong resolution and resilience.

The students' reactions, the substantial monetary and spiritual support of The Aga Khan Foundation, the excellent administrative personnel, and the careful preparation and enthusiasm of the hand-picked AKHP teachers--all of these factors make the project's ongoing success and its spread seem likely. The dream is a fascinating one for its potential of being realized, as well as for its uniqueness and fragility. (3)

A few years ago Ireland's PM Bertie Ahern rather vehemently inquired of his constituents, "Are we building a marketplace, or a society?" AKHP's response would be, "We're building a society--or, without that, we'll have no marketplace." Sometimes we forget this essential relationship. Recently, for example, I heard a keynote speaker at a national conference wonder aloud "whether a liberal education is perhaps a luxury." If it is, then too is the freedom to speak one's thoughts and to participate in one's government. It is this conviction--that liberal arts education is necessary for freedom--that I have found so emphatic in many universities outside the U.S.

Russia

In Russia, for example, due in no small part to the thought and work of Susan Gillespie, Bard College has become "the first institution to offer an American liberal arts degree program in Russia" (Cohen 2000) at the new Smolny College, now part of St. Petersburg University. Smolny's graduates obtain a double degree, from both Smolny and Bard. The curriculum (like that of AKHP) is notably non-Soviet and non-traditional, though organized within three familiar divisions: social science, humanities, and arts. Within these we find courses such as, in the division of arts, "Music in the System of Intercultural Communication" and "Poetics of Music."

Smolny's interdivisional programs, however, most catch my attention: "American Studies," "Analytics of the Present: Modem and Postmodern," "Asian Studies," "Democracy: Identity, Man and Nature." These programs present Smolny's students with a rich array of liberated and liberating thought. Asian Studies, for example, "presents a survey of social and cultural process in the history of Asian civilization. The courses... [explore] religious and philosophical systems, history, literature, and art," and include, for example, "The Ethnolinguistic Map of Asia," and "Mysticism East and West." Smolny's Web site (www.bard.edu/iile/ smolny/curric.shrml) explains, "The Asian Studies Department is devoted to the spirit of tolerance and mutual understanding through which its subjects are explored," a claim which that college in general is assiduously working to fulfill.

Smolny's venture into liberal education extends not only into these interdisciplinary courses, but also into intercultural interactions, soon to be realized through electronic classrooms joining Bard students in Annandale-on-Hudson with Smolny students in Sr. Petersberg to discuss topics of mutual concern. This will, it is anticipated, "materially influence the learning outcomes," Susan Gillespie states. "If [this experience] leads to the students' being able to think about things in new, more comprehensive ways, based on increased perception of reality, then surely there are identifiable advantages to [this approach]." (4)

Middle East

Further along in my journeying, this past summer I had many conversations with Dr. Larry Wilson, our former chancellor, about liberal education outside the U.S. What he had to tell me about his own recent journeying has given me even more pieces to fir into my global liberal arts puzzle and even more ideas about expanding and refining my quest. Currently, Larry is dean of arts and sciences at Zayed University, established in the United Arab Emirates in 1998, "as a public institution of higher education teaching almost 2,000 national female students.... With campuses in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, the university carries the name of President His Highness Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the founding President of the United Arab Emirates." (5) He, says Larry, "knows exactly what he's doing" in realizing at ZU a vision of a learning community for UAE's women to develop, according to its Web site, the knowledge, skills and abilities they will need for meaningful and successful life in the Twenty-First Century. [ZU's] mission is to graduate students who are fluent in English and Arabic, proficient in the use of technology, well prepared for professional employment and advanced academic study, and ready to accept leadership responsibility in their communities and their country. [Italics mine]

Toward this last goal, ZU is now forming a new college-wide interdisciplinary major, "emphasiz[ing] the integrative nature of the College of Arts and Sciences...and address[ing] issues of national and regional importance." One likely possibility, Larry remarks, is a Bachelor of Arts in global studies with concentrations in, for example, English language and literature, natural science, health science, and desert science. Beyond this interdisciplinary liberal arts major, ZU is planning interdisciplinary minors (e.g., Arabic-English translation or creative expression), which would lead the university to explore the benefits of joint faculty appointments. In the area of natural and quantitative sciences, ZU is working toward liberal arts general education courses that will explore "the interconnections between science and mathematics and the interdependence of each upon the other." And, in the college of social and behavioral sciences, the planned focus is upon interdisciplinary and integrated courses; for examp le, a "creative and rigorous new major in international relations," which "should have ties to and incorporate faculty and curriculum from other colleges." (6)

Korea

The pleasure of my months of journeying was expanded this past summer by many hours of conversation with Dr. Jong-Min Byun, a professor in the English department at Cheju National University in Korea, who was conducting research on our campus. He recently directed a revision of general education at his university. At Cheju University, Jong-Min explained, most students double-major--and some choose to triple-major. Minors, too, are becoming increasingly popular, as students work to widen their horizons and their job opportunities. Interdisciplinary studies courses frequently are arranged through interdepartmental programs in which more than two academic departments offer courses together.

