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Being Liberal
What’s Liberal about the Liberal Arts? Classroom Politics and “Bias” in Higher Education. Michael Bérubé. New York: W. W.Norton. 2006
Reviewed by Rebecca Ropers-Huilman
The play Third, by feminist playwright Wendy Wasserstein, centers on a relationship between a well-established, progressive professor and an intelligent and outwardly conservative student at an elite university. The play points out the ways in which professors and students see each other as more than individuals, instead constructing each other as representatives of larger social systems or movements that may or may not appeal to them. This play brings to light the ways in which classroom politics are born out of, and presumably have the potential to affect, larger social processes. Taking that as a given, what responsibilities do educators have to students in postsecondary environments? How are liberal educators to fulfill the various facets of their professional responsibilities?
Michael Bérubé takes up these same questions in What’s Liberal about the Liberal Arts? Bérubé provides a multifaceted analysis of the concept of liberalism and how it takes shape in postsecondary education and, more specifically, in teaching and learning relationships. Drawing on his experience with diverse learners, he interweaves theoretical discussion with accounts of his experiences working with students who have political inclinations both similar to and quite different from his. As Wasserstein does in Third, Bérubé offers a glimpse into a “liberal” classroom, both to conservative critics and to others whose interests have been piqued by debates about conservative and liberal bias in postsecondary education. Unlike Third, however, What’s Liberal about the Liberal Arts? emphasizes the benefits of responsible liberal education, asserting that the interactions fostered by liberal education are precisely what democracy requires.
Throughout his book, Bérubé considers teaching approaches, curriculum development, and contexts in which learning takes place. He situates his analysis in the broader dialogue about the role of postsecondary education in democratic societies, as well as in the specific contexts of his academic appointments. Through these discussions, he demonstrates his vision of liberal education as challenging and critical engagement between students and faculty who may or may not agree on particular topics, but who hold each other to high standards of understanding the content and implications of any given issue.
At its best, Bérubé’s text provides concrete examples of how to work with students and help them think about the grounds on which we construct discourse with each other. This thinking incorporates the multiple layers that, in essence, constitute how we as human beings get along with those who are different from us. How do teachers and students, in the process of liberal education, identify and understand difference? How do we make sense of multiple viewpoints, especially on issues with deep, yet conflicting, meanings in our collective history? How do we constitute the terms for constructing discourses together or, in extreme cases, for eliminating beliefs and actions that pose mortal danger? In today’s sociopolitical climate, the topics discussed in his classes (which include slavery, the terms of a “just war,” and Hitler, as well as violence in popular-culture depictions) take on added weight. Perhaps it is this weight that demonstrates the importance of the discussions that are facilitated in postsecondary education. The book thus raises the question for me: what are the aims of liberal education?
While I have a sense of Bérubé’s own political inclinations after reading this text, I also believe he gives a fair and honest portrayal of his relations with students who were very different from him. His pedagogical examples demonstrate how he actively and deliberately worked to incorporate students’ beliefs and predispositions into his teaching.
One example of this incorporation was the problematization of the concept of “rights” that he explored with students. In discussing the U.S. Constitution, Bérubé urges his students to consider that rights might be nothing more or less than a collective agreement about what we commit to each other. While I suspect that most college students engage with this concept at some point in their academic careers, Bérubé argues that liberal education helps to ensure both an understanding of and a commitment to protect that agreement. Our rights grow from our responsibilities to each other.
What’s Liberal about the Liberal Arts? is a text that will be useful to those engaging with the purposes of postsecondary education from various vantage points—whether as a current or potential student, faculty member, staff member, administrator, or policy maker. Likewise, it will be useful for those from a variety of places on the political spectrum, whether or not they agree with Bérubé’s conception of the problems and their potential solutions.
Yet I hope that conversations about the book also address what I saw as a limitation of the text. Specifically, while Bérubé draws attention to issues related to race, gender, ability status, and other identities in his classes, his analysis of liberal education does not draw adequately on the contributions of feminism or critical race theory in defining what we mean by liberal.
I saw as a missed opportunity Bérubé’s lack of attention to feminist teaching practices and feminism’s critiques of academic environments. Both feminist and critical race critiques of the academy and of the society in which it is embedded could have helped Bérubé examine the issues of power among faculty and students in a more nuanced way. Additionally, in several places (such as his discussion of economic and access issues in postsecondary education), his assertions would have been more compelling if they drew on the broader research in the field of higher education. Finally, the text comes dangerously close to suggesting that because Bérubé’s efforts to engage with liberal education in his particular environment are useful and appropriate, similar efforts in other types of learning environments or by other professors would be likewise useful and appropriate. What is the role of liberal education for students who are not interested in liberal education? Bérubé’s book details many interactions with students who are not liberal politically but seem willing to engage with him about big social, political, and theoretical ideas and questions that require active reflection. Readers would have benefited from Bérubé’s perspectives on ways to engage with liberal education in settings where neoliberal expectations were the norm and “worker training” trumped liberal education.
The most lasting contribution of What’s Liberal about the Liberal Arts? is Bérubé’s articulation of what has been a complex, core tenet in feminist approaches to teaching and learning for decades: that who we are makes a difference in what we know and can help others know. He does not use this perspective to encourage any type of indoctrination or a limiting of educational experience. Instead, he suggests that asking the big questions, and supporting students in doing the same, is what liberal educators do well. He urges that students come to their own answers, given their own experiences, and make sense of their education, their communities, and their purpose through that questioning. He argues that liberal education is far from the compulsion of particular kinds of thinking. Instead, it promotes the questioning that is crucial to democratic societies. As such, this book offers much to consider for those of us interested in promoting democracy through our service in postsecondary education.
Rebecca Ropers-Huilman is professor of higher education at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities. Her research focuses on identity, diversity, and change in postsecondary education.
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