Sale on Education

Pat Lang’s post on the U of VA sent genuine chills
through me. He put his point with some eloquence:

“What is happening at Charlottesville appears to be part
of a state wide effort to convert the state's many fine colleges and
universities into trade schools to support industry and the business community
generally. The process has had a certain elegant simplicity. Wealthy
business people give a lot of money.  They then are appointed to governing
boards.  After that they begin to agitate for "pragmatic"
reforms.  This generally means attacks on the Humanities.  These are
deemed to be "dreaming of the past"  rather than studies in which
critical, independent thinking is nurtured and fed on the experience of
mankind.”

Albert North Whitehead once said that civilization
is a precarious balance between “barbaric vagueness” and “trivial order.” The
current dispute in the University of Virginia clearly embodies this balance and
places in peril the whole idea of a cultured education.

But when the country is governed by a mass of people
with no clear intellectual ability, one of the first causalities is the idea of
education because such people have no idea of its significance, its enduring
value, the kind of spiritual growth and the promotion of reasonableness among
people that education at its best can produce. What is lost at the outset is
the moral obligation to be intelligent. We live in an age where the majority is
hostile to anything that is not useful. Such people have only strong views
about the immediate because it is only the immediate and the useful that they
can comprehend.

It should be pointed out that the ancient state did not share the utilitarian view of recognizing culture only as it was useful to the state, and it was very far from trying to weaken or destroy those impulses and activities that did not have immediate useful applications. The very reason
the ancient Greek had for the state a strong admiration and thankfulness, so
abhorrent to our modern, bumptious barbarians, was because he realized  that only without state protection, the germs of his culture could not develop. To the ancient Greek, the state was his
companion and friend and the protector of his spiritual development. They were
partners.

In America, this situation has been reversed.

Today in America, the educational institutions are at war, hiddenly and openly, with the
spirit of education.  In America, real talents in America life are being democratized in order that people may be relieved of the labor of acquiring culture and their need for it. There are two
main tendencies: a striving to achieve the greatest expansion of education on
the one hand, to expand it to the greatest possible extent, and a tendency to
minimize and weaken genuine education and culture on the other. In America,
most people are eager to obtain just the right amount of culture that allows
them to make a living. People are allowed just enough culture compatible with amassing
monetary gain. The greater number of such people, the happier the country will
be, goes the ordinary reasoning. But we cannot escape the fact that American
educational ideals are vulgar and superficial. We are addicted to any idea of betterment without understanding what genuine betterment means. Too often sober, practical men have no ideas worth having. They don’t know much that is worth knowing. They don’t revere the mind
and don’t want to make the effort to master a subject.  Their object is money predominance, not
culture.

Schemes of financial betterment neglect the obligation to be intelligent. It neglects the obligation to develop the human personality to its fullest ranges. For the students,  merely to be useful demands a much smaller energy and power of will on his part.

It should not be forgotten that there is an enormous
disparity between the multitude and the minute numbers of the truly educated. Nietzsche
said somewhere that the whole secret of education -- namely that the
innumerable host of men struggle to achieve it and work hard to that end, is
something too difficult for most to obtain.

So why is the education of the masses being pushed so ruthlessly on such an extended
scale? Because the structure of education wants to drive single great individual
into self-exile. The insidious vanities are no longer constrained by any real
barriers and have allowed or permitted the desire of the brainless to speak his
untutored mind. Originality of response to the classics, the humanities, is
demanded by today’s educators of their students, but only in the form that will
end by being by passed over in favor of the useful, the immediate, and the
desire for financial aggrandizement. It is a seeding ground for thoughtless
complacency.

Classics are there as a link to the past, a connection that places us in contact with past heroes and their deeds, who, like us, were animated at least in part by the feelings that reside in us. This is a
tough job that requires a talent for fine, discerning minds. It means a teacher
has to have a key critical impulse, the astuteness to separate the worthy from
the hapless trash. 

It might too be helpful to remind the sponsors of
education that both science and mathematics are liberal arts.

But be warned: the useful means contributions by
students that aid in building up the strength and prosperity of the state.  The scope of this is narrow and demands a much lower order of ability. There is a much higher form of vitality necessary
to realize the highest, most choice and most select achievements of the human
mind.  To concentrate on being useful, to be a “problem solver”  neglects the
effort needed to realize higher and more important abilities necessary to the
development of the human personality.

Nothing hobbles the mind more decisively than to
become merely a “problem-solver.”

Linguistic
Barbarism.

The complete want of style, the crude, characterless
or sadly swaggering methods of expression, are the key characteristic of our
age. Gone is the ideal to bring to life the disciplined, practical,  and well-thought out as a sacred duty. Instead we have irresponsible scribbling newspaper reading destroys any sense of any
kind of style.

Most ordinary life is lived on an ordinary level. When classes are dismissed, the student is drowned in the mediocrity of the current, the fashionable, the loud but false, the gossip novel, scandal, the tabloid. Students can easily drown in the vast oceans of falsehood and feverish overstatement. But
an advantage in studying  liberal arts consists of presenting a whole world of thought and reflection has to be set before students for them to peruse.

We live in a debased mass culture where the newspaper is the chief engine of informing. 
Any time any seeds of culture are sown, they are soon crushed flat by the steamroller of pseudo-culture.