Currently, through e-mail correspondence, Jong-Min tells me that Cheju is offering seventeen interdisciplinary majors, among which those in social welfare and early childhood education are the most popular with students. "Our students," Jong-Min writes, "are also allowed to design their own majors by taking courses from different academic disciplines, even though a very limited number of students are now interested in that path." He points out, furthermore, that "interdisciplinary liberal arts study is getting more popular in Korea, these days, with the country's increasing awareness that complex problems can no longer be resolved from the point [of view] of just one, single academic discipline.... The world is changing too rapidly," for that, he says.

However, Jong-Min remarks, there is as yet no easy agreement about the role of liberal education in Korea's colleges and universities. "I have looked over the liberal arts education curricula of some representative universities in Korea to find our its concept," he writes.

"But, unfortunately," he continues, it was difficult for me to find any university which defined what [this] is or should be, even though there has been much controversy on it in recent years.... In Korea, general education, rather than liberal education, is the preferred term.... In Korea, as college students study intensively in their chosen field, they are also required to take a specific number of general education courses. The central premise of general education is a commitment to developing the human mind and to knowing the natural world. Its major function is to provide students with the ability to think critically and creatively, to learn usable knowledge, and to act responsibly and ethically.

The general education curriculum usually includes these areas: 1) ways of critical thinking and interpersonal communication, 2) cultural and intellectual history, 3) [the] natural world, 4) social, economic, and political processes, 5) foreign languages and international culture, 6) community and environment, and 7) computer skills and information. The general education-liberal arts program and the major or professional program are together integral and essential components of college education in Korea. But Jong-Min Byun's statements leave me with many questions about the program.

India

Moving westward by about one-sixth of the world's circumference, to India, I find myself with information concerning liberal education from many sources--conversations, Web sites, articles, and books, sources recommended by colleagues or just happened upon in intentional browsing. In January 2003 (if our political situation permits), I'll be traveling to Mombai (Bombay), where I shall have sixteen days to find out how to better sort through and fit together these many pieces. I and a university colleague will be hosted by Jai Hind College of the University of Mombai, which last spring sent two of its faculty for a short-term visit to our campus. Besides investigating liberal education at JHC, I am anticipating similar delving at two universities in Mombai, schools recommended by my hosts as "really interesting" for my project.

I have found that liberal arts education is at present not highly popular in India, but (perhaps) is becoming more popular. India's populace (much like the populace in my Appalachian region of Western North Carolina, in fact) is interested in college course work that will prepare them for jobs and improve their social status. Liberal education currently is not viewed as a strong coach in either game. By far the predominant areas of study are, instead, technology, medicine, and administrative services.

Liberal arts education can be "sold" best in elite colleges--but "it's not viewed as appropriate for the bright people," according to Dr. Keya Maitra, a new colleague here at UNC Asheville and a native of India who received graduate degrees from universities there. It is commonly believed, she remarks, that "smart people can do far better for themselves in the more practical and lucrative fields of study." However, Keya points our, liberal education and the interdisciplinary coursework that can so nicely convey it are "starting to catch on," as Indians trained in the U.S., or U.S. citizens teaching in Indian universities (and there are many more than I had realized), bring in new programs: Women's studies, for example, is now an expanding field of study in India's universities. Interestingly, women are more likely to enter (though with little encouragement) such programs, since, as Keya states, "They're just preparing for marriage, after all."

This statement leads me to wonder whether this could be the case at Zayed University, as well. Could cultural attitudes toward women and their "appropriate studies" actually be assisting the receptiveness of ZU's curriculum to innovative liberal education, to studies which will, in fact, better prepare these women-as it would better prepare India's women--for new positions of leadership in their countries?

In the information I find on Jai Hind College,7 there is little emphasis on liberal education, despite the college's visionary motto, "I Will and I Can," and its proclaimed determination that its graduates will "do [their] utmost to achieve all that is worthwhile in life."

Its students, drawn from the diverse cultures and religions of India, are encouraged to "interact with each other"--surely an excellent starting point for liberal education's inquiries. I have found some clarification of the rather lowly status of liberal education in India from S. Srinivasa Rao of Jawaharlal Nehru University. He points out (Rao 2002), "In the Indian Constitution, the commitment made to social justice and equality emerged out of the conviction that education is a basic instrument of social mobility" (44), a condition difficult to attain in a culture which traditionally limited one's occupation to one's caste. Thus it is no surprise that, at present, this tradition still retains a firm grip on educational opportunities:

Nearly nine Out of ten students from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes [those groups designated to benefit from India's affirmative action programs] are enrolled at the undergraduate level in general programs in the arts, sciences, and commerce. Their participation has been far lower in the more prestigious programs--law, medicine, engineering, technology, and education--that lead to higher paying professional careers.

