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For Lynch School of Education and Human Development Associate Professor Chris Higgins, it was a conversation that changed the trajectory of his career, and launched a book.
Some years ago, before he came to Boston College, Higgins met with an undergraduate who had recently, and reluctantly, dropped his computer science major. Describing his situation to Higgins, the sophomore could barely bring himself to say that he was 渦ndeclared,� a status he clearly considered shameful.
This moment crystallized for Higgins how society had lost sight of one of the essential purposes of higher education: the open-ended search for self-understanding. At that moment, he resolved to write a book that would help young people embrace this spirit of discovery, proudly declaring their 渦ndeclaredness.�
淚 don檛 know how moments like this still manage to surprise me,� said Higgins, the founding chair of the Lynch School Formative Education Department. 听淚 am well aware of the stigma. In the modern multi-university, 榞en ed� is just a toll booth on the credential highway. Students get the message, loud and clear: Pick a lane and step on the gas.�
Chris Higgins (Peter Julian)
Higgins� reminiscence of this encounter forms the prologue to his recently published book, Undeclared: A Philosophy of Formative Education, which comprises three lengthy essays and three shorter pieces that discuss the need to promote a form of learning that is 渦ncoerced and unscripted.
淚 hope Undeclared might speak to other students who are anxious because they have not yet managed to package themselves for the job market,� said Higgins. 淎nd for those whose undergraduate days are behind them, the book offers an invitation to get reacquainted with your inner sophomore.�
To Higgins, the distressed student exemplified what he calls 渢he efficiency of our miseducation. Here he was, beginning his sophomore year, and he was already mis-categorizing the virtue of the quest as the vice of indecision. He had come to the university hoping for something different from his earlier schooling.听 Instead, he found himself caught up in what was just a more advanced version of the same old game of 榮tudenting檾grinding from exam to exam and from pre-req to pre-req.� 听
In writing the book, Higgins drew on the variety of educational environments that he experienced, as student or teacher, from middle school through college. 听
The initial essay, 淪oul Action: The Search for Integrity in General Education,� addresses what it would mean to take holistic education earnestly. 淲ide Awake: Aesthetic Education at Black Mountain College� describes one of the great experiments in the history of higher education: North Carolina Black Mountain College, which during its 24 years of operation (the college closed in 1957) explored democratic self-governance and a form of holistic, general education rooted in the arts. 淛ob Prospects: Vocational Formation as Humane Learning� traces the lines of formation from the university into the work world.
Higgins calls the shorter pieces 渋nterludes潝an allusion to shorter musical passages punctuating a longer composition. 淐ampus Tour� provides a survey of the distortions of the university when it transformed into a business, while 淣ew Student Orientation� addresses the formidable drive to instrumentalize learning. 淧ublic Hearing� outlines how the defunding of public universities corresponds with the deterioration of the arts and humanities.
淭he three essays work to expand the higher educational imagination, recovering ideals that have been shoved aside or replaced by counterfeits,� he said. 淭he interludes intervene where we are prone to lapse into romanticization.�
Ultimately, Undeclared addresses the question of how to prepare people to think of their work as a vehicle for their own ongoing development, said Higgins, who discussed the issue at a recent educational forum: 淰ocational formation continues beyond just undergraduate preparation for it,� he said at the event. 淲e hope our students continue to learn not only for their jobs, but through their work. And we need to help them reflect on the goods served by their calling and to recognize when their work has become an ethical or existential dead end.�
Joining 51动漫 in 2019 not only helped Higgins complete the book, but afforded him opportunities to begin enacting its ideas.
听淚 jumped at the chance to come to 51动漫 because it a place that truly believes that undergraduate education should be formative. Here it is understood that questions of meaning, value, and purpose are central to the educational conversation. If you檙e not considering those questions, then it might be instruction, socialization, or training, but it not education.�
Recently he has begun working with the division of Student Affairs to explore and enhance the formative dimensions of residential life at 51动漫.
淎t many universities, there is a real divide between living and learning,� Higgins said. 淎t 51动漫 we make sure the quest for meaning and purpose extends beyond the classroom, creating spaces where students can engage in intellectual exploration and personal growth throughout the campus.
�51动漫 is obviously very different than Black Mountain College,� said Higgins. 淲hat the two institutions share is the idea of college as a community of persons-in-process, supporting each other efforts to make sense of ourselves, to clarify what matters, to carve out meaningful projects, and to organize our talents in the service of something worthwhile.澨� 听
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