Abstract: Critical Multiculturalism, Border Knowledge, and the Canon: Implications for General Education and the Academy

Rhoads, Robert A. (1995). "Critical Multiculturalism, Border Knowledge, and the Canon: Implications for General Education and the Academy." Vol. 44. No. 4, 256-273.

Multiculturalism challenges the perspective of institutions of higher education and general education that is represented in the idea of a canon. The traditional view marginalizes and legitimates while multiculturalism is more democratic; thus, the move toward multiculturalism can be seen as an attempt to create more inclusive education and arguments over the canon as resistance to such change. The divisiveness on campuses over tradition and greater access is not new, but issues of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation today are central to the argument. This new focus and the slowness of campuses to embrace cultural diversity can be better understood through the concept of "border knowledge," that knowledge not in the canon but brought to the campus by culturally diverse students. For partisans of multiculturalism, the canon represents cultural capital and a static sense of knowledge. However, multiculturalism is not itself an uncontested term. Further, the content it proposes is secondary to pedagogical implications. Finally, multiculturalism if seen as an issue of culture and identity also suggests a need to revision organizational structures.

 

Rury, John L. (1996). "Inquiry in the General Education Curriculum." Vol. 45, No. 3, 175-196.

Inquiry, which could be considered a novel feature of the liberal arts, should be added to the general education curriculum since it provides an avenue for developing the knowledge and skills necessary to be an educated member in contemporary society. In 1987 Ernest Boyer challenged the fairly traditional and historical concept that the primary objective of general education had been the transmission of existing knowledge by suggesting that students should "see connections" between disparate subject areas, i.e. inquiry. Inquiry in its most highly developed form is linked to critical thinking as a form of self-directing learning using critical reflection, that is, students learn to construct and critically analyze knowledge for themselves. Inquiry in the formal sense is also synonymous with research which to date has been the purview of graduate education. One model of this integration can be seen at The School for New Learning (SNL) which is an interdisciplinary, competence-based liberal arts college for adults founded in 1972 to explore alternative approaches to liberal education. SNL utilizes research—labeled "formal inquiry"- as a central facet of the curriculum through instructional strategies such as Externships and Major Pieces of Work to better prepare students as educated adults in a world where knowledge itself is continually being reshaped and recast to new purposes. Finally, incorporating the inquiry methodology in general education can contribute to character education as well, which is considered traditionally and historically to be one of the primary purposes of a higher education experience.