The Necessity and Method of Death Education as a Liberal Arts Subject

The purpose of this essay is to create and promote a discourse on how to develop and operate convergence education within the liberal arts. Currently, the liberal arts curriculum is suffering from considerable difficulties caused by the logic of capital that has penetrated into universities. In such a crisis situation, death education can be an important motive for restoring the value of liberal arts. Students must one day face their own death. In the face of existential and ontological death, students are forced to ask the most valuable and meaningful questions in life, and these questions contain the classic essence of the liberal arts.Death has a very complex and multi-layered nature that can not be dealt with only by a single major subject. In order to fully and deeply deal with death, convergence education is needed. As death is a mirror that reflects life as a whole, it is necessary for us to review carefully the various and opposing views and positions on death together. Therefore, rather than having one professor in charge of death education, it is much more effective for many professors with different majors to participate in the lecture as possible. Seen in this light, a lecture on ‘Life and Death’ as an example of convergence education in the liberal arts is presented. By participating in free and open discussion about the problems of life and death without trying to provide only one right answer, students can gain a broader perspective on human beings and the world, as well as have an opportunity to reflect on their own lives and make independent decisions.

A Study on the Direction of AI Liberal Arts Education Based on the AI Perceptions of Freshmen in University

In the era of the 4th Industrial Revolution, AI competency is essential not only for computer majors but also for non-majors. Therefore, AI courses are being offered as liberal arts education for non-majors at universities. Compared to designing a curriculum for AI majors, when designing an AI curriculum for non-majors their experiences and perceptions of AI must be taken into account.The purpose of this study is to examine the direction that the design of a liberal arts AI curriculum needs to take by examining the experiences and perceptions of AI among freshmen at university. A survey was conducted on 286 freshmen enrolled in the Humanities, Social Studies, and Arts departments of P University at the beginning of the first semester of 2021. The questionnaire consisted of questions to determine the degree of experience the students had with AI, as well as questions to determine their overall perception of AI. Based on the results of the survey, the correlation between their AI experience and their perception of AI was also examined. Furthermore, we considered the direction that AI liberal arts education should take for non-majors in universities. I hope this study will help us better design an AI liberal arts curriculum.

“They Paint Sedition on the Walls”: Towards a University of “Immigrants”

While publicly funded institutions in India have provoked the punitive ire of the ruling Hindu Right and systematically invited acts of state terror, a new education policy drafted by the same ruling party advocates a wholesale return to a “liberal arts” curriculum. The essay attempts to demonstrate how the “liberal” has become the cultural logic of a communal-fascist regime, insofar as the regime is harnessing universities to its project of redefining citizenship as exclusionary, with a special rejection of the citizenship claims of Muslims. In this context, how might we rally our forces behind a hijacked “idea” of the university—and what are the possible futures of such a political maneuver? This essay suggests how a practice of imaginative labor at the university might be leveled not toward citizenship, but toward lessons in immigrancy. It will also address how a mass online transition—prompted by policy in the name of a pandemic—reconfigures rights of entry to this imaginative labor.

The basic principles of a socially just arts curriculum, and the place of drama

This paper provides a descriptive historical analysis of the planning and writing of the Australian Curriculum: The Arts which occurred from 2009 to 2013. This process involved extensive consultation across a range of stakeholders, including curriculum research, background reading and analysis that preceded the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority’s writing process. The curriculum itself was underpinned by a range of democratic principles, including the importance of developing a socially just curriculum. This necessitated extensive discussion which interrogated the terms excellence and equity to ensure a high-quality arts education was accessible for all students, regardless of their background. The implementation of these principles is then explored through the perspective of the Drama writing team, including the importance of the subject Drama in developing a sense of inquiry and empathy in students by exploring their own and others’ stories and points of view. The final curriculum document for the Arts, and specifically for Drama exemplifies the importance of these social justice principles in responding to the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (2008) which advocates for equity and excellence in Australian schooling and for all young Australians to become successful learners, confident and creative individuals and active and informed citizens.