Theorizing Liberal Arts Education and Place

Cultivating Citizens: Place and Formation

In the context of a democratic, pluralistic polity, citizenship must involve, among other things, the capacity to engage those who are different and yet share the same place we inhabit (27). This engagement is based on the willingness to listen to the voices that are not our own, and the disposition to deliberate productively to construct a vision of the common good, while remaining alert to the relationships of power and domination that are embedded in the physical and metaphorical architecture of our places. A liberal arts education is uniquely able to equip students to participate as citizens in a diverse public space, to present and represent particular identities and concerns as well as be attentive and receptive to the perspectives and identities of others. Moreover, the process of critical thought that is involved in liberal arts training is one of the most effective instruments to deconstruct the systematic power imbalances that underlie public discourses and interactions.

In order to achieve these goals, the liberal arts must take on the challenge to develop a critical pedagogy of place with specific attention to the civic dimension of public engagement. Liberal arts education must affirm the essential role of place (and its practices and habits) that shape our identities, and then reflect critically and constructively on the particularities of the environment in which the college operates.  This should include helping students reflect critically and with theoretical depth on how places are created, helping them understand the dynamics of power and place, and equipping them with the tools to both diagnose unjust place-formation and imagine and implement just place-formation. In other words, this would mean that we acknowledge that human beings exist within a cultural context, in a particular “situationality” which leads them to not only critically reflect on their experience, but to critically act upon it (28).  Peter McLaren and Henry Giroux explicate this point:  “At the most general level … a critical pedagogy must be a pedagogy of place, that is, it must address the specificities of the experiences, problems, languages, and histories that communities rely upon to construct a narrative of collective identity and possible transformation (29).”

From a political point of view, such a proposition requires an acknowledgement of the social and cultural realities that lead some members of any given community to positions of power and privilege and other members to positions of disadvantage and oppression.  For instance, in a predominantly white ethnic institution such as Calvin, it is very easy to overlook the racialized nature of what occurs in most classrooms and most cities.  This may not be conscious or intentional, but happens because much of our academic discourse ignores or renders invisible how whiteness shapes, influences, and places boundaries around what we “know” (and/or what we “don’t know”).

The vision and task of a liberal arts education involves place in an essential way, even if the link is not always made explicit.  Thus, the task is to elucidate the link between liberal arts education, a sense of place, and a conception of citizenship and civic engagement, as well as offer opportunities to tie theory and practice together.

First, an authentic liberal arts education aims to form students as “good citizens.”  Such an understanding of education is not just the depositing of “information” into students as cognitive receptacles, but rather education that aims to form them into certain kinds of people who are ‘habitually’ just not only within the spheres of their homes, churches, and schools, but also in their concern for the broader, plural community of the polity.  In other words, the goal of education is the inculcation of virtues (good habits) so that students become the kind of people who, out of their character (what Aristotle calls “second nature”), contribute to shape and to pursue a vision of the common good (30).  It might also be constructive to think of virtue formation as something akin to identity formation.  Some scholars have previously articulated some useful links between identity and place.  For instance, prominent geographer and social theorist David Harvey has noted that dissolution of place engenders identity loss:  “It suggests a fundamental spiritual alienation from environment and self that demands remedial measures (31).”  It is that alienation which fosters an individualism that runs counter to citizenship – or a nurturing of the common good.

As a result, liberal arts education must recognize the critical identity-forming, habit-forming role that place plays (for good or ill) in forming us (faculty and students) as certain kinds of people who ‘by (second) nature’ habitually pursue a particular vision of the good life.  With this in mind, professors can purposefully demonstrate the connection between identity, place and citizenship.  For example, “the art department… gives artists a venue to exhibit themselves.  It has helped to create a figure [of the] journeyman artist, whose work must be made on site, whose presence is demanded, and who travels from installation to lecture, supported by a network of grants, alternative spaces, and universities (32).” And so the academic artist, producing a public self as a means to engage in the contemporary discourse of the field, is tied to his/her identity professionally. On the liberal arts campus, this is an excellent reason for pursuing the development of the students’ identity, persona, and citizenship.  The studio art classroom is not just for developing skills or critical thinking and articulation or decision-making, but it is for the formation of citizens, whose identity is linked to place and to social responsibility.  Certainly, identity is phenomenologically tied to place in its formation.  Who we are is contingent upon where we are, but it is also crucial to actively engage place as a means toward citizenship, community development, and social justice.  We must give students a lens to help them see and connect to the world around them. For example, at Calvin College the Urban Bike Tours and Neighborhood Walking Tours have given faculty, staff and students an opportunity to “see” firsthand how patterns of human settlement are directly tied to issues such as urban sprawl, loss of the farmland and other green space, declining tax bases in urban centers, increased environmental and health risks, and the loss of a sense of community.  These tours have been used in a variety of classes from sociology, philosophy, nursing and geography as well in professional development opportunities for faculty and staff.  In every instance the purpose is to cultivate a critical awareness of how past decisions have affected places and to create a vision for assuming responsibility for the particular place where we are.

