PLENARY 1 SYNTHESIS

Liberal education is the hallmark of college education. A legacy of the enlightenment, it is the ideal aspiration of higher education institutions worldwide. Colleges and universities are expected to provide students a holistic education that prepares them to live meaningful lives and contribute significantly to the transformation of their communities. As disciplinal specializations evolved and universities increasingly aspired and focused on becoming research universities, the General Education Program, remained the platform for carrying out the objective of liberal college education as well as its embodiment.

Amidst changes in the global and national landscape, UP has struggled and continues to struggle to ensure that the GE program remains faithful to the liberal, holistic and integrative orientation of the University’s latest articulation of the GE framework, developing not only measurable competences but critical and creative thinking and a capacity for transformative action. Beyond inculcating habits of thought and ways of perceiving, the GE framework also aims to promote the loftiest principles at the core of a UP education of pagiging makatao at pagiging makabayan.

UP’s GE program as well as that of its counterpart Universities abroad consists of a variety of courses. On the one hand, we have courses in basic education such as fundamentals of writing, critical thinking, mathematics, and courses related to civic responsibility; and, on the other hand courses that conflate with interdisciplinary education, cutting across disciplines. Regardless of course content—and as an aside, the pandemic made us realize that the content we pack into our courses do not necessarily translate to learning, apart from the elements of “transactional distance”(that Pat Arinto expounded in her recap of the GE Program) imparts habits of mind necessary to cope with the challenges of a fast changing world- i.e. “the ability to read critically, to read between the lines, to recognize how rhetoric and argument are deployed… the ability to generalize from one course or topic to the next, to write fluently and critically, to master a body of material…to communicate logically about a common body of evidence and common rules of inference orally and in writing, and to link scientific or humanistic materials that seem disparate”*—e.g. the ability to develop connect dots and construct a big picture that reflects the intersection of biography, scientific developments, history, social structure; and the ability as well as reflect on underlying assumptions. As an aside, sometimes, being able to connect the dot, and “standing under” a challenging situation (as jimmy Abad’s depiction of what it means to “understand”) can help us cope by alleviating anxiety in extremely difficult circumstances.

This morning’s panel gave us snapshots of the breadth and depth of the GE minds of our esteemed panelists as well tips.

Jimmy Abad reflected philosophically on the activity of writing, its intimate link to language and imagination, how consciousness translates into language. Since every intellectual pursuit needs a language and every intellectual field has its own language, the interaction of disciplines will entail (to put it in Jimmy’s terms) “ferrying each discipline’s realty in a void”, so their imaginations interact and in the course of this interaction develop an interdisciplinary culture.

Butch Dalisay went beyond the usual formulations of GE to share 12 overarching realizations that students should learn for life—insights that have universal value because of their applicability to different contexts and most especially in a future of disruptions of which the pandemic is a eloquent preview. He further elaborated on our COVID-19 situation as the context for us to reflect on life, particularly the science of life and the need for rationality in the highly politicized context we are in.

Fidel Nemenzo underscored the idea of Science and Math as adventures of the mind, as a way of thinking, as a mindset. He underscored the idea of learning as an adventure where math is viewed as an adventure for human flourishing—this was the focus of a wonderful lecture in GE conversations.

Apart from walking us through the history of UP’s GE , Butch and Fidel expounded on the value of GE in these “illiberal” times where red scares and post-truth politics are prevalent. Post-truth politics, which is now a global reality, is particularly alarming with its reliance on assertions that feel true”, conspiratorial thoughts, absurd claims or systematically fabricated facts that persistently misinform and cloud the thinking even of otherwise educated individuals. The critical spirt that GE nurtures is what unsettles illiberal forces because of the inherent “radicality” of a liberal mind.

The Q and A dealt with interdisciplinary activities that we need to have serious GE conversations in the future on. Butch underscored the addition of working collaboratively with others and empathy in our list of future conversations.

We are now beginning the transition to the next normal, having entered the future of disruption. As we have stressed time and again, the future will be a mix of virtual, face to face and experiential learning. This GE Conference is a wellspring of rich insights and also brings us closer to crafting our strategies for the future —because GE is the Program we can more freely experiment on in terms of what the students should learn; how they will learn, how to assess/grade what they learned (should we do away with grades and just certify?) how to collaborate—because there is such a thing as the wisdom of crowds but also for a practical reason: as a way of lightening the load while administration reviews and rethinks academic loads.

Interestingly, NUS is creating a virtual liberal arts college out of its faculty of humanities, social sciences and natural sciences to enhance the liberal orientation (they don’t call it GE as American influenced universities do), interdisciplinarity and collaborative attitude to prepare their graduates for our increasingly disruptive world.

This synthesis does not do justice to the breadth and depth of the plenary discussion this morning. It certainly does not do justice to the GE conversations that we were privileged to have listened to. The GE conversations will continue because you have begun to craft the GE of the future. A GE that meets its objectives including building a collaborative culture in search of solutions to the many problems plaguing the nation and humanity. In this time of COVID , we are tapping into the values, ways of thinking and doing that we inculcate in GE.

WE thank our panelists for the sharing experiences and thoughts produced by playful and creative minds.

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*  University of California’s Commission on General Education in the 21st Century (2007). General Education in the 21st Century Report. P. 7

Prepared by Dr. Maria Cynthia Rose Banzon Bautista

You may access the copy of speech of the panelists by clicking their names below:

University Professor Emeritus Gemino H. Abad

Professor Emeritus Jose Y. Dalisay Jr.

Professor Emeritus Michael L. Tan

Professor Fidel R. Nemenzo