Peter Berkowitz made
a cogent argument in the WSJ this weekend for restoring and reforming liberal education in our colleges and universities. He hit the nail on the head by asserting that many students and professors do not understand the proper meaning of a liberal education or its virtues:
Meanwhile, confused faculty and incoherent university curricula encourage students to equate liberal education with studying whatever they please. Education for freedom requires more systematic training.
He then went on to pose a string of serious rhetorical questions defending liberal education, as properly defined:
How can one think independently about what kind of life to live without acquiring familiarity with the ideas about happiness and misery, exaltation and despair, nobility and baseness that study of literature, philosophy and religion bring to life? How can one pass reasoned judgment on public policy if one is ignorant of the principles of constitutional government, the operation of the market,
Just to take a step back from what’s happening day-to-day in the Central Falls, RI negotiations over a once-potential mass firing of teachers, consider this timeline of
Providence Journal stories:
- January 12, 2010: The state identifies six persistently low-achieving schools, including Central Falls High School.
- February 11, 2010: The local teachers union balks at Superintendent Frances Gallo’s requests to increase the school day by 25 minutes, create a tutoring schedule, agree to eat lunch with students once a week, attend two weeks of paid professional development in the summer, accept third-party evaluations, and stay after school 90 minutes one day each week for paid collaboration time. Teachers would have received an average of $3,400 in pay increases for the changes. Gallo threatens to fire all the teachers and make them reapply for their jobs. No more than half could return to their old positions.
- February 23, 2010: Former RI Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee (now running for governor as an independent) calls for an independent mediator.
- February 24, 2010: Every Central Falls High School teacher is fired.
