Throughout most of western academic history, indeed until this century, curricula were structured so that students would develop a worldview that integrates each area into a consistent whole, or universe of knowledge. The schools that still cling to this slippery ideal, require that students devise an academic plan mixing courses from each of the three areas. But most colleges and universities encouraged students to trim their course schedules down to those courses that have direct relevance to their career aspirations. For the past three years, I have been concerned with this condition of higher education and have explored ways of reviving a universal ideal in my own classrooms. It is a small, but important step toward the universal ideal.
Universal education is no easy task for either students or professors.
The first and foremost problem encountered by both is the difficulty in finding a quantifiable objective. We have for so long seen education as a specific tool for a specific purpose that we now have a hard time seeing it in any other way. Though higher education does have a quantifiable objective, that objective is not ascribed within any particular material purpose, such as a high-paying career. Seen as a tool for a specific purpose, education is trimmed and molded so that it is capable of performing a limited number of functions appropriate to the tool it is perceived to be. Within the universal ideal, higher education is a mode of being applied by its possessor in all situations requiring thought.