Response to Anthony J. Palmer, "A Philosophical View of the General Education Core"

Anthony J. Palmer's paper is not only an interesting one but it also continues an absolutely necessary discussion on the general education core curriculum for American undergraduate students. Initially, Palmer summarized the global conditions with which we are presently confronted. This discussion led him to the re-examination of the general education core at the undergraduate level. The goal of such education should be to "prepare students to develop a world where haphazard processes be minimized. . . . To accomplish that goal, the student must be enabled to integrate a wide variety of facts and ideas, theories, and applications that will become holistic in substance and unified in practice." More specifically, he then focused on the general education courses for music education students and finally, since the current concept is failing in presenting integrated knowledge, he proposed a new philosophy of the general education core. This new philosophy contains three steps: (1) cultivating personal qualities, (2) understanding multiculturalism, and (3) understanding the complexities of humanity itself and its relationship to the earth.

This philosophy is intriguing and does indeed deserve a broad discussion. To start that discussion, I would like to raise several fundamental issues. First, such a philosophy of general education cannot exist as a pure philosophy of the undergraduate general education core (nor can it specifically focus on music students). The ultimate goal of such a philosophy must be to turn toward the general education core of all levels of education, especially beginning with the youngest age groups. A student, educated according to existing philosophies up to age eighteen, will have the hardest time in suddenly connecting the various areas and fields of study in a globalized worldview. The reasons for this problem are cultural. At eighteen, students are culturally so formed that a new cultural opening is hardly possible. The philosophy should, instead, focus on the spiral that professors stimulate: our graduates are the teachers of the next generation, some of whom become teachers and will educate the following generation, and so on. Palmer's goal can, in my opinion, only be reached if we first focus on the general education of all ages, and then stimulate a slow but continuous change throughout the next generations. This change may exploit the cultural open-mindedness of students of all ages within the educational and cultural limitations that were set by their previous education. Indeed, such cultivation in early adulthood can benefit our university students, as Palmer states, but cultivation at such a late stage is limited.

Second, the philosophy suggested by Palmer may be hard to realize practically. All mass media would work against such a realization. The organization of classes is, with our current commercialized course offering system, impractical in terms of Palmer's suggestions. Academic units within universities generate money through large general education classes. Who would pay for smaller classes? (I am not speaking about the small, private liberal arts colleges that Palmer mentions but about public colleges and universities, many of which are very large.) If general education were to be moved to a newly created academic unit, as Palmer suggests, who would reimburse the academic units that would lose the credit hours? How could we create the additional classes that would be needed to bring all the areas together that he suggests (music, art, religion, myth, history, language, philosophy, psychology, paleontology, archeology, anthropology, biology, and zoology)? In addition, some of his philosophy is based on Carl Roger's view of personal relationships, which parents as well as teachers have to establish. But how are the parents of our students to establish such relationships? And who is going to educate the parents? American culture itself would certainly be an obstacle for the realization of such an educational philosophy. Furthermore, how do we select the students who are unsuccessful in becoming self-initiated learners? How do we identify those who are not well-read? Should they not be removed? Much of the current educational system is based on the assumption that all, or most, students are very talented. Realizing Palmer's philosophy would mean...