Article by Isis Calderon

Where do we find values? Why do we need general education? What do students care about? These are some of the questions professor Peter K. Bol posed in his speech about General Education at National Chengchi University on December 6. 

Peter K. Bol is the Charles H. Carswell Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University, and he honored us with his presence as a guest speaker discussing issues in higher education, using his knowledge of how Ivy League institutions such as Brown and Harvard University approach to General Education courses and the questions that surround the decisions of said universities in the crafting of a curriculum implementation. 

“Why do we need general education?” Peter asks, and asserts replies such as the need for a common culture, or that college general education can introduce new subjects, a higher level understanding of things for students  – these are all good reasons, he says, but are these the only reasons? 

Gen-Ed Courses, he continues, should make students question established dynamics and form critical thinkers. No matter the difficulty of coming to an agreement of what should be the best way or curriculum imparted - given that there are many stakeholders on the line such as university, professors, and students - the final aim is to transform general education into something that students can take as basis to dive into the question of the relationship they have with their environment and everyone around them. 

What professors in Gen-Ed should try to accomplish is to make students understand and think about how they are connected to the world, and needless to say – we are connected to the world in many ways – but the challenge is how to divide and understand each of those ways. 

We ought to divide our experiences of the world into five categories such as the physical world, biological world, language, institutions and beliefs. These are ways of living true to every culture, and this is a way of thinking about general education, Peter says, once we simply divide up our experiences in these categories, we realize that these different areas of experience are also true that we have different ways of living. And it is at that intersection of commonalities and differences that students should find the way to a common ground and understanding of the world.