General Education Course Development and Critical Openness : Focusing on Liberal Art & Science Education Courses

This paper articulates the need for research on the development of general education courses and proposes critical openness as a guiding criterion for such research. Critical openness refers to a mode of discussion concerning theories or topics in which no assumptions or principles are exempt from critical evaluation. This notion reflects both the goals of general education— namely, integration and openness—and the practical realities of education, in which extensive course-taking within a single disciplinary field is neither feasible nor desirable for students. Moreover, critical openness varies across topics and disciplines, as the objects and character of critique differ, resulting in course-specific differentiation. Even in such cases, however, the identity of general education is preserved as critical openness, characterized by the explicit questioning of underlying assumptions and principles.