Ethics Reading Assignment:
Liberal Education and Success at Work⁽¹⁾
by Arthur W. Chickering

Many of us have been asking, "Can colleges and universities provide both liberal education and preparation for work? Can those two major purposes be served simultaneously?" In my judgment we have been asking ourselves precisely the wrong question. The proper question is, "Can liberal education and preparation for work be separated? Is it possible to address one major purpose effectively without addressing the other?" Higher education has traditionally answered, "No." C. P. Snow, in the appendix to The Masters, tells how 600 years ago Cambridge University was born. The first students who came to meet with tutors in Cambridge village were poor, slept where they could and often went hungry. Like many students since then, they endured those hardships because that education could lead to jobs in teaching, in the church, in the courts, in the royal administration . ⁽²⁾And by now we all have been reminded several times that the first college in this country, Harvard, was established principally to prepare men for teaching, medicine, law, and the ministry. Since those early beginnings each college, student and parent has assumed that a college education would lead to a better job as well as a better life. So the traditional assumption of colleges and universities has been that liberal education and preparation for work, should and can, go hand in hand.

But does that traditional answer make sense today? Or do changes in human needs and purposes or changes in social conditions and the world of work call for new responses?

LIBERAL EDUCATION

Cardinal Newman, addressing The Idea of a University in 1852, provides one historically significant definition of liberal education. ⁽³⁾

"A University training ... aims at raising the intellectual tone of society, at cultivating the public mind, at purifying the national taste, at supplying true principles to popular enthusiasm and fixed aims to popular aspiration ... at facilitating the exercise of political power, and refining the intercourse of private life. It gives a man a clear conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them. It teaches him to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought, to detect what is sophisticated, and to discard what is irrelevant. It prepares him to fill any post with credit, and to master any subject with facility. It shows him how to accommodate himself to others, how to influence them, how to come to an understanding with them, how to bear with them. He is at home in any society, he has common ground with every class; he knows when to speak and when to be silent; he is able to converse, he is able to listen; he can ask a question pertinently and gain a lesson seasonably when he has nothing to impart himself ... he is a pleasant companion and a comrade you can depend upon ... He has a repose of a mind which lives in the world, and which has resources for its happiness at home when it cannot go abroad."

Communication skills, critical thinking, preparation for work, learning how to learn, cultural sophistication and cross-cultural understanding, empathy, understanding and respect for others, loyalty and intimacy, sense of self in a social-historical context-a good strong list. Other items, computational skills, for example, might be added. Perhaps this set will serve as we turn to preparation for work.
 
 

PREPARATION FOR WORK

In talking about work we find ourselves a bit like the patriotic gentleman accused by his friend of not believing in the Monroe Doctrine. The instant and indignant reply was, "It's a lie. I never said I didn't believe in the Monroe Doctrine. I do believe in it. It's the palladium of our liberties. I would die for the Monroe Doctrine. All I said was that I don't know what it means." Today it's hard to know what we mean by "work." The Oxford English Dictionary gives us nine pages of small type. Even Websters New Collegiate has such numerous definitions, many of which could apply equally well to vigorous recreation or leisure, that clear distinctions between work and a host of other activities are difficult to make.

Ancient man probably had no concept of "work." Primitive societies that still exist frequently have no vocabulary that distinguishes between "work" and "free time." In such societies, a person does what is expected, which includes domestic duties, gathering and raising food, performing various rituals and ceremonies, occupying time with conversation, singing, dancing, sleeping, eating and sex. Persons felt as constrained to do one as they were to do another. "Work" appears as a category we construct when we try to classify these varied activities. And if we limit the definition to those activities involved in gaining sustenance and producing goods, then in many primitive cultures persons spend much less time in work than we do.

Reading  Assignment Question

Explain why Chickering says "primitive" societies worked less time than we do now. Your name?

Our Greek and Christian heritages set work apart. For the Socrates of Xenophon, work was an expedient, and in Hesiod's Works and Days it is a necessity and a curse. In the Bible work became necessary because of a divine curse. Adam ate that apple, threw away Paradise without toil, and turned the world into a workhouse. The Lord said to him, "Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust and to dust you shall return." ⁽⁴⁾ This view reached full bloom as the Protestant ethic turned work and play into opposites and in some of its more extreme manifestations equated play with sin. Thus the idea become embedded in Western culture, that if an activity is to be called work, it must be something painful, unpleasant, that we do not want to do.

Reading  Assignment Question

Chickering says some people think work should be painful, that life should be unpleasant. Why does he say some people believe this?  Your name?

