When I was a child, I knew that if a Brussels sprout passed my lips, one of two things would happen — I’d vomit, or I’d die. Unfortunately for me, my mother loved Brussels sprouts and so they showed up on my dinner plate far, far too often. Because she had a “sit at your…
Tag: General Education
More Than a Few Tough Things (3)
In my second post in this series I took on my colleague Steve Pearlstein‘s argument that “universities” should engage in less research, more teaching. In this final post in the series, I want to take up his argument about general education. Cheaper, better general education. The reform of general education is something I’ve had a…
Back to the Future
The most recent issue of the AHA’s Perspectives includes a very thought provoking essay by current AHA president Kenneth Pomerantz on the place of history courses in the general education curriculum. Pomerantz correctly sees history courses as being under threat in a national conversation about making college education “more practical” or “more relevant.” I applaud…
The All Digital Semester
Now that I’m back in my old department (after four years in administration) I’m back up to a full teaching load and I’m happy that this semester is an all digital, all the time semester. That does not mean that I’m teaching online. Far from it. Instead, it means that both of my regularly constituted…