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Restructuring Gen Ed: Notes on a Train
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11-08-2012
10:01 AM
I think my status update on Facebook said it all: Trains are a little sad. Then again, maybe trains are fine; maybe it's only me that's a little sad. I'm writing this on Amtrak's Silver Service to Tampa, Florida. I'm headed toward the first meeting of the Communication Committee, one of five faculty committees that will help decide the new general education curriculum for all public higher education institutions in Florida. In this series of posts, I'd like to reflect on this process and its implications—not for my school or even for my state but for the ways in which writing, rhetoric, and composition—and education itself—are conceived and conceptualized in institutions of higher education today. The problem is, I'm stuck. Looking out at the monotonous scrubby landscape offers neither inspiration nor direction (Florida, you see, is surprisingly empty in the middle and unerringly flat everywhere). How does one tackle an artifact of this size? Not a paper or a class or a course or a program or a department or a school, but an entire statewide system and bureaucracy legislated into existence? How does one respond when (literally) hailed by the juridical? I suppose the law itself is a good place to start, or better, the reductive summary of the law provided to the faculty committees:
- Required general education credits statewide lowered from 36 to 30 beginning fall 2014
- Students must take one course, for a total of 15 credits, in each of the following 5 categories: communication, mathematics, natural science, social science, humanities
- Each category will have a maximum of 5 courses. Courses will be uniform across all state universities, state colleges, and community colleges
- Faculty committees to be formed to determine courses offered in each category
- Remaining courses (15 credits) to be determined by each university or college
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About the Author
Barclay Barrios is an Associate Professor of English and Director of Writing Programs at Florida Atlantic University, where he teaches freshman composition and graduate courses in composition methodology and theory, rhetorics of the world wide web, and composing digital identities. He was Director of Instructional Technology at Rutgers University and currently serves on the board of Pedagogy. Barrios is a frequent presenter at professional conferences, and the author of Emerging.