In the US comprehensive universities and art and science colleges, students are required to read widely in diversified fields in year 1 and 2, and only choose a particular subject field for advanced studying from year 3. For highly professional fields such as medical and law, students can only option at postgraduate stage.
Regarding the curriculum of liberal education, I’d like to use Columbia University as an example. Students must gain all credits of the 9 fields in the first 2 years, which is also known as the core curriculum, including Literature, Modern Civilization, Liberal Arts, Music Arts, Frontier Science, Foreign Language, Logic and Rhetorical Writing, World Major Cultures and P.E. In other countries, France or UK, a Chemistry student only learns about chemistry. But at Columbia University, the student must also learn about music, arts and literature. Liberal Education is not to train for jobs, economic returns or ideologies.
Liberal education is to build a whole person, under which students not only dip into knowledge of diversified fields, but also find the commonality among them and benefit from the interdisciplinary thinking. In other words, liberal education is to pursue the origin and process of knowledge. Students do not only absorb knowledge, but also critical-think between old and new knowledge. So no matter what their future professional career might be, they gain the critical thinking skills and the ability to transfer knowledge among various subject fields.
It’s not difficult to see that the US liberal education and IB share the same education philosophy. An IB student will gain critical thinking skills and interdisciplinary ability before going to university. Many BIBS graduates who are in the US universities told me they fit in their new environment smoothly. University was like an extension of their IB education experience.
最新评论