THE LIBERAL ARTS AS COUNTERCULTURE *STEVEN K. SCHULTZ* Director, San Francisco Urban Program Westmont College Standing in line at St. Anthony's meal program, I watch the steam rising from vats of stew and vegetables, and notice the smells of food mingling with those of unwashed bodies and damp clothing. As part of our urban studies classes, we have come to serve and to eat with the homeless. I note the stark contrast between the animated faces of my students, smiling and gesturing to one another, and the mute and expressionless faces of the homeless on this wet morning, shoulders slumped, waiting quietly in another one of the endless lines that will fill their days. The morning ends with a time for reflection, to be followed in later weeks by readings and class discussion about economic justice and the responsibility society has for the poor. For now, the encounter with the homeless remains vivid, and leads to a wide spectrum of student response. "Why are there so many people here?" (This can't happen in a country so prosperous as ours.) "Who are they--what are they like?" (Perhaps much more like me than I suspected.) "Why don't they get jobs?" (The problem is one of individual irresponsibility.) "Isn't anyone doing anything about this?" (The problem is one that should be solved by government.) "As a student at a Christian college am I called to respond in a particular way?" (Such an encounter may lead to an adjustment of my well-laid future plans.) What does carrying food trays and serving stew have to do with the liberal arts? As experiences in themselves, probably very little. As part of an opportunity to encounter and reflect upon the character of our society and how it cares for its weakest members, perhaps a great deal. This example of experience and reflection can serve as a symbol for some elements of a vital liberal arts education. It can also provide clues to the ways in which the liberal arts might address the overdeveloped individualism of our culture which Habits of the Heart (Bellah, et al., 1985) so aptly describes. This illustration of reflection upon an encounter with a contemporary issue can serve to illuminate four aims of the liberal arts that deserve a renewed emphasis. The liberal arts must: 1) awaken us to complexity; 2) cultivate understanding of and respect for tradition; 3) develop an awareness of one's context within community, and 4) address the heart as well as the head. This list is not intended to be exhaustive, but instead to indicate some important qualities that have been neglected in recent years, and that can help to counter our tendency towards individualism. One thing the liberal arts must do is awaken us to complexity. Individualism, by its nature, is simplistic. It would explain the success and failures of a society and its members solely as matters of individual responsibility. It would prefer to abandon difficult critical reflection if a more facile explanation can serve some immediate end. If a liberal arts education is to have integrity it must provide us with a more richly textured vision than this, one that does not settle for easy answers. Following on the example mentioned earlier, we may be less apt to describe the problem of homelessness as "their fault" when we learn that the ranks of the homeless include a disproportionate number of Vietnam veterans, disabled persons, the chronic mentally ill, the elderly on fixed incomes, those who have suffered sudden job loss, mothers and children who have lost support through divorce, alcoholics, and refugees as well as a small proportion of people who have made an individual choice to live this way. In other words, an increased appreciation for complexity helps us to begin to understand homelessness as "the sum total of our dreams, policies, intentions, errors, omissions, cruelties, and kindnesses," as Peter Marin has stated, rather than simply a free choice of certain individuals. By making our students aware of complexity, whether they are exploring different interpretations of a biblical text or competing explanations for changes in the economy, we not only contribute to their critical abilities but help them to see that the advancement of knowledge takes place through a dialogue between differing ideas. Complexity implies the need for a cooperative search for truth. A second value that the liberal arts must cultivate is an understanding of and respect for tradition. Barbara Ehrenreich has spoken of "premature pragmatism" among today's students--before they even enter college many have begun to "position" themselves for a career with job security and solid pay. The great questions that artists and scholars have wrestled with through the ages--questions of meaning, truth, beauty, or what constitutes a just society--are not "productive" and pale before the concrete certainties that students believe await them when they graduate. For many it is preferable to stick to something that will produce results. Yet we do our students a disservice by acceding to these desires. At some point the deeper questions of meaning must be addressed, if not now, then later in the life of an individual or a culture, when a crisis of values occurs. Those of us at Christian institutions are fortunate in having a heritage of several thousand years to refer to in our teaching, and one to which most of our students