November 1, 2002

General Education for Graduate Education

By CATHARINE R. STIMPSON

The graduate students who came to see me had teaching in the university's general-education program on their mind. Their brief: They didn't like it. They had to prepare too much unfamiliar material. Deflected away from their specialties, they were wasting time.

Privately, I was appalled. "You are scholars and intellectuals," I said. "Surely, our responsibility is to explore what is unfamiliar to us and to others." My piety was treated as what it must have seemed -- a piety.

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