Gordon Gee in The Grace Adams Tanner Lecture in Human Values on April 28, 1999 mandates that the modern university "must provide the moral, intellectual, social cultural, and emotional framework into which [students] can properly place the pieces of the puzzle of life. We [the university] must help our students accommodate not only their hopes and aspirations, but also the inevitable fears, disillusionment, the desperate moral dilemmas, the guilt, the anger, and the questions of conscience which are part of every life. We must help them channel the power of the individual into strengthening the community." Gee speaks about an obligation of the university to prepare her students for life as members of a greater community. He places inherent value on the strength of community and assigns, as do the two authors quoted, a "moral responsibility" on contemporary universities to enable each student to contribute to this strength.
Like Gee, William James talks about the "action of innumerable imitative individuals upon each other." Both Gee and James believe that education is not an individual search for self or righteousness or belonging. This process is not one about receiving wealth or fame. It is a process about learning to give. It is a process about acquiring the knowledge necessary to strengthen the community in the ways you feel are right.
My own experience at Brown is one that has led me to internalize many of these same values. When I first arrived at Brown, I asked myself where I would fit here; what was it that I was supposed to do? I took advantage of Brown's liberal curriculum and sought the perfect concentration for me. When I settled on Political Science, I asked myself what I wanted to DO with that degree. Over the course of my Junior year, the answer simply emerged. I became interested in education and finally found the perfect field for my interest: Civic Education. I plan to write my honors thesis next year with professors Tomasi and Kaestle on civic education. The question I ask myself now, is not what can I do with Civic Education, but rather, how can I use my academic work to enhance the educational experience for all American children.
In contemporary debates over civic education theory, the question is often posed: how can an Aristotelian, republican notion of cultivating citizens fit into a modern liberal democracy? Most theorists examine Civic Education from the vantage point of society: how can teaching children about citizenship (and attempting to form them into active, educated citizens) enhance or benefit our society? Furthermore, how can this type of cultivation work in a liberal, democratic system? I believe the answer to these questions reveal themselves when and if we abandon our social vantage point and examine the effects of civic education on the individual. If implemented carefully, I believe Civic Education can prove both beneficial and empowering for the individual as well as the community. In civic education, there is a chance to create a symbiotic relationship between the individual citizen and her community.
This Summer I am working for the Public Education Network in Washington, DC on an initiative that seeks to enhance the relationship between public schools and their surrounding communities. If we can teach or encourage American citizens to invest themselves in their own communities, we can create a self-perpetuating cycle of success. Instead of widening the gap between those who live in wealth and those who live in poverty in the twenty-first century, we can move toward achieving a true democracy of opportunity. If we could equip each citizen with the tools to become active in their community (either national or local, politically or otherwise) we would grant each individual the power to achieve social change.
This debate over civic education focuses mostly on the public school system, but the University is an important extension of this process. Within the University are the potential leaders of our national community. The responsibility of the university is not only to educate and inform but also to allow each student to place his/her life in the context of a greater world. Each student should ask: how will/can I affect the world I live in? Answers to this question will differ, but everyone who asks it will share a common value: a value for the world they live in.
In his Grace Adams Tanner Lecture, Gordon Gee quoted Elizabeth Hollander, executive director of the Campus Compact at Brown who recently wrote "A generation that acquires knowledge without ever understanding how that knowledge can benefit the community is a generation that is not learning what it means to be citizens in a democracy." The university quest should not be an isolated, individualistic one, but one that enhances each student's understanding of the community around her, whether this community is local, national or global. A life of usefulness and reputation is a life invested in something greater than self.