Page 24 - EducationWorld March 2023

EW FOCUS: LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION

seen as catering to only those from faculties should be encouraged to SoLS: Majors & Minors
the upper classes who can afford to bring their research into the class-
experiment with their university edu- room, design courses that speak to Majors: SoLS will offer five
cation and who are not immediately their research, and mentor students in majors to its first undergraduate
concerned with finding employment their academic choices. cohort. In coming years, we plan
after graduation. The BA(H) in Liberal Arts at to develop majors in the natural
Any discussion of a new Liberal SoLS is designed following these sciences:
Arts program ought to offer answers principles and the acknowledgement ▪ Economics
to these questions. The next sec- that depth in a discipline demands an ▪ Literature
tion outlines a set of responses that interdisciplinary framework. Educa- ▪ Philosophy
we at the School of Liberal Studies tion ought to offer tools to students ▪ Psychology
at BML Munjal University (BMU) to contextualise their learning in the ▪ Sociology
have developed in consultations with milieu in which they are situated.
educators, school leaders, teachers The pandemic made explicit the Minors: All major fields can be
and other liberal arts universities in interconnected nature of the globe taken as minors. In addition to
India and these responses guide our and made us aware that our experi- these fields, SoLS will also be
vision of an interdisciplinary liberal ence of phenomena is cumulative. offering the following three fields
arts program at BMU. Thus it is not enough to have a high as minors:
level of specialised study in biology, ▪ Data Science
Why Liberal Arts? computational systems or the cultural ▪ Mathematics
At the School of Liberal Studies specificities of populations. Instead, ▪ Physics
(SoLS), BMU, we are conceptualis- we need an educational model that
ing our Liberal Arts curriculum with will train scholars, policymakers,
an eye to three sets of considerations. and leaders who will be able to bring edge created by all, owned by all and
First, we want to create institutional these specialisations together to hence to be learned and practised by
structures that are dynamic and ca- address 21st century problems. Any all. Here we can create engineers,
pable of responding to the changing discussion of issues in the social or scientists, educationists, develop-
demands of the time. We believe this natural world can therefore only take mental practitioners, managers, civil
requires us to rethink disciplinary an internationalist perspective, situ- servants, environmentalists, journal-
boundaries, rigid curricular structures ated in the tradition of interdisciplin- ists and bankers to be self-reflexive
and pedagogical practices. Second, ary studies and grounded in the lived so that this shared sense of collective
we want to promote a culture of experience of the participants. ownership and achievement guides
self-directed and life-long learning, Here we recognise that the turn their life. We believe that this anchor
in which students are encouraged to towards interdisciplinary education in can in fact be the best life skill that
take charge of their education, pursue the NEP 2020 as well as UGC FYUP any educational program can offer.
those fields that they like and experi- have presented an opportunity for We aim to create a program that can
ment with different disciplines. Third, educators in this regard. SoLS con- equip them to specialise in a particu-
we believe knowledge is co-produced siders all disciplinary knowledge as lar field of scientific inquiry but also
between teacher and student, and that the sum total of the collective knowl- teaches them that all knowledge must

EDUCATIONWORLD MARCH 2023