UND’s Philosophy of General Education

Before consulting the University-wide graduation requirements (immediately following this section), students are urged to read this statement of philosophy prepared by UND’s General Education Requirements Committee. One aspect of the University-wide requirements for a baccalaureate degree is completion of UND’s general education requirements. This statement places the general education requirements into a broader context and indicates the end results which should be striven for in undertaking a university education.

Introduction

The University of North Dakota provides students opportunities to enrich their lives through a large number of major and minor fields of study designed both for general education and for academic specialization. This dual objective — non-specialized and specialized education — ideally is reciprocal and inclusive. Each kind of education is expected to inform and enrich the other and to contribute to those special qualities and abilities we have come to expect of university graduates.

While the directions and purposes of specialized programs usually are clear, the directions and purposes of general education have often been left undefined. For this reason, the General Education Requirements Committee has defined a number of broad and specific goals to serve as guideposts for faculty proposing and teaching courses designed to fulfill general education requirements and also to enhance students’ understanding of the purposes of a university education.

These broad goals are rooted in a belief that a general education program should help students develop (1) the ability to make informed choices, (2) the ability to communicate effectively, (3) intellectual curiosity and creativity, (4) a continuing commitment to learning, (5) a capacity and interest in serving others, (6) a sense of responsibility both to specific communities and to a culturally pluralistic world, and (7) greater personal satisfaction through access to the larger social, political, economic, scientific, and aesthetic culture.

The specific goals have been organized into two sets. The first set is not tied directly to any particular discipline and gives attention to integration around such abilities as critical thinking, effective communication, creative thinking, recognizing relationships and understanding value formation. The second set is more closely tied to the areas of study included in the general education program: the social and behavioral sciences; mathematics, science and technology; and humanities and the fine arts.

I. Cross-Disciplinary Abilities

A. Critical Thinking

Critical thinking can provide students confidence and assurance to make informed decisions. The processes of dissecting and reassembling ideas can be personally liberating and serve as a powerful means for developing one or more of the following abilities:

1. defining a problem and selecting pertinent information for its solution;

2. recognizing stated and unstated assumptions in order to formulate useful hypotheses;

3. understanding methods of inquiry as they are used in specific disciplines;

4. using imagination and insight to expand an exploratory process;

5. questioning what one has been told; and

6. relating skills to thought and action.

B. Communication

The ability to communicate is the ability to present information, ideas, feelings, and values, in such a way that people may be able to understand one another. Students should learn how to communicate effectively in as many ways as possible.

In order to communicate one must know languages. Each culture and each discipline develops it own language, with unique symbols, terminology, and rules for using its symbols. Students must advance their skills in the use of English, develop abilities to use other languages, and become acquainted with the specialized languages which exist in many areas — mathematics, computer science, graphics, the fine and performing arts, and others.

Communication also depends on experience in expressing oneself through language and experience in interpreting and appreciating what other people are trying to say. General education at the University should provide students with numerous opportunities to express their thoughts, feelings and values through language of all kinds, and to learn how well others have been able to understand them. Communication skills may be taught both by courses specifically emphasizing written and oral expression and interpretation and by courses emphasizing other aspects of the arts, sciences, and humanities.

C. Creative Thinking

While it is unrealistic to expect every student to bring into being original work of extraordinary merit, every person ought to be given opportunities and incentives to think creatively and to attempt creative work. Creative thinking can be encouraged by promoting students’ ability and effort:

1. to imagine alternatives to accepted ways of solving problems or formulating questions;

2. to change categories and comprehend analogies;

3. to generate new ideas; and

4. to add details, transform, or extend ideas.

Characteristics of a teaching environment that fosters creativity include:

1. encouragement of risk taking;

2. use of a rich variety of stimuli;

3. support for curiosity, imagination and experimentation;

4. opportunities for self-expression; and

5. tolerance for ambiguity and complexity.

D. Recognizing Relationships

Focusing upon relationships among parts — emphasizes connectedness and interdependency.

