Educators Explore Issues and Programs in Liberal Arts

Educators from 16 different schools joined Westminster faculty on campus for the fifth annual Westminster Teaching Symposium Sept. 24 titled “Embracing the Liberal Arts.” The symposium was hosted by the Westminster Teaching Initiative (WTI), which creates opportunities for teachers to share ideas through weekly meetings and the symposium. WTI is co-chaired by Westminster faculty members Mark de Kanter ’91, P’19 and Nancy Urner-Berry ’81, P’11, ’16.

“This symposium brings Westminster faculty together with colleagues from area schools to share in a morning of ideas, reflection and collegiality,” said Mark in his welcoming remarks to attendees. “By sharing what we all do and have learned about education, we hope to serve all of our students better in our common quest to prepare the next generation and society to thrive.”

  

The keynote speaker was Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University and author of the book “Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters,” which was published in spring 2014 and has received widespread media attention.

 

“I am happy to talk to you about a broad liberal education, especially because I think you are already doing such an important job in preparing students to open themselves to learning at a higher level when they get to a college or university,” he told the audience. “It is not easy to teach 15- to 18-year-old students things they do not think they need to learn.” He emphasized the importance of helping students see that learning is not only about performance on a test, which is difficult in today’s culture. “The ability of teachers to help their students understand the benefits of ongoing learning is for me the most important ability teachers have but is one that is easy to give up on because there is not a real metric for that.”

 

In talking about his book “Beyond the University,” he said, “I decided to write a book about the context of the debates around liberal education in the United States because I was struck by the current controversies surrounding liberal education.” He pointed out that when talking about liberal education, he is not talking about liberal arts education, which has a longer history. “The discipline is not the important thing,” he said. He then gave an overview of important moments in the history of liberal education and how students should be taught to liberate, animate, cooperate and instigate. Following the historical mode of his book, he referred to thought leaders such as Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Jane Addams.

 

After his address concluded, participants attended additional presentations about how various schools provide traditional curricular elements and are experimenting with new models of cross-disciplinary, project-based and online learning. The presenters included Alec McCandless of Loomis Chafee School; Jennifer Weeks of Kingswood Oxford School; David Chrzanowski, Kerry Kendall and A-men Rasheed of Westminster; Kate Seyboth of Westover School; Andrew Harcourt of Deerfield Academy; and John Corrigan of Northfield Mount Herman School.