Pragmatic Philosophy and the 1997 Rollins Colloquy

"pragmatism is pouring over and through the academic dikes that long kept it outside the liberal arts...a broad consensus is therefore emerging around a view of liberal education that may be termed 'pragmatic'!"

- Bruce Kimball, The Condition of American Liberal Education

The proposition that pragmatism is now becoming the legitimating theory of American liberal education suggests that close attention to where the educational enterprise is headed is not only warranted but might be, in fact, a transformative act. To this end, Rollins College president Rita Bornstein and Robert Orrill, executive director of Academic Affairs for the College Board, decided to convene a conference of college presidents, faculty and administrators to discuss the future of American liberal education.

An invitational colloquy, "Towards a Pragmatic Liberal Education: the Curriculum of the 21st Century" will include papers presented by experts in a number of fields and several moderated sessions. In addition, there will be small "teams" from approximately 35 colleges and universities. In the majority of cases, these "teams" will include the institution's president. Finally, a number of educators and organizational leaders have been invited because they have a particular interest in the evolution of liberal education.

Charles Eliot, (president of Harvard during the late nineteenth century), made a break with the classical tradition, and John Dewey took this break as a given in his own thinking about the further reform of American liberal education. Furthermore, it is this same break that Robert Hutchins sought to reverse and undo in a debate with Dewey that reverberated in the educational community throughout the first half of the 20th century.

In addition to these considerations, Eliot wrote that the meaning of liberal education has sometimes in its history "quietly undergone many serious modifications" and that, at other times, conditions have changed so forcefully that its meaning had "to be fundamentally and openly changed." The heart of the matter for those attending the Rollins colloquy in February 1997 is perhaps whether it is one of these latter moments that we are entering at the close of the 20th century.

Pragmatism

Bruce Kimball identified six points of pragmatism in The Condition of American Liberal Education. They are:

1. that belief and meaning, even truth itself, are fallible and revisable;
2. that an experimental method of inquiry obtains in all science and reflective thought;
3. that belief, meaning, and truth depend on the context and the inter-subjective judgment of the community in which they are formed;
4. that experience is the dynamic interaction of organism and environment, resulting in a close interrelationship between thought and action;
5. that the purpose of resolving doubts or solving problems is intrinsic to all thought and inquiry; and
6. that all inquiry and thought are evaluative, and judgments about fact are no different from judgments about value.

"We believe that pragmatism, a uniquely American philosophy, has much to offer as Americans question the value of a liberal education and expect us to prepare students not only for personal development but for leadership in the community and the workplace," said Rita Bornstein.

"The disuniting pressures of ethnocentrism, fundamentalism, and incivility are straining our ability to sustain a viable democratic nation. New workplaces and careers are requiring new skills, knowledge, and experiences. The pragmatist nexus between theory and practice, academic and applied learning, fact and value can help us reconceive liberal education for the twenty-first century," she explained.