share a commitment. Again, and to draw upon the example of reflection upon the issue of homelessness, students need to learn that many people in different times and places have examined the nature of the good society, and asked what the strong owe to the weak. Students need to see the timeless character of these questions, and understand that tradition can make important contributions to our own understanding. Because tradition represents our shared cultural heritage, a renewed respect for tradition implies a deeper sense of our common life as a culture as well. A respect for tradition also must lead to an awareness of our continuity with past and future generations, which is desperately needed in an age in which our decisions have the power to have tremendous impact upon the future. Our technological skill gives us ever greater power to alter the shape of both the biological environment and of our social relationships, while leaving us empty in terms of the ends we are to seek. In such a situation, we ignore the wisdom of the past at our peril. This leads us to a third task of the liberal arts: to make students aware of their context within community. We must remind one another that our educational enterprise is provided for by the larger community, and that the liberal arts at their best should be a preparation for service to that larger community. This value is one that seems to be under the most serious threat. Higher education is viewed more and more as a means of pursuing power, wealth, and prestige, and less and less as preparation for service to one's community. At the same time, our public life is pervaded by a sense of futility, and a feeling on the part of many that since everyone else is pursuing their self interest, there is no meaningful place to participate. We need to be more diligent about assisting students with application of their learning to the needs of our society, whatever shape this might take. Education as preparation for service should be demonstrated as a value throughout the structure and activities of the institution. In addition, our institutions must reassert the traditional role of higher education in a democracy--to develop citizens who are willing and able to participate effectively in public life. Finally, education must address the heart as well as the head. This is particularly true for the Christian liberal arts college. Some will argue that this cannot be an intentional goal of education, and yet we address it implicitly already. What we most often cultivate is detachment, with the unspoken value that a kind of cool "objectivity" is the highest form of knowing and learning. In this we contribute to the model already provided by television--the passive absorption of information without the need for response. We need to question this implied value, and instead to help our students to develop feeling about things that matter, a sense of connection to the world, and a love for the material that they study. Perhaps we even need to encourage a sense of outrage, if it is appropriate to the issue at hand. Serving and eating with the homeless represents one way of involving both heart and head in learning. It can be a kind of transformative experience for many students, in that it puts a human face on what had remained until then an abstract social problem. If we believe that what we are teaching matters to the world, we need to find more ways to create this personal kind of engagement with learning for students. A liberal arts education has the opportunity either to reinforce or challenge the individualism that is present within the larger culture. In a space as brief as this, some important aims leading in this direction can only be briefly outlined. What remain to be explored are the more difficult structural questions of how these values might best be realized: Are incremental changes in course content sufficient, or does the pursuit of these ideals require a wholesale restructuring of our institutions? Does our hidden curriculum, expressed in the ways we relate to one another as faculty and staff and our methods of teaching, testing, and grading, need reform before any curricular changes have an impact? What would such changes look like? How does a college balance the desire for institutional survival (e.g., the maintenance of student enrollments) with the effort to preserve values that run counter to those of the culture? Bibliography Bellah, Robert N. 1985 "The Humanities and Social Vision." In Applying the Humanities. Daniel Callahan, Arthur L. Caplan, and Bruce Jennings, eds. New York: Plenum Press. Bellah, Robert N., Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton. 1985 Habits of the Heart. Berkeley: University of California Press. Fuller, Edmund, ed. 1957 The Christian Idea of Education. New Haven: Yale University Press. Giroux, Henry A. 1983 Theory and Resistance in Education: A Pedagogy for the Opposition. South Hadley, Massachusetts: Bergin and Garvey Publishers, Inc. Martin, Jane R. 1981 "Needed: a Paradigm for Liberal Education." In Philosophy and Education. Jonas F. Soltis, ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. On the Uses of the Humanities: Vision and Application. 1984, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York: The Hastings Center Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences.