Introduction: Teaching Wisdom and Goodness

Distilled to its essence, Portland State University’s University Studies Program fosters wisdom and goodness in students. The program embodies the kind of education Robert Maynard Hutchins promoted in his 1943 book Education for Freedom for a world, at that time, unsettled by war, economic distress, suspicion, and fear. Teaching students to be wise and good was essential to solving problems Hutchins saw as moral, intellectual, and spiritual, not technical. Teaching students these same skills, in our current unsettled social context, is as critical today as it was three-quarters of a century ago. University Studies does this. Authors in this section describe specific strategies for developing wise and good people, including engaging students with classmates unlike them, teaching them to communicate with a variety of audiences in different contexts, and prompting them to question how they know what they know.