Informing and Turning: Two Approaches to General Education

This article was invited by a member of the editorial board of The Mentor based on an exemplary conference session presented by the author.

Many students come to college with very practical, down-to-earth objectives. They want to get a usable degree. They want to have a good time while they are here. They want to have something meaningful to do when they leave—start a job, go on to graduate school, find a spouse, begin a family.

A recent survey of 276,00 first-year students entering school in the fall of 2003 and published in the Almanac Issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education (2004, p. 19) paints a profile that is in some ways predictable and, possibly in others, surprising. When asked to identify things that are “essential or very important to me,” this is what they reported:

When asked for reasons that were “very important” in deciding to go to college, they ranked “to learn more about things that interest me” over “to be able to get a better job.”

In these responses, I see considerable interest in a cluster of values that we have often associated with higher education—a good job, a high salary, financial and personal security. But I also see another cluster of values, goods that we associate more with idealism than realism or pragmatism. Raising a family stands in first place, no less! Helping others who are in difficulty is right on the heels of being well-off financially. Understanding other cultures, integrating spirituality into life, and developing a meaningful philosophy of life—all of them reside in the top ten. Seeing that learning about “things that interest me” trumps the “ability to get a better job” may force us to revise some stereotypical pictures of college students as uniformly interested in parties, shortcuts to a degree, and lucrative jobs.

We know from our own experience, as well as from surveys like this one, that our first-year students are complex people, perhaps conflicted, but also insightful and, in some ways, very mature. Even without the kinds of worldly experiences that are so essential to the slow process of growing in wisdom as human beings, these folks have some very good intuitions about the nature of the good life and where they hope that a college education will take them. To put it bluntly, they want far more than fun, a degree, and a job—even though sometimes, when we observe their behavior, it does not look that way.

This observation provides some context for our discussion of communicating the role of general education. It suggests to me that general education cannot and should not be seen in simplistic or otherwise absolute terms. It should not be pitted against professional education or thought of as some kind of preserve or sanctuary where students can come in touch with the best that has been thought and written. Nevertheless, this is a fairly common way of conceptualizing general education. The statement of purpose for general studies in Penn State's Undergraduate Degree Programs Bulletin (2004) has this kind of flavor.

The inclusion of General Education in every degree program reflects Penn State's deep conviction that successful, satisfying lives require a wide range of skills and knowledge. These skills include the ability to reason logically and quantitatively and to communicate effectively; an understanding of the sciences that makes sense of the natural environment; a familiarity with the cultural movements that have shaped societies and their values; and an appreciation for the enduring arts that express, inspire, and continually challenge these values. General Education, in essence, augments and rounds out the specialized training students receive in their majors and aims to cultivate a knowledgeable, informed, literate human being.

We all understand this language and logic. To be sure, there is an important sense in which general education needs to be protected as a domain for reflection, personal expansion, exploration, inspiration, for rounding out one's education. And there is no doubt that the value of general education is frequently questioned in a world that marches to a variety of professional drummers.

These percussionists wear any number of uniforms. At Penn State, a number of pressures—the explosion of knowledge in major programs, the fierce competition to get into graduate school, the proliferation of external certifying organizations, the tendency of professors and administrators to want to keep up with the academic Joneses down the street, and initiatives to keep major programs in the vicinity of 120 semester hours—have produced what might be called “major creep.”

You know all too well how it works. Specific general education courses are turned into requirements in the major. General education courses are redesigned to meet certification and professional needs rather than the ideals of general education. Major advisers steer students into general education courses that will look good on graduate school applications. Potential career interests drive general education “exploration” rather than the other way around. General education courses are selected with an eye toward raising GPAs for purposes of gaining admission to a major or, later, to increasing chances of getting a job or gaining admission to graduate school.

It could be that nobody in this process really intended to do general education in, or, more cynically, it could be that some did. But the result is the same. When one wakes up, observes these cumulative effects, and assesses what has happened, one could conclude that general education has effectively disappeared. Or at the very least, has been mortally wounded.

I take this problem seriously, and I think that the tendency to tell students that general education is truly pre-professional education is unfortunate. Some energy undoubtedly needs to be aimed in the direction of reminding educators what unique purposes general education serves. Undoubtedly, some work needs to be done to make sure that our students are not channeled into pre-professional courses and frames of mind from the start.

