Tutoring / in our time

Applied for more part time tutoring - one is an hourly paid lecturer at the University of Lincoln, another is at the Independent Art School in London. I think my applications get better and better. Good enough for interview and the job I hope - I think I could really do with an MA on my CV.

Also heard from the London School of Liberal Arts venture - I did not get through to the next round, and am honestly relieved. I had sent some more blog entries in their interview process, more on the theme of exploring what the Liberal Arts are anyway. I have a much more broad and abstract view than is wanted. I think the students in such a course should come with their own theme, and devise their own journey through the broad curriculum, much as how one comes in to study Fine Art. You don't have every nuance already worked out for you - the point is learning to do your own research and find your own references. I ended up feeling that the historians and philosophers and educators devising the course already had a very fixed view on what the Liberal Arts are, that is was basically what they already teach, and that they can deliver it. However, for true integration with other disciplines, you need to allow other practitioners to take over, and teach in their own terms and allow students to experience differently, outside the realms of academia.

I think it would be a wonderful education to have a true grounding in the Liberal Arts, to create your own portfolio on your own chosen theme, taught through the eyes of historians, artists, philosophers, engineers. Then later when one has specialised, communication is more possible between scientists and writers, artists and historians, having the basis of a common language.

Radio 4 touched on this theme in In Our Time recently, Melvyn Bragg hosting a fascinating discussion about the emergence of Universities.

bbc.co.uk/radio 4 in-our-time

Broadly, for hundreds of years in Europe students learnt a common Liberal Arts  curriculum in the common language of Latin. Travel was encouraged, and so Dutch engineers could converse with English theologians and French medics in terms they understood. Such a transmission and dissemination of ideas seems like an aspiration today, and makes the sci/art movement relevant but in its infancy.

18th March 2011