MTC/LAC/LEP
“It is impossible to write a government document without
a mandatory TLA.”
Common knowledge.
My brother, Rob, (a wiz at computer programming) is the one who informed me of the useful term TLA, the Three Letter Acronym. In the computer world, acronyms rule: BIOS, HTML, and URL. Even online, they populate our messages: LOL, OMG, POS, IMHO.
In my professional world, that of public higher education in Minnesota, the dominating TLA is the MTC. (Its cousin, the MnTC is the same exact thing but interspersed inconsistently amid various MnSCU documents. “Consistency is all I ask!”)
The MTC, the Minnesota Transfer Curriculum, is a set of ten goals that every student earning a four-year degree at a Minnesota public university must experience. They range from the essentials, like oral and written communications, to math, the sciences, and the humanities. Besides content areas normally found in a single department, the MTC also includes thematic aims like “Critical Thinking” and “Human Diversity” and “Ethical and Civic Responsibility.” These are lofty goals. To earn a four-year degree, a student completes 120 credits. The MTC takes at least 40 credits, one-third of a student’s work. It’s not something “in the way” of graduation but something that’s an integral part of graduation.
Any system has its drawbacks, and the MTC is not immune. One remark I hear regularly comes from students “who just want to get done with generals” without seeing any reason for these fundamental and comprehensive goals, and without seeing any integration of these goals in their major, indeed every major. I heard one student complain once that none of his major classes in business counted in the MTC and that was a disappointment to him. “But, that’s the point,” I replied. “The MTC is the superstructure not the exterior.” I don’t think he was pleased with my answer.
At Southwest Minnesota State University, we call our MTC the LAC (formerly) and currently the LEP. (That’s the Liberal Arts Curriculum at one time and now the Liberal Education Program.) We’ve individualized the mandatory MTC in various and clever ways; we’ve put our own distinctive stamp on it.
For example, we use the MTC Goal #2, Critical Thinking, to have our incoming students take a First-Year Seminar. About a dozen professors teach differently themed seminars in the Fall, about eight in the Spring. Topics range from sexuality to the Great War to the mind/brain question to the meaning of life to jazz. These are small classes with about 25 students each. (Prospective students take note: SMSU = small classes, and at state U bargain prices.) We also have a further junior-year requirement that integrates oral and written communication, critical thinking, and information literacy around a central theme, once again, unrelated to a major so it can focus on the process and not the product.
It’s all a noble endeavor when we are confronted with rising prices of everything, fewer students willing to read (for its own sake), and a society that seems to be growing more and more intolerant of ideas qua ideas. Americans are practical if nothing else. And when times are tough, they get too practical. Many begin to think that four years in “college” is enough. “A lifelong career better be attainable once I don my graduation robe and cross the stage,” they argue, whistling against the wind.
Sadly, some students with such an attitude don’t realize that most careers will change radically or disappear entirely in a few years. Many of their future careers haven’t been invented yet. If you are a bit older, say past 40, you probably remember typewriters and black objects wired to the wall and to its component parts (i.e., telephones). You probably remember doing government forms (like a FAFSA or your taxes) using paper forms and a calculator or an adding machine. You probably never imagined first DVDs for rent then those rental stores going bankrupt as movies became streaming data. Life changes rapidly, almost instantly. And those workers without the skills to adapt (by learning, discerning, and exploring new ideas and technologies and careers) are doomed. Remember the dinosaurs; it wasn’t Noah’s Flood that swept them away. The world changed; they didn’t adapt.
My point about education is nothing new, I realize. John Henry Cardinal Newman made the same point (rather more eloquently) in his Ideas of the University more than 150 years ago. Education shouldn’t just be for the sons of an elite class, Newman wrote, nor should it exclusively be a practical hands-on training for hands-on jobs. Thinking clearly, speaking articulately, writing well: those should be the cornerstones of everyone’s education. Knowing something about real science is important with global climate change, earthquakes and tsunamis, radioactive meltdowns. Being able to understand math beyond balancing a checkbook is necessary each day with the Euro in trouble due to the economic crash of the PIGS nations, in addition to state and federal deficits. Comprehending the geopolitical world is about understanding the world not fearing it.
My First-Year Seminar next Fall is on World War One, the so-called Great War. As a British literature specialist, I have studied the War Poets in detail: Sassoon, Owen, Jones. My students haven’t. And so, my students explore the history of an antebellum European aristocracy gone by and then the ramifications of a repressive peace treaty. It’s a fascinating way to start college, too, learning about a generation with such noble ideals and ambitions that was cut off in its youth because they trusted their leaders too much. It’s no wonder the second act came along so quickly after the curtain of the first; World War Two was only twenty years after the repressive Treaty of Versailles, fought over much the same ground between many of the same combatants.
Confronted with a topic they know little about, my untrained students have to train themselves to discern and to connect it all so it makes sense. Regardless of topic, these thinking skills are for a lifetime.
History repeats itself. The MTC or our LEP won’t stop that. But, with effort and fortitude, students learn to apply these fundamental skills to their major course of study and eventually in their lives as employees, as engaged citizens, as educated and active voters.
This is all so idealistic, I realize. I know critics of higher education are calling for three-year degrees by reducing the kinds of classes I am advocating. I know many politicians want fewer skeptical and questioning citizen-college grads because a thinking electorate sees through sound-bite ads and knee-jerk, fear-mongering rhetoric.
But perhaps now is precisely the time to be idealistic. Delving into the areas covered by the MTC or our LEP maybe can’t change the world; it may, however, just change our understanding and appreciation of it.
And IMHO, that should make us all take a deep breath and text OMG!
