Remarks

Remarks by Chargé d’Affaires, a.i. Judith A. Chammas at the University of Liberal Arts

January 19, 2006

Salaam aleikum, nomaskar, and good afternoon.  I am very pleased to be here at today’s seminar on Liberal Arts Education.  Today’s discussions will, we hope, make clearer the whole concept of a liberal arts education: its benefits for students personally and professionally, but also how an innovative approach to university education can benefit Bangladesh and strengthen democracy here. 

I must say that I’m delighted that the concept of a liberal arts education has come to Bangladesh – it’s an idea whose time has come.  Liberal arts education is somewhat unique to the United States, although more and more countries around the world are seeing its benefits.  The key idea is that learning is not compartmentalized or specialized according to a department.  One educator explained it this way, “Life itself is a whole, not divided into majors.”  Early in their academic careers, and throughout their studies, students are grounded in many different subjects – science, math, language, history – instead of narrowing their focus.  Liberal Arts education builds on a long tradition that an educated person ought to be “well rounded” and knowledgeable about a wide variety of subjects.  The original premise of universities was to bring together all branches of knowledge.  Although modern universities have become very specialized, the liberal arts programs maintain the tradition of providing a broad general education.  In the United States, some of our best educational institutions are small schools that focus on the liberal arts – schools like Swarthmore, Wellesley, Pomona, and Carleton. 

This may sound unfamiliar to many here.  However, I can speak as the direct beneficiary of a good liberal arts education.  As a graduate of Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota, a small liberal arts college that emphasizes the development of the whole person, I know that my early studies have enriched my life immeasurably.  (CDA can add more specifics here – I’m not comfortable putting words in her mouth!)  University of Liberal Arts has a unique opportunity – it will be possible to develop a broadly based education that is not a carbon copy of the U.S. system, but one specific to Bangladesh and with Bangladesh’s interests at heart. 

We live in an age of short attention spans.  Our children send text messages and emails, we watch CNN with its sound bytes and news flashes, and we get impatient if our Internet connections are too slow.  However, the liberal arts education develops and rewards concentration and the ability to analyze.  When a student more accustomed to explaining mathematical formulae is required to annotate a poem or analyze an historical event, that student is taught, perhaps painfully, to concentrate, to pay attention to detail, and to develop a well-constructed argument.  MTV and CNN can never teach those kinds of skills, but the ability to focus and concentrate on an unfamiliar subject – to learn -- will benefit that student for the rest of her life.

When is the last time that you read a book outside your professional interests, or tried to conduct a scientific experiment?  I’d guess that most people seldom stray from familiar territory in their everyday lives.  Liberal arts graduates, however, have been taught to see relationships between seemingly disparate subjects.  How does history explain literature?  How is sociology related to art?  How can the study of economics enhance one’s skills in business?  In liberal arts study, barriers are not constructed between areas of knowledge – education is not a territorial pursuit, but one which emphasizes creativity and common ground.

In the 1960s, some students carried placards that read, “Question authority.”  This idea frightens some people, but it is one of the purest ideas in a democratic society.  It is only through questioning boundaries and barriers that students can truly learn.  The best classrooms that I have seen have had a free, messy, democratic exchange of ideas, opinions, and theories.  When my daughter talks excitedly about her senior project and doing original, creative research, I feel that she is learning something impossible to acquire in a traditional classroom.  She is learning to develop and defend her own ideas, a precious skill.

Liberal arts graduates are lifelong learners.  Because they have been taught to see relationships among and between different disciplines, they can make amazing leaps in their acquisition of knowledge.  No matter what profession these students eventually take up, they are able to enjoy learning forever.  Your own Vice Chancellor called liberal arts “vital – and fun!”  I certainly agree.

“Fun.” That’s a word you probably didn’t expect to hear today.  Some of you might think that education is much too serious a matter to ever be considered “fun”, but modern pedagogy places a great emphasis on interactive teaching techniques that keep students engaged.  In other words on fun.  Although the liberal arts education draws on the long tradition that I mentioned earlier, it is also a vibrant tradition that incorporates modern pedagogical approaches.  One of those modern approaches is the concept of student centered learning.  “A student is a flower to be opened, not a vessel to be filled.”  In other words, the purpose of an education is to explore ideas and values rather than to memorize information.  The typical American changes career several times during his or her worklife and a broad liberal arts education can help prepare someone for those life changes.

Now, some of you may be parents, like myself, and you may be wondering how after the wonderful, fun experience of a liberal arts education, your child could ever hope to find a first job – let alone worrying about changing careers later in life.  That’s a legitimate concern.  Let me allay your fears by telling you that, in the United States, there are many employers seeking to hire the graduates of good liberal arts programs.  Why would an employer hire a graduate with a broad background rather than one with a technical background?   Because a liberal arts graduate is flexible and has learned how to learn new things.  For some employers this may be important because the skills that they are looking for are so specific that they train their own employees.  For others it might be because technology changes over time – I remember learning to use a slide rule, but an engineer today would need skills that we hadn’t even imagined when I was in school.  Even in less technical fields, like business administration, universities today are teaching skills like team building and managing diversity that weren’t taught in earlier times.  Finally, some employers have learned that the skills that they need are the ones taught by liberal arts programs: skills such as researching new information; examining information from different perspectives in order to identify creative solutions to problems; working collaboratively with colleagues; making convincing arguments.  I don’t know whether Bangladeshi employers appreciate these qualities and seek out liberal arts graduates now, but I’m sure that if ULA does a good job preparing students that employers will soon realize the value of graduates with these skills.

I’ve said a lot about how liberal arts can benefit students personally.  But why is liberal arts education good for Bangladesh?  I’ve noticed that here, many higher education institutions are strictly professionally or technically oriented.  This is not a problem – everyone has to earn a living, after allsociety does need engineers and others with specialized skills.  But ULA wants students to have the best of both worlds: to give them a degree and practical skills, but also to enrich and enhance these skills by exposing them to a broad range of subjects.

Liberal arts education will give Bangladesh a vital intellectual community.  Students and faculty with different backgrounds and experiences can get together and discuss – and maybe even solve -- vital issues of the day.  It’s no mistake that Vaclav Havel, first president of the new Czech Republic, was a poet or that Estonia’s first Prime Minister after independence was a novelist.  These broadly educated men were able to view the world broadly, to speak comprehensively and to tie together ideas.  As Bangladesh continues to change, grow and develop, creative people are essential.  Society needs visionaries with practical skills – people who are poets and technocrats simultaneously. 

Educated people – broadly, not narrowly educated citizens – are essential to a democracy.  Liberal arts colleges want to nurture thoughtful and courageous world citizens.  Michele Myers, president of Sarah Lawrence College, said that liberal arts colleges provide “an education in which students learn how to learn, an education that emphasizes the forming rather than the filling of minds, an education that renders our graduates adaptive to any marketplace, curious about whatever world is around them, and resourceful enough to change with the times.”

Thank you.

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Note:  A Bangla translation of this article is also available from the American Center.  If you are interested in the translation, please call the American Center Press Section (Tel: 8813440-4, Fax: 9881677; e-mail: DhakaPA@state.gov; Website: dhaka.usembassy.gov