From Liberation to Remediation: The Rhetoric of General Education

Ever since its origins as a post-World War II movement designed to democratize education and promote civic engagement, General Education has been the source and subject of political battles. From Liberation to Remediation explores how Gen Ed’s initial goal of providing a common intellectual foundation for all students has been gradually undermined, resulting in a growing perception that General Education is unnecessary for high-achieving students and is instead a remedial path for those deemed underprepared.

Kelly Ritter addresses how lawmakers, for-profit testing companies, and even universities fuel public misconceptions of what Gen Ed can provide for our democracy and the role that a broad-based college education plays in social uplift. Tracing the history of the public rhetoric that persuades parents and students to see these courses as a set of interchangeable precollege credits to gain (or game) by any means necessary, she examines how positive and negative public responses to the curricula affected the position of core subjects in US universities, focusing on first-year writing. She also explores the role local, state, and organizational politics played in Gen Ed’s positioning, including decisions related to race, social class, and educational attainment; the impact credit-by-exemption and seamless transfer had on the quality and import of Gen Ed programming in both high schools and colleges; and the perceived use-value of the courses themselves in the face of rising college costs. Finally, she considers which student populations have benefited from the denigration of Gen Ed’s value and which have been left behind.

Drawing on archival research and case studies, From Liberation to Remediation raises important questions about equity, access, and the role of General Education in US higher education’s future and demonstrates that recovering the original post-war democratizing principles and practices of Gen Ed is critical to the continuance of a literate, empathetic, and civic-minded democracy for the twenty-first century.

Kelly Ritter is chair of the School of Literature, Media, and Communication and professor of writing and communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia. She is the author of four books and editor or coeditor of four collections, including Beyond Fitting In: Rethinking First-Generation Writing and Literacy Education. Her work has appeared in CCC, College English, Rhetoric Review, Pedagogy, Profession, WPA: Writing Program Administration, Composition Studies, JAC, Slate, The Conversation, and The Chronicle of Higher Education and in numerous edited collections.