[SustainableTompkins] Sustainability: the Ultimate Liberal Art - Frank Rhodes article

[GayNicholson at aol.com]

     (http://chronicle.com/)      (http://chronicle.com/review/)     From the 
issue dated October 20,  2006POINT OF VIEW  
Sustainability: the Ultimate Liberal Art
 
 



By FRANK H.T. RHODES 
Ironic as it may now seem, the liberal arts of grammar, rhetoric, and logic  
were regarded by the ancient Greeks as practical and useful skills — so  
useful, in fact, that they were seen as the indispensable preparation for  
citizenship, for participation in a free society. And it was in Greece, the same  
Greece, that science was "invented." How doubly ironic, then, that in our  
science-driven age, we have so little place for the wisdom of Greece. 
It is not that we reject useful knowledge. We worship it, but we have  
redefined it to exclude those very elements that the Greeks judged of such  
significance. It is time that we reconsider our approach — for the benefit,  and 
perhaps even survival, of our modern world. 
Our scholarly forebears of the Middle Ages enlarged, rather than ignored, the 
 judgment of Greece, adding to the liberal arts the quadrivium of arithmetic, 
 astronomy, geometry, and music, thus providing the essential educational  
preparation for the new age of discovery that marked the Renaissance. Even those 
 most practical of people, the pioneers of the industrial and social 
revolutions  of the 19th century, were careful not to reject, but to redefine, the 
essential  content of the liberal arts — expanding them to embrace the new 
insights of  the emerging natural and social sciences. 
It is our generation that has seen the liberal arts confined largely to the  
liberal-arts colleges, both the smaller, traditional, independent 
undergraduate  institutions and the colleges of liberal arts and sciences within 
universities.  Outside those communities, the liberal arts have languished, not because 
they  have been tested and found wanting — the evidence of centuries refutes 
that  proposition — but because they have been nudged aside, elbowed out by 
more  "practical" training and more "relevant" instruction. 
So our new leaders — engineers and architects, physicians and social  
workers, lawmakers and urban planners, business executives and economic policy  
makers — graduate untouched by the hard-won collective historical  experience, 
social perspectives, moral considerations, and humane reflections of  our fellow 
human beings through the ages. Unencumbered by such reflections, they  are 
likely to confront each new emerging issue as something novel: a challenge  now 
encountered by society for the first time. 
Perhaps we need to learn from our forebears of the Renaissance and Industrial 
 Revolution and reformulate the liberal arts in ways that will nurture the  
development of freethinking men and women for the current age. The concept of  
sustainability could provide a new foundation for the liberal arts and  
sciences. 
By "sustainability" I mean the effort to frame social and economic policy so  
as to preserve with minimum disturbance earth's bounty — its resources,  
inhabitants, and environments — for the benefit of both present and future  
generations. The old Native American proverb captures perfectly the spirit of  this 
sustainability: We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow  it 
from our children. 
What might such a foundation entail? Certainly some significant exposure to  
the appropriate sciences: geology, natural resources, ecology, and 
climatology.  Certainly, too, some understanding of social interaction: sociology, 
economics,  and history. And also, surely, some extensive familiarity with the great 
issues  and themes of human inquiry, self-reflection, and moral consideration 
that have  guided human conduct and reflected human creativity — with the 
arts and the  humanities, in other words. And to anchor everything in the 
present, some review  of the practical arts of technical discovery and invention, 
especially in  relation to the broad issues now confronting us. 
"That's not much different from the traditional grab bag of the liberal  
arts," the cynics might respond. But, in fact, it would be different in the new  
focus, added coherence, and stark immediacy that it would provide.  
Sustainability, after all, is the ultimate liberal art (and science). 
Mastery of such a sweeping range of topics is, to be sure, the work of a  
lifetime and more, but exposure to the issues and methodological approaches  
involved is not. It is, in fact, no more extensive in its reach or burdensome in  
its demands than the "old" liberal arts. How it should be framed, what it 
should  contain, how it should be taught, and how it should be supplemented will 
be the  questions that the governing faculty of each college and university 
should  consider and decide for itself. There can and should be no single 
prescriptive  approach. Experiment and variety will have much to teach us. 
But we should agree on one matter: The broad range of questions that  
sustainability raises have no single set of answers. We have yet to develop  
solutions. The topic is full of approximations, assumptions, projections,  
extrapolations, and ambiguities. Moreover, we should avoid simple stances  because, to a 
greater degree than most other subjects, sustainability is open to  
indoctrination and partisan scholarship. Although it may be possible, it is  difficult 
to be a partisan advocate in, say, chemistry or classics. It is  probably less 
difficult in climate change or energy policy. 
And beyond the complexities of sustainability as such, there lies the larger  
question of sustainability for what purpose. For sustainability will be best  
understood within the larger framework of values, meaning, and purpose —  
just as "solutions" are best considered within the context of the global  
society. That is why the wisdom that the traditional liberal arts provide is  such a 
vital part of any such new curriculum. 
Such a new approach to liberal arts, science, and sustainability will demand  
much of its students; it will demand even more of faculty members. But it 
will  have one distinct potential benefit: If it is taught as an exercise in  
exploration and discovery, it may form the basis for a new kind of global  map — 
a policy blueprint — that would allow us to set a common course  for all the 
people of our rare, beautiful, and benevolent planet. 
Frank H.T. Rhodes is president emeritus of Cornell  University.