From liberal education to general education

General education as a curriculum concept appeared with the campaign to reform the higher education curriculum in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century. Advocated by a small number of scholars, it was first tried in various forms in different colleges. The lack of consistency in the philosophies that supported the various experiments and the differences in the processes of implementation and outcomes resulted in much criticism and debate. After World War II, with the increasing number of students entering university and with the shock of the devastating war, general education was given a second look by universities. Notwithstanding, on more than one occasion in the 1970s it was described as the “disaster area” of the undergraduate curriculum (Lucas, 1994, p. 268), which led to serious reviews and reforms of general education. Since the 1980s, numerous universities have been busy reviewing and redefining their general education curricula. Following the ups and downs in the general education movement, not only has general education become a basic component of the undergraduate curriculum of most American universities (Johnson, 2002, p. 10), ¹ but the importance attached to it by universities has only increased (Johnson, Ratcliff and Gaff, 2004, p. 10). ² Additionally, general education has progressively received greater attention in places outside the United States. In 2000, the Task Force on Higher Education and Society convened by the World Bank and UNESCO published a research report on the prospects of higher education in developing countries in the twenty-first century. The report devotes a whole chapter to explaining the importance of general education and encourages the relevant countries to ensure that, while they are developing higher education, at least some of their universities provide a broad-based general education (Task Force on Higher Education and Society, 2000, pp. 117–18). ³