Liberal Art: not to be collapsed, conflated and confused with liberal artst

Dear College,

They who know of no purer sources of truth,
who have traced up its stream no higher, stand,
and wisely stand, by the Bible and the Constitution,
and drink at it there with reverence and humility;
but they who behold where it comes trickling into
this lake or that pool, gird up their loins once
more, and continue their pilgrimage toward its
fountain-head. H.D. Thoreau, “ Civil Disobedience”

Or as Henry Jensen urges in our
Alma Matrix: Stalwart Pioneers!
Toward Frontiers Yet Unknown!

Anyone: do you think there is specific shared Intellective
Content that ALL our students must experience to
become our brand of Liberal Art?

In-common skills? methods? attitudes?

We might reach some agreement on this: make the list. Show
how we’ll demonstrate success (outcomes assessment)
and we’ve got IT covered: the re-accreditation minotaur.

For years, around re-accrediting time, the talk is all like:

Do you Do
what you SAY
you Do?

Prove it.

(Plus there's always a lot we got to do that’s standard
ordinance and THEY say we ought to do it, but there
used to be a clause, fine print somewhere we always
ignore as risky business that offers an institution pportunity
to go it’s Own Way rather than march in the band, just as
long as you can show us that your doing what you say
you’re doing marching to your different drummer for
crying out loud!)

We take the standard option. We always do: show that we
do what we say we do & what everyone else says they do
too if you’re going to march in the band.. We have to. We
always do. THAT RIGHT THERE is the BEAUTY of the
PROCESS of External Assessment. Make sure you do
what you say you do: do it and show that you did it,
like any decent syllabus.

IF what we are doing is Doing-It-So-As-to-Satisfy-some-Outside-
Examiner, some External Point of View and Standard Operating
accreditation process—then we will. Please the examiner. Comply.

And it’s always cast as GOOD EXERCISE.

(“Re-accreditation is an industrial institutional pain in the neck,
sure, the lesser of the axes of evil; but look: we can make it a
good exercise in assessing our assessmentalism to see that we’re
doing what we say we’re doing…. We’ll make lemonade.”
Get R done.”)

Liberal Art: Imagine saying: “well, here’s what we say we do, but
darnit damned if we do. Not even close! It’s like playing upside down
flamingo & hedgehog croquet & herding cats at the same time; Sure:
we MAKE IT look like hard balls and mallets, but really, to be honest:
it’s a lot more interesting than that:

We prefer to turn up the RATIOS—
confusion-to-clarity relationships,
illogic to logic & irrational to rational
mess & guess, mothering our finished
product: celebrate our failure & success
ratios: we actually encourage Failure!
Good for collaborative genius, and we
don’t let Clarity rule the roosters either
but put IT all in play and just get along
—that’s what we actually DO even
though we got to say we Do it
Different in order to get our
tickets punched.”

Make it an aesthetic experience and not
just "the damned moral sense." Whole-istic.
Holy smokes & not yr old man's
cellophane-wrapped
any more.

xxxooo, Presbyter