Learning to see connections is vital to general education. This process emphasizes:

1. inter-relatedness; conceptualizing links between events, entities and ideas and the larger context in which they occur;

2. inter-dependency: conceptualizing mutual dependency or reciprocity of events, entities, or ideas — seeing that the impact on one part has ramifications for the other parts and for the whole;

3. holism: conceptualizing a totality rather than considering discrete or individual elements that only partially depict that totality; and

4. structure: conceptualizing the underlying and relatively stable relationships that exist among events, entities and ideas which unify any totality.

E. Recognizing and Evaluating Choices

Education concerning values is important in general education — not seeking one right way to behave, but recognizing that choices cannot be avoided. Students should be aware of how many choices they make, how these choices are based on values, and how to make informed choices.

General education courses should deal with at least some of the following issues:

1. how human choices influence the results and dominant values of all disciplines;

2. how these choices have been made in the past;

3. how some of these choices might otherwise have been made; and

4. how choices are made, evaluated, and used to explain phenomena.

F. World Cultures

The University of North Dakota has established a World Cultures course requirement to enable students to:

1. gain an awareness of cultures geographically or historically different from their own;

2. gain an awareness of a language other than their native language;

3. foster a spirit of international understanding;

4. understand cultural systems other than their own;

5. address multi-cultural issues, or

6. learn about race, gender, or ethnicity other than their own.

This requirement will be satisfied according to the following format:

1. World Cultures courses will be taken as part of the General Education Requirements.

2. Students will find the plus sign symbol (+) before each course that meets the World Culture designation.

3. A minimum of three (3) credits of the General Education Requirements must meet the World Cultures designation.

II. Disciplinary Abilities

A. The Behavioral and Social Sciences

General education should include courses that help students understand the complexities and uncertainties of their personal and social environment; its differing goals and expectations, agreements and conflicts, actions and transactions; and how students intentionally and unintentionally can change and control their personal and social environment and be changed and controlled by it.

Specifically, general education in the behavioral and social sciences should give students knowledge about themselves and their human environment at three levels: 1) how human beings behave individually; 2) how individuals are linked to the social environment around them; and 3) how the social environment is organized and influenced by institutions.

For knowledge of individual behavior, general education should help students attempt to understand how human behavior originates, how it is integrated into a continuing and whole personality, and how it can deviate from what is intended or desired. To increase this understanding, general education courses should help students learn about how individuals think, obtain and use information, solve problems, make decisions, are motivated to act, develop over a lifespan, and can demonstrate a broad range of behavior.

For knowledge of the social environment, general education should help students attempt to understand how they are affected by the world around them, how they affect that world, and how they may be able to make intended changes in it. Improved understanding can come from learning about the following issues:

1. how groups of people make decisions intended to direct their own behavior and other people’s, or to change the conditions in which they and others live;

2. how the behavior of individuals is socially organized into different patterns of coordinated activity that individuals are obligated to perform;

3. how the cumulative effects of individuals and their behavior have consequences for the environment that individuals have not intended or controlled; and

4. how people produce, expend and exchange social resources, those resources whose existence and usefulness depend on social interaction (such as money, authority, information, or loyalty).

General education should also help students understand how the structure, organization and resources in the social environment depend on social institutions such as family and household life, religion, education, business, politics and health. General education about social institutions should address the origins of institutional characteristics, variations and options, how the institutional characteristics have changed and developed, and what the immediate and long-term consequences of these characteristics may be.

B. Mathematics, Sciences and Technology

General education in mathematics, science, and technology should provide students with knowledge of how human beings try to understand and control the fundamental phenomena and processes of the universe, and do so by means of readily understandable, accurate descriptions and explanations.

Mathematics

General education in mathematics should help students to understand and use mathematics as:

1. an intellectual discipline concerned with such considerations as quantity and space and their relationships.

2. a method of analyzing problems with logic and precision;

3. a way to communicate and interpret information provided by others; and

4. a continually developing tool, useful for describing and explaining phenomena.

General education in mathematics is one way to improve a student’s ability to think in terms of precise and quantitative relationships. It should develop abilities to perceive how things are logically related. It should also enable students to consider systematically alternative approaches to solving problems, and enable them to appreciate the accomplishment and elegance of solutions to problems.

