Proposal To Make Humboldt State University's
General Education Curriculum More Consistent with Our Goals of
Social and Environmental Responsibility

A White Paper by the Summer 2004 Philosophy Class:
Issues in Critical Thinking and Educational Reform

Summary: We propose to the HSU faculty that two senior level courses be added to the General Education requirements, addressing current urgent issues of social and environmental responsibility and focusing on development of skills of critical analysis of issues, articulation of relevant arguments and objections, and thoughtful evaluation with an eye to improving the level of public debate on those issues. We address implementation and financing, and abjure measures which would cut into any of the current G.E. program.

Background, History: This class has taken up many problems regarding critical thinking, including evaluations of some of the main approaches to critical thinking, and then problems regarding educational reform in higher education. The history of educational reforms is pretty depressing. That history supports a case that any attempts we make at reform are likely to be ineffectual at best, or to become oversimplified fads with their own pathological consequences if they do get implemented. The attempt to make higher education curriculum more "relevant," a theme for 150 years and especially pressed by the Port Huron Statement in the 1960's, had only a diffuse and scattered success, some of which may be seen in HSU's current curriculum. Moves toward restructuring General Education requirements toward more adequate development of critical thinking skills run up against obstacles which make odds of success slim or impossible. Those obstacles include the following:

• fears of losing student enrollment by those who are invested in the present system;
• legislators' and taxpayers' misunderstandings of what critical thinking is;
• the interests of some (definitely not all) in corporations in hiring cheap workers who won't question their bosses;
• trustees and administrators who share those corporate goals; and
• textbooks dedicated to oversimplifications and to finding shortcuts where none exist.

We spent some time doing problem-solving in the face of this history. We took hope in the uniqueness of Humboldt State. We looked at the prominence given here to the Graduation Pledge to work toward a socially and environmentally responsible world and the endorsement of that pledge and adoption of it as a central goal for HSU by our administration. We developed the following framing concerns:

• we need to avoid proposals which will cut into any departmental turf, and, more, to acknowledge that much if not all of the current program has good reasons supporting its existence;
• still, we are convinced the need for new requirements is pressing, and that those should be focused on critical analysis of important and urgent social and environmental issues addressed only piecemeal and in haphazard fashion in our current curriculum;
• new requirements should use already-existing expertise on the part of faculty who are willing to bring that expertise to bear on the above issues;
• careful analysis of complex issues may help develop a crucial ability to do careful analysis which the world needs from our graduates.

Proposal: We propose to the HSU faculty (curriculum being the purview of faculty) that the G.E. program be amended to require two more courses taken in the senior year, each course dedicated to analysis of an urgent and important social or environmental issue. We suggest that at least half the courses be the result of interdisciplinary team teaching, financed by asking each department at the university to hand one weighted teaching unit over to the Dean for Undergraduate Studies, who will administer courses meeting this requirement. Courses are to be under regular departmental listings or under Environmental and Social Issues, ESI, with a 400-level number. Interdisciplinary teams are to involve faculty from all departments willing to let their faculty participate, given that they receive backfill by the Dean. Courses must be kept small, should begin with a research skills component, and must have formidable writing and presentation components. Courses will be timely, not permanent, and should be phased out or changed if, for instance, our graduates solve the problems at issue. Courses should not be double-counted with GE Area courses or the Diversity and Common Ground requirement. Actual courses will be proposed and developed by faculty with the approval of the University Curriculum Committee, but in order to help make our intent more clear we offer the following suggestions for courses, analogues for some of which are already in the schedule:

