Posted on September 23, 2002
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A Petrology of the Liberal-Arts Curriculum:
Keystone Versus Capstone
Evan T. Williams
Chair, Environmental Studies Major
Professor of Chemistry
Lewis & Clark College
0615 SW Palatine Hill Road
Portland, OR 97219-7899
etw@lclark.edu
Over the course of developing a proposal for our new environmental studies major
at Lewis & Clark College, the concept of an integrative culminating senior
seminar was discussed and approved. Senior
seminars are a very common feature of today’s liberal-arts curricula and are
widely referred to as “capstone” courses.
In thinking about
this course, I have become increasingly dissatisfied with the metaphor of the
capstone. For me, the term capstone
calls up the image of a heavy block sealing off the top of a structure with an
impermeable lid to keep out the elements and to protect and immobilize the
stones beneath. By definition, no
further extension of the structure is envisioned or permitted.
The capstone marks the top and implies finality; nothing can be built
upon it. Since the senior seminar
marks the top or culmination of the undergraduate major, it is easy to
understand why the term has achieved near ubiquity.
But wait – is
the senior seminar really the ultimate intellectual pinnacle?
Certainly not if one goes on to post-graduate study.
However, that is not really my point.
I believe that most people, especially those in academe, would agree
that, at any stage, an individual’s intellect and understanding of a
discipline or an interdisciplinary field, must be considered a work in progress.
We are fond of saying that learning never ends.
If we agree on that, then should we not agree also that the capstone
metaphor is not a particularly accurate representation of our thoughts on
education and intellectual development?
Thus, I began to
ponder other possibilities. To one
who has long been fascinated with rocks, it seemed that a lithic or petro-metaphor
would be highly suitable. A new
metaphor not greatly different from the popular one in current use might gain
relatively easy acceptance.
Several common
stones come readily to mind. My Shorter
Oxford Dictionary defines “touchstone” as: “a thing which serves to
test the genuineness or value of anything.”
That’s pretty good. Perhaps
every major should have a touchstone course somewhere along the line. Or,
perhaps, a touchstone course, taught in an interdisciplinary manner, naturally,
ought to be a required part of the general-education program of every
liberal-arts college. It is surely
appealing to think that our students would, by taking such a course, gain the
ability to “test the genuineness of anything!”
In a sense, this is one of the outcomes of a liberal-arts education
fervently to be desired.
Exploring the
array of available petro-metaphors further, another kind of stone presents
itself: the cornerstone. Not a bad
metaphor for a crucial part of the curriculum either. Quoting the dictionary again; the cornerstone is “an
indispensable part or basis on which something depends.”
Generally, we would expect to find cornerstone courses at the
introductory or intermediate level (a research-methods course, or an
introductory survey, for example) of the curriculum of an academic major. A
cornerstone course would be definitely a good thing to have, setting, as a
cornerstone does in a building, the style as well as providing a solid
foundation or connection to the foundation.
Cornerstones, however, are generally found near the base of a structure.
Thus, this metaphor, while useful, does not answer.
The architectural
component that I believe provides the most apt metaphor for the senior
integrative seminar is the keystone. The
keystone is the block without which the structure is not whole; it receives and
joins forces of upwardly-reaching members of an arch and creates a structure
that soars with lightness yet with solid integrity and strength.
The integrative strength of the keystone is a natural one that does not
depend for its function on massiveness but rather works because everything falls
into place around it and is strengthened and brought together by it, making all
the components work together. A
keystone is synergistic, yielding a structure that is stronger than the
individual parts would be if they were merely stacked together, one on top of
the other. It exists to unite structural elements rather than to be the
final “capping” element in a linear sequence.
But most
importantly for me, a keystone, in contrast to a capstone, does not imply
finality; an arch readily serves as the foundation for further development of a
structure. And, of course, because
the fit is so natural and synergistic, a keystone confers a lasting strength on
the structure of which it is a part. One
only has to look at an ancient Roman aqueduct or a Medieval gothic cathedral to
see the clearly-apparent truth of this in architecture.
An additional benefit is that the keystone has obvious centrality;
without it, the arch is not an arch. The
absence of a capstone would not be such an obvious structural void.
Getting back to
the curriculum, I maintain that the important courses for seniors mentioned in
the first paragraph play the same role as the keystone.
This concept could be the basis (the key?) for better recognizing and
emphasizing the importance of the senior keystone course/project/seminar.
In fact, one could use these three types of architectural stones to lay
out a structure for a general-education scheme:
the cornerstone course for new students, the touchstone course (metaphor
for methodology courses?) at the intermediate or advanced level and finally, the
keystone course for seniors. Have
we perhaps gone to the quarry a bit too often?
No matter.
Nevertheless,
because the message is so important and because the metaphor should convey the
intended message accurately, permit me to suggest that we discard the
descriptive word capstone and term these courses for what they really are;
keystones acting as essential courses joining the various structural members and
components of our respective academic majors; courses which, in the final
analysis, serve as strong, elegant, foundations for further intellectual
endeavor.