“It is impossible to write a government document without
a mandatory TLA.”
Common knowledge.
My brother, Rob, (a wiz at computer programming) is the one who informed me of the useful term TLA, the Three Letter Acronym. In the computer world, acronyms rule: BIOS, HTML, and URL. Even online, they populate our messages: LOL, OMG, POS, IMHO.
In my professional world, that of public higher education in Minnesota, the dominating TLA is the MTC. (Its cousin, the MnTC is the same exact thing but interspersed inconsistently amid various MnSCU documents. “Consistency is all I ask!”)
The MTC, the Minnesota Transfer Curriculum, is a set of ten goals that every student earning a four-year degree at a Minnesota public university must experience. They range from the essentials, like oral and written communications, to math, the sciences, and the humanities. Besides content areas normally found in a single department, the MTC also includes thematic aims like “Critical Thinking” and “Human Diversity” and “Ethical and Civic Responsibility.” These are lofty goals. To earn a four-year degree, a student completes 120 credits. The MTC takes at least 40 credits, one-third of a student’s work. It’s not something “in the way” of graduation but something that’s an integral part of graduation.
Any system has its drawbacks, and the MTC is not immune. One remark I hear regularly comes from students “who just want to get done with generals” without seeing any reason for these fundamental and comprehensive goals, and without seeing any integration of these goals in their major, indeed every major. I heard one student complain once that none of his major classes in business counted in the MTC and that was a disappointment to him. “But, that’s the point,” I replied. “The MTC is the superstructure not the exterior.” I don’t think he was pleased with my answer.
At Southwest Minnesota State University, we call our MTC the LAC (formerly) and currently the LEP. (That’s the Liberal Arts Curriculum at one time and now the Liberal Education Program.) We’ve individualized the mandatory MTC in various and clever ways; we’ve put our own distinctive stamp on it.
For example, we use the MTC Goal #2, Critical Thinking, to have our incoming students take a First-Year Seminar. About a dozen professors teach differently themed seminars in the Fall, about eight in the Spring. Topics range from sexuality to the Great War to the mind/brain question to the meaning of life to jazz. These are small classes with about 25 students each. (Prospective students take note: SMSU = small classes, and at state U bargain prices.) We also have a further junior-year requirement that integrates oral and written communication, critical thinking, and information literacy around a central theme, once again, unrelated to a major so it can focus on the process and not the product.
It’s all a noble endeavor when we are confronted with rising prices of everything, fewer students willing to read (for its own sake), and a society that seems to be growing more and more intolerant of ideas qua ideas. Americans are practical if nothing else. And when times are tough, they get too practical. Many begin to think that four years in “college” is enough. “A lifelong career better be attainable once I don my graduation robe and cross the stage,” they argue, whistling against the wind.
Sadly, some students with such an attitude don’t realize that most careers will change radically or disappear entirely in a few years. Many of their future careers haven’t been invented yet. If you are a bit older, say past 40, you probably remember typewriters and black objects wired to the wall and to its component parts (i.e., telephones). You probably remember doing government forms (like a FAFSA or your taxes) using paper forms and a calculator or an adding machine. You probably never imagined first DVDs for rent then those rental stores going bankrupt as movies became streaming data. Life changes rapidly, almost instantly. And those workers without the skills to adapt (by learning, discerning, and exploring new ideas and technologies and careers) are doomed. Remember the dinosaurs; it wasn’t Noah’s Flood that swept them away. The world changed; they didn’t adapt.
My point about education is nothing new, I realize. John Henry Cardinal Newman made the same point (rather more eloquently) in his Ideas of the University more than 150 years ago. Education shouldn’t just be for the sons of an elite class, Newman wrote, nor should it exclusively be a practical hands-on training for hands-on jobs. Thinking clearly, speaking articulately, writing well: those should be the cornerstones of everyone’s education. Knowing something about real science is important with global climate change, earthquakes and tsunamis, radioactive meltdowns. Being able to understand math beyond balancing a checkbook is necessary each day with the Euro in trouble due to the economic crash of the PIGS nations, in addition to state and federal deficits. Comprehending the geopolitical world is about understanding the world not fearing it.
My First-Year Seminar next Fall is on World War One, the so-called Great War. As a British literature specialist, I have studied the War Poets in detail: Sassoon, Owen, Jones. My students haven’t. And so, my students explore the history of an antebellum European aristocracy gone by and then the ramifications of a repressive peace treaty. It’s a fascinating way to start college, too, learning about a generation with such noble ideals and ambitions that was cut off in its youth because they trusted their leaders too much. It’s no wonder the second act came along so quickly after the curtain of the first; World War Two was only twenty years after the repressive Treaty of Versailles, fought over much the same ground between many of the same combatants.
Confronted with a topic they know little about, my untrained students have to train themselves to discern and to connect it all so it makes sense. Regardless of topic, these thinking skills are for a lifetime.
History repeats itself. The MTC or our LEP won’t stop that. But, with effort and fortitude, students learn to apply these fundamental skills to their major course of study and eventually in their lives as employees, as engaged citizens, as educated and active voters.
This is all so idealistic, I realize. I know critics of higher education are calling for three-year degrees by reducing the kinds of classes I am advocating. I know many politicians want fewer skeptical and questioning citizen-college grads because a thinking electorate sees through sound-bite ads and knee-jerk, fear-mongering rhetoric.
But perhaps now is precisely the time to be idealistic. Delving into the areas covered by the MTC or our LEP maybe can’t change the world; it may, however, just change our understanding and appreciation of it.
And IMHO, that should make us all take a deep breath and text OMG!
RSS Feed