Second, any functional notion of virtue must recognize that a virtue is relative to a specified telos or aimed-at vision of “the good life.”  In fact, what constitutes a “virtue” relative to one story or telos can be a “vice” relative to another story or telos.  Meekness, for instance, is prized within a story that narrates a gospel of peace, but denigrated as cowardice relative to a story of heroism in the face of oppressive power (33).    Therefore, liberal arts education must provide the resources to critically reflect on the historical and political significance of place within a community and institution as well as articulate a telos or vision of the good life that prizes the pursuit of justice for the common good, acknowledges the existence of alternative and competing visions, and connects this with the inescapability of place.  Connected to this notion, Harvey (drawing on Ernst Bloch) argues that the fostering of hope (which, according to Aquinas, is a virtue) requires the possibility of a utopian imagination—fostering the ability to imagine the world otherwise.  The illusory “necessity” of capitalist ordering denigrates such an imagination; this means “a loss of hope and without hope alternative politics becomes impossible” (Harvey, p. 156).  Liberal arts education should foster an expansive imagination, which envisions the world otherwise and inscribes the virtue of hope into our character.  

Here the primary task of a liberal arts education is expanding the social imaginary (34) of both faculty and students, thinking in terms of what might be rather than what currently is.  For example, the PLANT! project at Calvin College served as a vehicle to connect students in a sculpture class to the place of Grand Rapids.  Whether or not it was a success as an art project, students acquired a deeper understanding of Grand Rapids, and of place, which will inform their future work and citizenship.  This project became about seeing, and about engaging the geography and culture of the city.  As students worked in groups to convert unused urban spaces into working gardens or studios or sites for discourse, they experienced a healing of disassociation and alienation and were encouraged to think about what their project could be and how it could be a transforming element in the community. 

Third, formation, particularly virtue formation, takes practice—a habituating doing that inscribes an orientation to the common good and an attentiveness to the other into the very character of the person. Liberal arts education must provide opportunities for embodied practice and habit formation which foster just relationships and connections to place, and counter unjust practices associated with certain kinds of places—with the goal of inscribing in students habits that will outlive their college experience.  In other words, liberal arts education must harness the possibilities for positive (and at times counter-) formation that is possible by inhabiting certain kinds of spaces, as well as critically reflecting on the effects of negative habits associated with other places.  Related to practice and a complementary key component, according to both Aristotle and MacIntyre, is the crucial role for exemplars.  These exemplars would operate as “role models” who provide tangible expressions and stories of the one who acts justly.  Exemplarity can be channeled either through first-hand encounters with persons who are exemplars or through the narratives and stories of their actions.  For example, one opportunity for ‘embodied practice’ in caring for others and for place is offered through Calvin’s Project Neighborhood, an off-campus living experience in intentional community within an urban neighborhood.  Guidance from community leaders, college representatives, and in-house mentors provides upper level students with role models as well as opportunities for personal growth and for making an impact in the community.  Focused reflection and learning is integrated into the Project Neighborhood experience through an interdisciplinary seminar all residents participate in each semester.

Fourth, practices are inescapably material: they engage the whole person by involving the (intersubjective) body in concrete, tangible activities and rituals of physically in-habiting a place (35).  In fact, there is a dialectical relationship between body and place: a body is a “first” place that both shapes and is shaped by its environment (36).  Beyond that, author (and former mayor of Missoula, Montana) Daniel Kemmis insists on a “politics of inhabitation.”  By this he means that “to in-habit a place is to dwell there in a practiced way, in a way that relies upon certain, regular, trusted, habits of behavior… We have largely lost the sense that our capacity to live well in a place might depend upon our ability to relate to neighbors (especially neighbors with a different lifestyle) on the basis of shared habits of behavior … In fact, no real public life is possible except among people who are engaged in the project of inhabiting a place (37).”  Some scholars have elaborated and reconceptualized the idea:  David A. Gruenewald has argued for “reinhabitation,” that is, learning to live-in-place in an area that has been disrupted and injured through past exploitation (38). Reinhabitation requires identifying, conserving, and creating those forms of cultural knowledge that nurture and protect people and ecosystems (39).  One way Calvin is learning how to ‘reinhabit’ our place has been through our work with Get the Lead Out!, a community collaborative working to end childhood lead poisoning in our county.  This issue has been identified as one of significant concern for this region.  Students and faculty in several different departments have been involved in various aspects of the work—from the actual lead testing to public education work with local residents to advocating for policy changes. 

Liberal arts education offers students an opportunity to connect what they are learning to how they will live rather than what they will do.  Through the liberal arts experience it is hoped that students can connect with and learn about a place, realizing that the more one knows, searches and understands, the greater the interest and satisfaction of inhabiting a place.  The overall challenge for liberal arts institutions is that they must look for ways to integrate philosophy and theory with practice, offering a rich learning environment where praxis can take place as an integral piece of practicing virtue.  We have woven into this narrative some examples which flesh out our argument that liberal arts education can be strengthened by focusing on the particulars of place.  Additional case studies are included later in the paper.

If liberal arts colleges seek to develop active citizens who have a strong sense of place, they must begin by examining their own institutions and ask how they can make their own campuses good places to live, work and learn, connect with others, get involved in the communal life of the institution, as well as connect to the larger community in which the campus finds itself.  The challenges described in this paper are formidable, but (as we have noted) they also offer liberal arts colleges tremendous opportunities to intentionally define their natural, built, social, and learning environments in order to promote virtue and identity and challenge students to be active citizens throughout their college experience and wherever they may find themselves after they graduate. 

 

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