The Core Curriculum: An Analysis of Liberal Arts Colleges in Asia, North America, and Europe

Author(s):  
Insung Jung ◽  
Sarah Sanderson ◽  
Jennifer Christine C. Fajardo
2009 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 219-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Bourke ◽  
Nathaniel J. Bray ◽  
C. Christopher Horton

2014 ◽  
Vol 33 (5) ◽  
pp. 456-469 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Estad ◽  
Stefano Harney ◽  
Howard Thomas

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the prerequisite conditions for implementing a liberal management education and for fostering ethical students using examples from the core curriculum at Singapore Management University (SMU). Design/methodology/approach – Beginning with a reading of the Carnegie Foundation's Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education: liberal learning for the professions (2011), the paper examines the contribution and limits of the findings and recommendations before discussing the place of the liberal arts in the modern university and describing a case study of liberal management education in process at SMU. It concludes with a reading of the work of Emmanuel Levinas and Asian philosophy as the basis for an ethical management education. Findings – The paper uncovers a central shortcoming in an otherwise important Carnegie study: that business education is unlike other professional education because it lacks an autonomous discipline that studies business knowledge production as an object. Consequently, applying the liberal arts to business education risks neglecting the critical side of the liberal arts. With only the reflective side of the liberal arts in operation, management education cannot be grasped as a specific sphere of values within the pluralism of spheres advocated by the Carnegie report. Only by recreating the function of an autonomous discipline with an objective lens on business knowledge within the core curriculum at SMU can that university attempt to incorporate both the critical and reflective side of the liberal arts in management education. This kind of liberal management education can indeed lead to respect for the values of the others in the way that ethical philosopher Emmanuel Levinas envisioned. Research limitations/implications – Further development of the SMU core curriculum is necessary in order to confirm the hypothesis that the liberal arts can be brought together with management education to produce more mature, ethical students. Practical implications – Liberal management education curriculum must incorporate the critical function of the liberal arts when faced with business knowledge production in order to promote a pluralist ethics. If SMU is successful, it can become a model for other global business schools in Asia and beyond. Social implications – Asian higher education is ongoing a rapid transformation in values. The shift is towards understanding the wider relationship between universities and society and the role of an education citizenry. Liberal management education can be a bridge to this new world of higher education in Asia, and beyond. Originality/value – This discussion provides a fuller understanding of the two-sided nature of the liberal arts and the importance of both sides for building a liberal management education and creating ethically mature students.


Liberal education has always had its share of theorists, believers, and detractors, both inside and outside the academy. The best of these have been responsible for the development of the concept, and of its changing tradition. Drawn from a symposium jointly sponsored by the Educational Leadership program and the American Council of Learned Societies, this work looks at the requirements of liberal education for the next century and the strategies for getting there. With contributions from Leon Botstein, Ernest Boyer, Howard Gardner, Stanley Katz, Bruce Kimball, Peter Lyman, Susan Resneck Pierce, Adam Yarmolinsky and Frank Wong, Rethinking Liberal Education proposes better ways of connecting the curriculum and organization of liberal arts colleges with today's challenging economic and social realities. The authors push for greater flexibility in the organizational structure of academic departments, and argue that faculty should play a greater role in the hard discussions that shape their institutions. Through the implementation of interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches to learning, along with better integration of the curriculum with the professional and vocational aspects of the institution, this work proposes to restore vitality to the curriculum. The concept of rethinking liberal education does not mean the same thing to every educator. To one, it may mean a strategic shift in requirements, to another the reformulation of the underlying philosophy to meet changing times. Any significant reform in education needs careful thought and discussion. Rethinking Liberal Education makes a substantial contribution to such debates. It will be of interest to scholars and students, administrators, and anyone concerned with the issues of modern education.


2021 ◽  
pp. 147787852199623
Author(s):  
Jon Fennell ◽  
Timothy L. Simpson

What would we have the school teach? To what end? In the name of democracy, and building on the pioneering epistemology of Michael Polanyi, Harry S. Broudy, a leading voice in philosophy of education during the twentieth century, calls for a liberal arts core curriculum for all. The envisioned product of such schooling is a certain sort of person. Anticipating the predictable relativistic challenge so much on display in our own time, Broudy justifies the selection of subject matter (and thus the envisioned character formation and cultivation of moral imagination) by reference to the authority of experts in the disciplines. This response fails to fully repel the assault, thereby revealing the need for a dimension of Polanyi’s thought whose significance exceeds even that of the epistemology that Broudy so effectively invokes.


1952 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-20
Author(s):  
M. L. Story
Keyword(s):  

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