This view would certainly not have been understood by medieval craftsmen nor by craftsmen and artists since then. And now we are moving toward the view that work is not a curse but a blessing. It may even become a privilege. Useful occupations are an antidote to stagnation. Complex and challenging work is less boring than pleasure. Achievement, contribution, and productivity are the cornerstones for self respect. In the United States, the dominant orientation is moving beyond viewing work as a curse or privilege to call it a "right."

Reading  Assignment Question

Do you see work more as a "curse" or more as a "right?" Why? Your name?

Our changing orientation toward work is consistent with the changing nature of the activities called work, which have shifted dramatically as we moved from an agrarian, through an industrial, to a technological and post technological" society. To day the center of the workforce is the "service worker" and the "knowledge worker." That shift is vividly documented by Eli Ginsberg: "Almost the entire growth in post-World War II employment has been in the service sector. Among the goods-producing industries, only construction shows any sizeable increase. Agriculture declined by more than half, from some 47.6 to 3.5 million, mining declined by approximately one third, from 995, 000 to 672,000; manufacturing- the backbone of the economy-showed only a small absolute increase: approximately a third, from 15.6 to 20 million, which meant that its share of total employment dropped from about 27 percent to 21 percent." ⁽⁵⁾

A major consequence of the expanding services sector has been increased demand for professionals in education, health, management, science, engineering, and many other fields. An advanced service economy depends on trained and well-educated persons. The key to effective service is quality not quantity. Achieving high-quality service is more complicated than producing high-quality goods. Given human complexity and orneriness, it is difficult to develop services and organizations that work for large numbers. A television set is a complex instrument, but producing high-quality sets in large numbers is much easier than producing high-quality programming. Designing high-powered automobiles, fast trains, and supersonic airplanes requires high-level technological skills and scientific knowledge, but we are far from designing environments and related transportation systems that effectively serve human needs. In fact in some cases we are losing ground. Motor trucks average six miles an hour in New York City traffic today, as against eleven miles an hour for horse-drawn trucks in 1 91 0. And given the escalating ratio of divorces to happy, solid marriages, it looks as though putting a chicken in every pot is easier than having a congenial family dinner.

These changes require a shift in the way we think about work and jobs. Green puts it this way, ⁽⁶⁾

". . .if we are to understand the relation between education and work we need to mark a sharp distinction between work and job. There is an enormous difference between the person who understands his career as a succession of jobs and a person who understands the succession of jobs he has held as all contributing to accomplishment of some work.

... This distinction between work and jobs is essential for understanding the problems of modern work life. The central question is always whether it is possible to find work through roles validated within the employ-ment structure. We cannot even ask such a question if we do not distinguish these two concepts. What is often referred to as alienation from work is seldom that. It is rather, alienation from the job structure of modern society. Such alienation is often the expression of discontent with the pos-sibilities of finding a work to do through the constructed avenues of remunerative employment.

Work is basically the way that people seek to redeem their lives from futility. lt therefore requires the kind of world in which hope is possible, which is to say, the kind of world that yields to human effort. A world in which these conditions are unsatisfied is a world filled with labor, but without work-a world perhaps with "free time" but without "leisure."

Reading  Assignment Question

Chickering says that work is "the way that people seek to redeem their lives from futility." First explain what this means, and then explain whether you agree or disagree with him -- Would life be futile for you without some kind of meaningful work? Your name?

With this perspective on the distinction between work and jobs, we can address the kinds of competence and personal characteristics required for success in work. There is a large body of research which identifies the skills, abilities and other characteristics required for effective work. George Klemp and his associates have made major contributions. Their approach involves three steps: (a) identify successful individuals in a variety of occupations and professional roles, (b) find out what they are doing that makes them successful, and (c)examine how and why they are doing what they do. They have studied diverse career areas through direct observation, interviews, and direct assessment: human services, military services, alcohol abuse counseling, small businesses, police work, sales, process consulting, civil service, the State Department, industry management. What did they find? ⁽⁷⁾

"Our most consistent-though unexpected-finding is that the amount of knowledge one acquires of a content area is generally unrelated to superior performance in an occupation and is often unrelated even to marginally acceptable performance. Certainly many occupations require a minimum level of knowledge on the part of the individual for the satisfactory discharge of work-related duties, but even more occupations require only that the individual be willing and able to learn new things . . . In fact, it is neither the acquisition of knowledge nor the use of knowledge that distinguishes the outstanding per former, but rather the cognitive skills that are developed and exercised in the process of acquiring and using knowledge The cognitive skills constitute' the first factor of occupational success."

Reading  Assignment Question

Do you agree or disagree with the results of Klemp's study?  Do you think that the skills listed above are more or less important for genuine success in a field than the amount of factual knowledge one has of that field?  Your name?

