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General Education: The Human Community - Philosophy and Mission

Program Philosophy: The General Education Program: The Human Community is the core academic program of James Madison University, required of all students regardless of their major or professional program. JMU’s General Education Program seeks to educate students in ways that have been fundamental to higher education and to thinking people for many centuries. The philosophy of the program is the cultivation of the habits of the mind and heart that are essential for informed citizens in a democracy and world community. The General Education Program is committed to developing in students the power to reason, to make ethical choices, to appreciate beauty, to understand the natural and political worlds we live in, to understand the past and to work for a better future.

By providing a strong foundation of knowledge, skills, and experiences expected of all educated people, the General Education Program prepares students to become flexible thinkers and life-long learners. This core of knowledge, skills, and experiences transcends every major and professional program and is essential for successful and rewarding careers and lives.

In a rapidly changing world, it is increasingly important that students create knowledge out of vast amounts of information and place that knowledge in its social, cultural, historical, philosophical, economic, literary and political contexts. The role of the General Education Program is to introduce these concepts, so students understand that knowledge seldom develops in isolation, but rather within larger interactive and sometimes competing contexts.

As students study intensively in their chosen field, they also take General Education courses in which they can come to understand how different disciplines look at the world from different vantage points, using different methodologies, different tools, and different kinds of answers, reasons, or evidence. Thus, the General Education Program and the major or professional program complement and complete each other; together they are integral and essential components of a student’s full and proper education.

Mission: The mission of the General Education Program is four-fold:

  • to graduate students who will be informed citizens, well prepared to participate in public life and public decision-making;
  • to provide students with critical skills in reasoning, communication, and technology that build a strong foundation for course work at JMU as well as for their lives and careers after college.
  • to introduce students to the core areas of knowledge central to the history of western civilization, including its interactions with other traditions and the individual disciplines that contribute to these areas of knowledge. Central to this mission is the core learning in the humanities in which students grapple with the history of ideas and come to value great artistic and literary works.
  • to invite students to know themselves and to consider the connections between values and actions.