This battle will be bloody, as I discovered in my own department last year as we debated the needs of a science- and math-grounded major in kinesiology against the broader goals of general education. I saw what I have called the pressures of “major creep” up close and personally. Professional preparation, certification, prerequisites for graduate school, and other work-related foundation stones turned out to be nonnegotiables. Alternately, arguments to the effect that general education should be the nonnegotiable were not well-received.

Nevertheless, I wonder if there is not a better way to conceptualize this whole issue of general and professional education. By fighting for the existence of music, and history, and literature, and science in everyone's education—as important as that is—we may be partly missing the educational forest for a few trees.

I gave a talk a few years ago to our trustees when my term as faculty senate president was over. It was a report of what we had accomplished. One significant task on which some progress had been made was general education. But even with general education reform partly in the bank, it struck me that we can appear to succeed in higher education while still failing in another, but equally important, sense. This realization led me to the metaphor of informing and turning.

Higher education has a great deal to do with informing, with transmitting information, with making sure that our students are in possession (or know where to find) the latest facts or hypotheses about a variety of topics. Professors are paid to keep up with the literature in their respective fields, to do research that provides current information, to attend conferences that include speculations on trends that point to the future. If we professors are reasonably articulate, industrious, well-organized, and conscientious, we will make sure that we put our students in contact with all these exciting information-based realities.

Students, too, enter both general education classes and major courses expecting to be informed. I learned this in a painful way a few years ago when I stopped lecturing altogether and adopted a problem-based style of teaching and learning. Students were not happy. I was not behaving like a professor should behave. They virtually shouted in unison—tell us, inform us, help us get the information we need. It is a good thing that I was already tenured, because my student evaluations, as we say, “went south.”

But, with all the advantages of problem-based teaching strategies notwithstanding, the students had a point. Education has a great deal to do with informing. It is a foundation stone of learning, something that simply has to be there. And from time to time, students may be right in asking professors to give them the facts and nothing but the facts. Regarding this course, they say, I want the information, and I want to get out—preferably with an A.

But sometimes education cuts deeper than that. And students genuinely want it to cut deeper—as attested to by our experiences with them and by surveys like the one we just reviewed. Here is where, I think, the utility of the turning metaphor comes in.

Students can be informed without being turned. That is, the information received does not affect their worldview in any significant way. It does not impact on life goals, on deeply held values. It does not challenge biases. It does not shake them up in any way. They leave the class much as they were when they entered it—albeit with a little more information. They have been informed, to be sure, but they have not turned in any noticeable way.

We all know, however, that education can also surprise students. They may enter a class expecting only to be informed. Instead, they are turned. Their lives begin to take a different direction. The change can be dramatic or subtle. And sometimes only the seeds for change are planted during any one semester, while the full blossoming occurs months or years later.

Some students, for example are surprised by poetry and good literature. “The world is too much with us ... ,” penned Wordsworth, “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.” English words ... interesting ... informative. And sometimes it is left at that. But on other occasions, as was the case for my father and myself—both of us coaches and physical educators—poetry gets under the skin. Reading it and appreciating it has affected the quality of our lives and has probably affected the way we make decisions, though it would be hard to say exactly how.

Similar experiences happen in intercultural classes. Students enter these courses hoping to learn about how people live in other places, what their traditions are, what they believe, and so on. But again, sometimes they are surprised. Old biases are challenged, comfortable ways of conceptualizing cultures are disturbed, and, before one knows it, a new way of looking at the world starts to grow in this student. He or she has been turned, not just informed.

And so it is, in principle, with all the courses in general education and, to some extent, in our professional classes as well. This is why I remarked that the major battle in higher education may not exist between general and professional education, but between two levels of learning—one that merely informs the learner and another one that turns this individual. Students, I believe, want to be both informed and turned. They want the world to change while they are with us and this change happens only when they turn to see it from a new angle. Information, as important as it is, may only fill in the world, not necessarily change it.

If this metaphor possesses any utility, it may give us some clues about how advisers should communicate about general education. To be sure, one message may well be to avoid, as much as possible, unreasonable incursions by “major creep.” But if the imagery of turning is important, then many other thoughts should be coming to mind about our roles in advising for general education.

1. Identify turning signposts.

   Let me describe three possibilities in this regard. First, find the professors who are passionate about their subject matter, the ones who do not regard their job as one of sharing information. Rather, they see their work as a process of bringing students into a new world. And lest we think that this is possible only in the humanities, I have seen it happen in chemistry and physics, too. It is not the subject matter; it is the approach to the subject matter that matters.