What are the cognitive skills that are most important to success at work?
 

1. "Information processing skills related to learning, recall, and forgetting."
2. "Conceptualizing skills" (which) enable individuals to bring order to the informational chaos that constantly surrounds them . . . such skills go beyond an ability to analyze . . . they involve an ability to synthesize information from a prior analysis."
3. "The ability to understand many sides of a controversial issue." (Persons with this skill can resolve informational conflicts better than persons who can't conceptualize in this way. Persons without such skills typically resolve conflicts by denying the validity of other points of view and are ill equipped to mediate disputes or to understand what their positions have in common with the positions of others.)
4. "The ability to learn from experience . . . the ability to translate observations from work experience into a theory that can be used to generate behavioral alternatives."

1. "Communication skills." "Fluency and precision in speaking and writing is important, of course, but often it is the nonverbal component of communication, both in sending and receiving information, that has the greater impact."
2. "Accurate empathy . . . defined as both the diagnosis of a human concern (based on what a person says or how he or she behaves) and as an appropriate response to the needs of the person . . . . Accurate empathy helps clients and co-workers understand what is being said or done in a way that makes them feel they are themselves understood. There are three aspects to this skill ... positive regard for others . . . giving another person assistance, either solicited or unsolicited, that enables the other person to be effective . . . ability to control impulsive feelings of hostility or anger that, when unleashed on another person, make that other person feel powerless and ineffective."

Reading  Assignment Question

Re-state in your own words what Chickering means by "interpersonal skills." Your name?

"Motivation is, after all, a need state--a prerequisite for behavior-and for a variety of reasons people are often unable to translate their dispositions into effective action. Recent research strongly suggests that cognitive initiative-the way one defines oneself as an actor in the motivation sequence-is an important variable. This variable describes a person who habitually thinks in terms of causes and outcomes as opposed to one who sees the self as an ineffective victim of events that have an unknown cause. It has been empirically demonstrated, for instance, that women who think of themselves in terms of cause-action-effect sequences are more successful in careers ten years after college than women who do not think of themselves as the link in the cause-effect chain. ⁽⁹⁾ Our own analysis of complex managerial jobs and the people in them has shown that a person who takes a proactive stance, who initiates action and works to dissolve blocks to progress, will, with a few exceptions, have the advantage over a person who is reactive, who does not seek new opportunities, but sees the world as a series of insurmountable obstacles.

To sum up then, effective performance in the world of work involves a set of clearly identifiable cognitive skills, interpersonal skills and motivational characteristics.

To what extent are these kinds of competence and personal characteristics consistent with those typically taken as the aims of liberal education? There seems to me to be striking agreement. This agreement strongly supports higher education's traditional response concerning liberal education and preparation for work. Can liberal education and preparation for work be separated? Is it possible to address one major purpose effectively without addressing the other? The answer clearly is "No." Must liberal education and preparation for work necessarily be integrated if the ends of both are to be soundly achieved? The answer clearly is "Yes."

Reading  Assignment Question

Chickering says that the skills learned by a "liberal" education are more important to success at work than factual knowledge you have in a particular career. Why does he say this? From the evidence he gives, do you agree or disagree with him? Your name?

(1) This paper was prepared for the Memphis State University Professional Development Program, Spring, 1981.
(2) Snow, C. P. The Masters, Middlesex, England, Penguin, 1976, pp. 300-312.
(3) Newman, J. H., Cardinal, The Idea of a University, Christian Classics Inc., Westminster, Md., 1973, pp. 177-178.
(4) Genesis 3:17-20.
(5) Ginsberg, E. "The Pluralistic Economy of the U.S.", Scientific American, 1976, 235(6) :25-29.
(6) Green, T. F. "Ironies and Paradoxes"; in Dychman W. Vermilye, (Ed.) Relating Work and Education, San Francisco, Jossey Bass Publishers, 1977, p. 42-44.
(7) Klemp. George 0. Jr. "Three Factors of Success" in Dychman W. Vermilye, (Ed.) Relating Work and Education, San Francisco, Jossey Bass Publishers, 1977, p. 103.
(8) Klemp, George 0. Jr., "Three Factors of Success" in Dychman W. Vermilye, (Ed.) Relating Work and Education. San F@a-ncisco, Jossey Bass PublisheFs-, 1977, p. 107-108.
(9) Stewart, A. J. and Winter, D.G. "Self- Definition and Social Definitions in Women," Journal of Personality, 1974, 42: 238-269.

This essay originally appeared in the BULLETIN, Vol. 5-No. 1, June, 1982 published by the Center for the Study of Higher Education, College of Education, Memphis State University, Memphis, Tennessee 38152

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