Integrative Learning - A Key Component of Higher Education

For some time now I have wanted to reflect on exactly why I think it is important to integrate the arts and the sciences in undergraduate education.

Researchers, journalists, writers and thinkers around the globe are more productive than ever before. Estimates are that the amount of new information is more than doubling every ten years. Assessing and analyzing even a tiny fraction of the current global output – to say nothing of knowledge generated in earlier years – is a daunting challenge. The addition of different cultural perspectives, new academic disciplines, countless discoveries and new ideas, and the massive expansion of the world’s university systems and research capabilities have made it impossible for even the most devoted and engaged citizen to stay on top of anything but a small fraction of the knowledge, information, ideas and insights now in circulation.

The result, not surprisingly, has been the development of academic and personal specialization within the post-secondary education system. Increasingly people know more and more about less and less. Students are expected to specialize early, often receiving little or no introduction to the insights and ideas generated in another part of the academy. Subsequently many students graduate from university with a highly fragmented understanding of the knowledge available in the world and few strategies for coping with its complexity.

“What is needed?”

Ironically, our complex, inter-connected world requires more integration of knowledge, not less, and more generalists to work with the specialists now graduating from our universities. Scientists need to understand the dictates of national politics and the ethical parameters within which new discoveries must be developed. Cultural understanding, in the form of language, literature, and popular culture, has to be integrated into efforts to explain regional, national, and international social movements. Understanding the social dynamics of technological change requires knowledge of both social structures and the intricacies of contemporary technologies. The myriad influences of globalization – ecological change, cultural diffusion, political, and economic integration – require many different perspectives. Citizens seeking to work in this rapidly changing and complex intellectual environment require the skill of integration and the ability to work with and between bodies of disciplinary knowledge.

We need to rekindle enthusiasm for intellectual integration. We need to encourage students to read between the disciplines and to develop the special skills of synthesis. We need to revive the generalist approach to personal growth and intellectual development.

Quest University Canada is inspired by precisely this kind of thinking. I am convinced that an education based on the science of synthesis and integration, learning across cultures and academic disciplines, will prepare our graduates very well for the challenges and opportunities of an interconnected, interdependent world. And that’s why I think it is so important to integrate the arts and the sciences.

I would like to hear other’s views on this great challenge we face in preparing students for life in the 21st century. What do you think about the direction of education for the future? And by the way, a warm welcome to dialogue at Quest!

Gratitude

This year the celebration of the full moon mid-Autumn festival in most East Asian countries, and Thanksgiving in Canada, coincide. It is a special time for returning home and spending time with family. It is a time for giving thanks for the simple abundance with which we have been blessed - a time to pause and reflect and take stock and prepare for the winter days ahead.

Here at Quest University Canada we are just completing the first phase of recruiting visits to high schools. Next week our Admission Counsellors will return home from the field before another round of visits later in October and November. We look forward to learning about the response of students, parents and schools to the opportunity that our University offers to students to learn, to participate and to make a difference in the world. I have to admit that I am a bit antsy, waiting to hear the news -- hopeful and anxious that students will want to join us in this grand adventure and in turn, that their parents will be willing to support them in doing so.

I am hoping for great results but I also know that we will learn from whatever experience confronts us. To date, we have received many positive indications from all over North America and the world. Having said that, we are fully aware of the importance of the university decision and to that end, we are prepared to work as hard as is necessary to help students and families make an informed judgment about enrolling with us.

And so yesterday, as I signed an agreement with the President of the National Outdoor Leadership School to have them join us as a Founding Partner, I felt a real sense of what a great Thanksgiving Day Weekend this will be for us here at Quest. We are prepared in the best possible sense to work together with partners and students from around the world to create a unique learning experience that combines integrated academic learning with development of leadership and teamwork skills. Working in small groups, our students will learn to become expedition guides to people facing the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. What a great thing this is for which to be able to give thanks!