The London Times Higher Education Supplement
Pressure to End Standards Circus
by Lucy Hodges

Reacting to criticism that education in the United States is lacking in rigor and too consumed with faddish courses on issues such as ethnic diversity, a group of traditional scholars have set up a new organization to ensure colleges and universities set demanding standards for undergraduates.

The American Academy for Liberal Education aims to become an official accrediting agency approved by the US Department of Education.

Academic luminaries such as Edward 0. Wilson, the Pulitzer prize-winner and Harvard science professor, and Jacques Barzun, author and history professor at Columbia University, are on its board of trustees, as well as a well-known member of the political right, Chester Finn, and Shelby Steele, the black professor of English at San José State University in California who opposes affirmative action.

“The United States has recently experienced a well documented decline in education standards at all levels of instruction, including undergraduate liberal arts,” the academy said in a pre-pared statement

“This trend threatens to deprive students of the habits of reflective learning and of the body of useful and important knowledge, characteristic of a liberal education.”

The academy, which is run by Jeffrey Wallin, is concerned about the dearth of rigorous courses American undergraduates are required to take.

Colleges and universities do specify requirements for students to study humanities and other areas, but they allow such requirements to include, for example, Introduction to Circus Arts.

The group is proposing l7 standards for institutions wanting to pursue a good liberal education. Neither ethnic diversity nor multiculturalism are mentioned, though Mr. Wallin said he had nothing against such subjects. Instead students are required to study Western civilization and the foundations of American society, as well as the classics so as to become acquainted with important ideas, works and authors.

On the list are mandatory courses in mathematics and the physical and biological sciences, including laboratory work. Students should be required to have intermediate knowledge of more than one foreign language.

This kind of basic and core curriculum is advocated because American high school students do not have to master the bodies of knowledge which are required at GCSE and A levels in Britain.

What worries people such as Mr. Wallin is that college students are not receiving such learning either.

“We have people leaving university who don’t know their numbers, who don’t know anything about science and have read few, if any, serious books,” he said. “Social concerns, like teaching students about ethnic groups, are given more weight than academic ones.”

To some extent concerns about quality are inevitable in a system which gives as much access to higher education as the US does, and Mr. Wallin recognizes this. “But it has been demonstrated that students from all walks of life can benefit from a high quality education.”

The academy hopes to become a recognized accrediting agency by the end of this year when it will have to recruit members.

Copyright 1994, The London Times