"The pattern is clear," Rao continues. These students, in need of ways to escape their traditional poverty and social ostracism, are admitted wholesale into the non-professional programs, including those in liberal arts, "which prepare them least well for competition in the job market. Their enrollment in professional courses, for which the job market is attractive, is extremely low" (48). Yet, he continues, India, as a "knowledge society" (viz., its leadership role in information technology), is coming to realize its increasing need for "an open system of continuous learning characterized by flexibility and availability without regard to time or place," and for greater awareness that "the highest educational achievement is in fact to 'learn to learn"' (59).

Twentieth-century proclamations about liberal education made by India's great leaders and reformers--by Nehru and Gandhi, for example--and that sub-continent's long, rich, and variegated history make me rather hopeful for the future of liberal education there.

Future

I am planning several projects that might invigorate liberal education through promoting international conversations based in local realities and dreams, but reaching toward global understanding and the sharing and reshaping of good ideas. (8)

First, I am working with colleagues here and abroad to obtain funding for an international faculty reading group, possibly for summer 2004, in Italy's Piedmont region. Our probable focus will be "The Year 1600 C.E." Our materials will be drawn from several disciplines and contributed by participants from five or six colleges and universities around the world--places where we at UNC Asheville now have colleagues already engaged in conversations about how to improve and expand liberal learning.

The second project under discussion will involve four U.S. higher-education organizations, each with its own particular focus and mission, in investigating recent curricular reforms in colleges and universities in "Third-World" countries. Visits and conversations will be held, and observations and learning will be shared at a 2006 International Liberal Education Conference-Retreat attended by representatives from these American organizations and from the programs abroad. During the following year, conversations will continue and widen in sessions at the annual conference of each of the four organizations.

Whether or not these initiatives will be taken, I have more ideas about where to go next in this exploration into global liberal education. Some pathways have been dead-ends, and some even embarrassments. The journey is amazingly interesting, crowded with fascinating people, processes, programs, and places, and well worth the expenditure of time.

NOTES

(1.) Some passages previously appeared in "New humanities programs in Central Asian universities," AGLS News, Spring 2001, 17:3, 1-2.

(2.) For information about the Aga Khan Humanities Project, see: www.akdn.org/humanities/Humanity.htm, and www.civilsoc.org/nisorgs/tajik/agakhan.htm

(3.) On 26 August 2002, the New York Times published an article by Barbara Crossette on yet another step in the Aga Khan's plans to assist higher education in Central Asia: the founding of the new University of Central Asia, on three campuses in three countries, with the main campus in the Badakhshan region of the Pamir Mountains in eastern Tajikistan, in the city of Khorog. The full effect this will have upon AKHP is not yet clear.

(4.) Susan Gillespie, private correspondence. September 15, 2002.

(5.) Information from Zayed University's Web site: www.zu.ac.ae.

(6.) All quotations from Larry Wilson, private correspondence of July 22, 2002.

(7.) www.members.tripod.com/~jaihindcollege/.

(8.) "Glocalize," a term attributed to Jairam Ramesh, "the Indian Congress Party's top economic advisor," appears in an op-ed article by Thomas L. Friedman 2002. The term aptly expresses the conjoining of the best of the local with the best available globally.

(9.) These organizations are the Association for Core Texts & Courses, the Association for General and Liberal Studies, the Association for Integrative Studies, and Historically Black Colleges and Universities Faculty Development Network.

WORKS CITED

Aga Khan Trust for Culture. Aga Khan Development www.akdn.org/humanities/Humanity.htm.

The Aga Khan Humanities Project for Central Asia. www.civilsoc.org/nisorgs/tajik/agakhan.htm.

Cohen, Roger. 9 Apr. 2000. The liberating arts. New York Times. Section 4A, 26.

Crossette, Barbara. 26 Aug. 2002. Central Asian university aims to train region's next leaders. New York Times. Section A, 2.

Downes, Peg. 2001. New humanities programs in Central Asian Universities. AGLS News 17:3,1-2.

----- Global Liberal Arts Student Seminar. The University of North Carolina at Asheville. 30 Oct. 2002. www.unca.edu/~downes/glass.

Friedman, Thomas L. 22 Sept. 2002. Globalization, alive and well. New York Times. Section 4:13.

Jai Hind College. 30 October 2002. www.members.tripod.com/~jaihindcollege.

Rao, S. Srinivasa. 2002. Equality in higher education: The impact of affirmative action policies in India. In Edgar F. Beckham, ed. Global collaborations: The role of higher education in diverse democracies. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities.

Smolny College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. 30 Oct. 2002. www.smolny.org.

Zayed University. United Arab Emirates. 30 October 2002. www.zu.ae.

Zelnick, Stephen C. 21 Sept. 2000. Teaching ambassadors are taught life lessons. Temple Times, 31.3

MARGARET J. DOWNES is professor of literature and language and director of the Key Centre for Service Learning at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.