When to Start the Liberal Arts

Thinking BIG: When to start the liberal arts

By Mary B. Marcy – August 14, 2005

It is nearly a tautology to say that the 1960s were a time of experimentation. Yet it is useful to remember that this experimentation extended to most corners of daily life, including — perhaps especially — education. In the '60s and '70s, over 300 "new" colleges and universities were established, some with profound ideas about education and some that were little more than glorified encounter groups.

Today, only a handful of those 300-plus institutions exist. Those that do — Hampshire College, the Evergreen State College, branch campuses of public universities among them — were created with ideas whose intellectual legitimacy, commitment to access, or academic currency allowed them to thrive beyond the vicissitudes of political and social trends. One of these institutions is the nation's first free-standing campus devoted to early college education, Simon's Rock College of Bard in Great Barrington.

The idea that created Simon's Rock was a particular vision concerning adolescents and liberal arts education. Elizabeth Blodgett Hall, the founder of Simon's Rock, believed the last two years of high school and the first two years of college represented the ideal age for introducing the liberal arts; when able students had already mastered the basics of education, were intellectually curious, and had not yet focused on college as an avenue to a profession.

"Before vocational or professional training," she wrote, is the time "for finding out about oneself and what one is interested in and able to do, without regard for what one has to do for a living. These are the years for a liberal education, a four-year sequence for students who have completed the 10th grade."

This vision for liberal arts learning stands in contrast to the traditional, age-defined progression to 12th grade, which ignores the range of intellectual and social development across individuals. Many students are ready to embrace rigorous learning prior to the age of 18.

In a recent survey by the National Governor's Association, fewer than two-thirds of high school students said that schools did an ''excellent" or ''good" job of providing critical thinking abilities. By contrast, students at Simon's Rock engage in college-level work upon entry, typically at the age of 16. With a writing and reading workload that is as demanding as any traditional college, they succeed because they are intellectually curious and receive the support to respond to challenging expectations.

This underlying premise of Simon's Rock Early College — that high school age students are ready to embrace a more challenging curriculum — is now being tested in early college programs around the nation. While liberal arts education was central to the founding of Simon's Rock, some emerging programs will also offer technical, professional or business programs. What we share through early college is another means of educating the American adolescent.

An opportunity and a challenge for the emerging early college effort is to address longstanding problems in education. Inviting adolescents to engage in rigorous college-level learning when they are ready is one step. Another is to ensure that we do not duplicate existing problems at the college and university level.

For example, access to higher education has long been stratified along lines of class, race, and ethnicity; for too long this meant liberal arts education for the privileged few. But ideally, access to higher education is based on aptitude, interests, and motivation rather than accidents (or opportunities) of birth. Traditional colleges are working to address historical inequities; early college has the opportunity to get it right the first time.

The young mind is elastic and curious. If early colleges are to succeed in reaching those poorly served by the rigidity of traditional education, we must offer students a full complement of educational opportunities. Liberal arts education should not be the province of the privileged; similarly, technical education should be a means of pursuing interests and skills rather than the only alternative for underrepresented groups.

If we are right about the notion of early college, and if adolescents can take advantage of an educational alternative at the right time in their development, they will go on to graduate and attend professional school at some of the most prestigious institutions in the country, or they will build successful careers in business, the arts, education, and nonprofits.

In other words, they will enjoy the success of other graduates of quality colleges and universities — but it is a success they may not have experienced without access to an early college education.

Mary B. Marcy is provost and vice president of Simon's Rock College of Bard.