   Second, look for courses in which the material is provocative, perhaps even upsetting. Much turning occurs when we are disturbed, challenged, put off balance. Some courses have the courage to go in these directions, and some professors know how to do this in ethically sound ways.

   Third, interview students and try to find out whether or not they have been turned and, if so, where and how it happened. They may identify strange turning places—some that would not make many traditional professors very happy. Among those that may emerge are sport clubs, musical organizations, academic advising offices, social organizations, religious groups, athletic experiences, work, and others.

2. Support a curriculum that is designed to promote turning.

   Penn State engaged in the process of supporting a turn-oriented curriculum when it last revised its general education program: it instituted a first-year seminar requirement. This introductory course included the following structures or stipulations that, arguably, are conducive to turning: (1) small classes, (2) real professors, and (3) content that is related to the professor's field of interest.

   Turning works better in classes where a personal relationship can develop between an instructor and a student, where individual questions can be answered, where a student feels comfortable having conversations with a faculty member outside the classroom setting. When a professor faces a crowd of 150 or 300 or 600 students, such turning-conducive experiences are few and far between.

   Likewise, the odds of turning experiences may increase when students can experience veteran professors who have given a lifetime of energy, teaching, and research to a field of study. Their passion can be contagious. Their mastery of the subject matter can show students what it is like to live in this different world. Of course, informational introductory courses can be useful too—courses, for example, that provide directions to the library and tips on studying. But turning is not likely to be found in these more mundane, survival-oriented classes.

3. Coach students toward turning experiences.

   Students are easily influenced once they are on campus. They may fall under the influence of a variety of professional anxieties that lead to a series of prudent decisions at the expense of exploration and serendipity. They need to be coached and emboldened. They may need someone like yourself to say at just the right time, “Treat yourself. Give in to your curiosity. Follow your heart, not just your head!”

A final point needs to be made on this topic, one that may be as important as any of those already mentioned. Some turning occurs very slowly, almost imperceptibly. We wake up one day and realize that we are different. The factors that allow such methodical turning to take place are repetition and commitment. If there is no repetition, the engine for slow turning will be missing. And if there is no commitment, the repetitions will be cut short. A promising partial turn ends up with a return to comfortable habits and old attitudes.

In my own field of movement and healthy living, the need for commitment and repetition is particularly evident. We talk about developing an active lifestyle—and this is not in theory, but in practice. Students come to us habitually TV'd, DVD'd, headphoned, video-gamed, and otherwise chaired. When they have free time, they typically sit.

As all of you know, or should know, sitting is dangerous to your health. Statistically, it has the same early mortality effect as smoking cigarettes. Consequently, we are interested in changing this behavior. However, when we inform students of the facts of inactivity and poor health, it typically has little effect. They are young and bulletproof. They know someone 85 who is sedentary, healthy, and happy—though usually they cannot name two.

What is needed is turning more than informing. And for the active lifestyle, this change often takes years of repetitions—of jogging, of attending table tennis club, of taking activity classes and receiving instruction, of getting a membership in some movement subculture, in attending tournaments or other gatherings of what have been called tribal members. Repetition, by repetition, by repetition, a person slowly turns. Then one day this student may actually realize that he or she is genuinely looking forward to the daily workout, the walk, the game of tennis, the swim. And, miracle of all miracles, this person eventually might admit to being a runner, a tennis player, a swimmer. Part of their identity is tied up with moving skillfully, creatively, and meaningfully.

When I observe such turning, I am filled with gratitude. This is what education, I think, is about. It is about changing us to be more discriminating, to have better taste in music and literature, to embody better habits, to have a feeling for our fellow human beings.

And when we aim at these more ambitious objectives of higher education, the battles between general education and professional preparation are put in a different perspective. General education is crucial. It performs a distinctive function. It needs to be protected. But higher education is not only about balancing general studies with professional training. It is about turning students, not just informing them.

We turn students quickly and slowly, in theory classes and in laboratories, inside the curriculum and outside, and for our own purposes here, in general education and in their major studies. Turning is much harder than becoming informed—for the learner, the teacher, and the adviser. Turning advice from counselors undoubtedly requires far more sophisticated skills than tips on getting information. I doubt than any formulas exist here, and those who do it well are undoubtedly involved more in an art than a science.

Regardless, working to turn students is a worthy goal, even if we never quite get it right. Students want to be turned. I think that many of them come to school expecting to be turned. It would be good if we did not let them down.