Liberal education disciplines

Schwab, J. J. (1978). Education and the structure of the disciplines. In I. Westbury N. J. Wilkof (Eds.), J.J. Schwab Science, curriculum and liberal education,. selected essays (pp. 229-273). Chicago University of Chicago Press. 

The Yale Report of 1828 (Hofstader and Smith, 1961, 278-279) expresses that the scholar must form himself, by his own exertions and that we doubt whether the powers of the mind can be developed, in the fairest proportions, by studying language alone, or mathematics alone, or natural or political science alone. The transformation of American colleges into research universities in which the elective system developed at Harvard was adopted in the 19th century meant that disciplines and fields of study were no longer limited to the classics, religion, and mathematics. To be liberally educated meant engaging many fields of study. 

It is important to acknowledge that bodies of abstract knowledge originating in the social sciences, humanities, or business management typically do not exist in a form ready for easy and uncontroversial incorporation into the heart of formal engineering education. Faculty from liberal arts disciplines can be inflexible themselves, especially when they seek to reproduce themselves in students rather than to adapt modes of knowledge and practical reasoning to student trajectories. 

I visited two Mormon family homes and was privileged to read the wives Journals at both, and on occasion visited most of his brothers homes in the Salt Lake City area. One or another brother would house us and we could count on a passionate evening encompassed by a liberal education in Mormon discipline, theology, and faith. 

Proposal 6 The academic discipline of engineering (or. perhaps more broadly, technology) should be included in the liberal arts canon undergitding a 21st-century college education for all students. 

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