• Global Warming, Pollution, Ice and Sea Levels
• Language Extinctions and Endangerment
• Family Structures: Current Changes, Functions and Pathologies
• Global and Local Land-use Planning
• Money and Independence in the Media: Spin and Truth
• Contextless Abstractions vs. Indigenous Storytelling
• Work and Alienation
• Globalization and Poverty
• The Psychology and Sociology of Integrity
• Third-World (or 2/3rd World) Politics
• Ecosystems and Endangered Species
• Owning Water
• Professional Codes of Ethics: Status, Limits, Failures
• Recombinant DNA issues
• Energy Sources and Alternatives
• Resistance Movements and Oppression
• Social and Environmental History of California
• Universal Health Care: Models and Issues
• Unions and Multinational Corporations
• Corporations and Higher Education
• Ethical Issues of Nanotech
• Dissent and Civil Liberties Issues
• Medical and Other Issues of Mental Health

Postscript: The goal is not to make every HSU graduate literate about the range of urgent social and environmental issues. We do like that goal but do not see how to implement it short of adding a year to the Bachelor's degree and requiring a minor in social sciences, a minor in science, and a minor in arts and humanities with two courses in each minor under ESI. We would endorse replacing most of the current G.E. area requirements with such a program; we don't see it happening. The goal instead is to require students to apply these central critical thinking skills at the end of their education. In particular we propose requiring students to practice the skills of clarifying live, urgent issues, articulating arguments and objections, and using those arguments to help achieve a more socially and environmentally responsible world. Our hope is raise the level of public debate on such issues by turning out better-educated graduates willing to engage the issues. HSU will then be a force for a socially and environmentally responsible world. For now, and for most students, it's mostly just talk.

Post-Postscript, responses to objections and concerns: Those to whom we have distributed drafts of this proposal have raised the following concerns and objections, which we have only had time to discuss briefly:

• One additional course might be palatable, but two is too too. Support for this idea was not spelled out, but we speculate that the reasons have to do with the B.A. degree already being too crowded with requirements, perhaps in particular that the senior year has little time to spare on more requirements.
  Response: We in class had already discussed our doubts that two courses will be enough to achieve the goals of further developing skills in clarifying issues and thinking through relevant arguments, and of raising the level of public debate among our graduates. We frankly cannot credit the idea that one would be more than a token gesture, or that those who work with students seriously think that one would be enough to make much difference. As for whether there's room in the B.A. or in the senior year for two additional courses, we looked at the stats provided by HSU's office of Analytic Studies (a good name to swipe for the department overseeing this requirement). We graduate 1200 to 1400 seniors each year but have nearly 3000 seniors enrolled. Over the last few years here are the percentages of students who came here as freshmen who graduated four years plus one summer and one semester later: 1995, 7.2% graduated, of those who came here four and a half years earlier; 1996, 5.6%; 1997, 11.0%; 1998, 9.3%; 1999, 7.6%; 2000, 7.4%; 2001, 11.8%; 2002, 9.7%; 2003, 11.7%. Typically, it's two more years (a total of six and a half) before the percentage of those who graduate gets near 50%. It seems students take the time needed and could accomodate this requirement. We tried to find out the distribution for number of credits students accumulate by graduation, but could not do so quickly. We suggest this might also be relevant. Ironically, our suggestion that the bachelor's should be made a five year degree has apparently already been implemented.
• The proposal is not specific enough, and should be developed with spelled-out course descriptions, syllabi, model writing assignments.
  Response: You're right. It will be necessary if the UCC is to certify courses as meeting this requirement to provide models and more specific guidelines showing what is to be expected of courses meeting these requirements. We expect faculty debate will sharpen expectations and lay out policy. We have not thought about whether 25 or whether 30 pages of argumentative prose and analysis would be more appropriate as a writing component guideline, or the extent to which the research skills component should also result in writing projects. These details seem more the job of faculty. We do suggest that faculty look around at courses already on the books which would meet or come near to meeting this requirement. We had no trouble coming up with a list of eleven in about four minutes. Faculty can surely do better.
• The proposal has quite complex ramifications and is likely to drown in committee.
  Response: That's not our table. We've put quite a bit of good faith effort into this proposal, have had mostly positive feedback so far from faculty, administrators, and students who have responded to drafts, and now it is up to faculty to set aside irrelevant worries, such as most of the worries about turf (granted some of those are relevant) and do the right thing.