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As Bryn Mawr prepares for our Middle States Review, each of the departments here has been asked to come up with a plan of assessment: what do we ask our majors to do, and how do we measure their accomplishments? This has led (@ least in the English Department!) to many lively debates--since we think much of what is important about what we do is immeasurable, perhaps incommensurate with other things we do (and ask you guys to do).

In today's meeting, one of my colleagues read this statement:

A few years ago, a faculty committee at Harvard produced a report on the purpose of education. “The aim of a liberal education” the report declared, “is to unsettle presumptions, to defamiliarize the familiar, to reveal what is going on beneath and behind appearances, to disorient young people and to help them to find ways to reorient themselves.”

The article (by David Brooks) in which this quote is embedded takes a very different view, one that argues for the virtue of socialization over individualization: “institutionalists see themselves as debtors who owe something, not creditors to whom something is owed.”

Read his piece, to see (and say here?) what you think.....