General education courses should help students learn how to use mathematics as a basic tool for working in many different disciplines and for integrating the findings of different disciplines. Because it is important for students to understand that the concepts and methods of mathematics are not fixed, but are continually being expanded, revised, and refined, students can benefit from learning the history of mathematics, and learn how mathematicians evaluate their achievements and decide on their goals.

The Natural and Physical Sciences

To make a significant contribution to general education, courses from the natural and physical sciences ought to attract those who find science fascinating, those who approach it apprehensively, and those whose outlook falls somewhere between. Given the wide range of attitudes toward science, science courses designated as part of a general education program must necessarily differ from each other structurally and pedagogically. All should share, however, certain common characteristics.

Science courses intended for general education should offer students opportunities to acquire an appreciation of science and its contributions to society. General education courses in science should present current information on certain aspects of the natural world, and should require students to follow the logical, and sometimes mathematical, reasoning relating one structure or process to another. What differentiates science from other disciplines is its methods and its choice of problems. Scientists continually build and revise theoretical models to organize and explain natural phenomena. The theories must be logically consistent and must stand the test of experiments. Thus, as part of their general education, students should learn that science does not consist of a set of immutable or unquestionable facts but is by nature a continuing process of hypothesis and revision.

Technology

Throughout history humans have sought to apply their scientific knowledge in ways that enhance material culture, enlarge their capacity to produce goods and services, and defend physically their territorial and ideological borders. This application of scientific knowledge is what is commonly referred to as technology. Technology is visible everywhere and has brought enormous material benefits as well as increasingly complex social and environmental problems. The need to understand the tensions and conflicts that arise over the uses and consequences of technology is as critical as the necessity of making human choices about technology.

C. Humanities and Fine Arts

The humanities and fine arts are expected to give principal attention to the individual and collective search for meaning through order, values and aesthetics. By giving focus to ‘‘a search for meaning,’’ the general education program encourages courses and related experiences which challenge how individual students think about and relate to the culture in which they live, as well as introduce them to some of the literature, the ideas, the art forms, and the expressions of social order which are rooted deep in history.

The search for meaning which is embodied in the humanities and fine arts is an exploration of the many imaginative answers given to the questions about the place of human beings in the universe by richly diverse cultures. In this sense, the humanities and fine arts are attempts to understand human action and thought, to find languages which express ideas and beliefs, hopes and fears, certainties and uncertainties. They provide opportunities for students to see how their present lives connect with the larger life of our culture as it has developed over time. The humanistic tradition embodies the age-long attempt to know and express self through works of the imagination and intellect.

While courses in the humanities and fine arts may help students examine their own values and ways of viewing the world, they also provide opportunities for students to encounter the great humanistic works. By enriching their experience with the exploration or other ways of seeing, of recognizing meanings, and of dealing with the world, students should discover in the interplay the complexity of our world.

As much as possible, humanities and fine arts courses should assist students to appreciate the roles of historians, writers, painters, philosophers, sculptors and musicians in giving voice to human understanding and aspiration. These courses may also help students to comprehend the joys that come from personal expression. Thus it is appropriate to provide within related general education courses both opportunities to participate actively in the humanities and arts as creators — as writers, painters, musicians or actors — and as audience in art exhibitions, performances, lectures and discussions.

Conclusion

General education as it is presented in this statement has few unique qualities. Thinkers and writers in various ages and cultures have voiced ideals for individuals and societies that undergird the concepts of general education presented. The pursuit of each of these ideals requires different, often specialized skills. The full realization of any one of these ideals may require a lifetime of experience to perfect, during which one progressively hones skills, encounters a range of practical experiences, and learns to deal with a level of complexity not previously recognized.

Each culture has an image of the person who has had the benefit of a general education. The goals set forth in the preceding sections mirror the idealized vision of our university and of our contemporary society. The following set of courses is intended to make the achievement of these goals more attainable. Faculty and students must create from their commitment to general education a sense of the unity of learning.