But language has to be respected as the vital means of expression  and has to be mastered and
used with skill.  Nietzsche said that by the treatment of our other tongue we can see clearly whether we esteem the art of expression. He said, “If you notice no physical loathing when you meet with
certain words or tricks in speech in our journalistic jargon, cease striving
after culture.”

 

Teachers

Teaching is no longer seen as being part of the
highest sphere of human activity.

The teaching profession today embodies the spirit of
bureaucracy. Only a narrow mind is solely interested in problem solving or
financial or social advancement. Education is supposed to develop mental
faculties and talents as opposed to learning the technique of business success.

But to be successful, a teacher must have a mental life which includes reading books, studies, interests and having a reverence for ideas. They should have strong interests outside of their specialty.  Remember, there are fewer born teachers than born poets. Teachers must reject and repel the idiot idea that they were simply older versions that their students and not better informed than they are. Teachers should do better than have vague habits copied from life. Otherwise, classrooms
are often merely centers of the waste of expensive human material.

An
Example

One should look at Napoleon. People become captive
of their own schemes and intrigues for advancement at the expense of real
spiritual and intellectual growth. Napoleon had trained his memory and his
analytical powers of reason by sheer hard work and determination under the spur
of ambition.

He plunged himself into a course of self-education devouring particular books on military
or political history. In order to train his memory to hang on and utilize what
he had read, he wrote a prefis of the books he had read, and these voluminous
digests still survive. They cover his field of subjects and indicate the trend
of his thoughts and ambitions. He was more or less a negligent student, but his
mind, once awakened, his mind became a powerful machine, grinding through all
the materials that had come within his reach, appropriating them, absorbing
them and sorting them into compartments where they would be effective.  And he did this in poverty – in conditions that would discourage any prolonged or arduous study.

It is a stunning example to emulate.

Sale

Comments

[Walrus]

Ignorant people are easier to rule.

The falsehoods peddled by almost all of the political classes today go largely unchallenged because so few people have the education to challenge them and those that do are either cowed or complicit.

"Practical" education is code for dumbing down.

[kao_hsien_chih]

Mr. Sale,

The example of Napoleon is something truly stunning, but is it something that most college students, let alone most people, can be realistically expected to emulate? I've seen a few people who are truly Napoleon-like in their thirst for knowledge and understanding, but they are few and far between. We can perhaps encourage wider, more systematic emulation of Napoleon through our education institutions, but only if they are made sufficiently selective, and consequently, exclusive and "undemocratic." (I don't mean that the doors should be closed arbitrarily and artificially, but the requirements should be made so demanding that few could dare follow through realistically.) A "democratic" education of the kind that people (particularly of the so-called "liberal" persuasion, but also of the corporate kind as well) demand is the polar opposite: it should be made simple enough that just about anybody could do it. The demands placed on students should be minimized and the material should be stripped down and simplified--which is how much of higher education (esp public higher education) in this country has become in the past few decades.

I don't think it is possible for real and serious "liberal arts" education to become "democratic." In order to enrich our national intellect, we should perhaps institute a system where even those of lesser means could obtain it provided that they had the necessary talent and willingness--and we did, at one time, as that was how some of the better state universities became first rate institutions --but it cannot be open to the general masses unless the content of educations becomes oversimplified.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Quite right about N. Bonaparte.

He was from a good family and he was very bright.

Laplace explained to him his theory of solar system stability to him and Napoleon could follow him.

Later, he learnt the solution of a problem in geometry from a foreign scholar during one of his campaigns and once he went back to France, he explained the proof to the members of the French Academy.

Also I agree with you about Liberal Arts education, it is a form of democratic envy. Why is it that no one wants to make legal, dental, or medical education accessible to the masses? Or Pharmcy?

Very many people in US own pets - how about veterniary medicine for the masses?

[Bobo]

Bowditch took Laplace's Mechanique Celeste and translated it into English while improving its formulas. But Bowditch had the ability to teach the common man (his fellow seafarers) Celestial Astronomy during his voyages so they could use the stars to reach their destinations in life. Where are those teachers today.

[r whitman]

It seems to me that most of the Neocons running around screwing up the foreign policy of the USA are Liberal Arts graduates. Certainly, we STEM trade school grads do not claim them.

[Leanderthal]

This should be required reading, but it won't be because those who need to read it and understand it are those who have no use for anything in education which has no immediate utilitarian value.

Leanderthal

[YT]

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/mar/28/liberal-arts-enter-uncharted-territory/

At a time when places associated with "money predominance, not culture" are trying to explore new ways of reforming their education, it seems counter to the Zeitgeist of "spiritual growth and the promotion of reasonableness" that education of youth in a Superpower should be CHEAPENED to such a state where "only the immediate and the useful.... they can comprehend."

Reductio ad absurdum.

[optimax]

The following video shows how some college courses are no more than brainwashing techniques for instilling white guilt and promoting the cult of victimology, which leads to self pity and cultural paralysis. This is the opposite of what a liberal education was originally designed to do.

http://d-umn.campusreform.org/group/blog/university-sponsors-campaign-to-undermine-white-privilege

[YT]

Mr. Sale,

My personal thanks for another insightful Essay from your pen.

RE:"Classics are there as a link to the past, a connection that places us in contact with past heroes and their deeds"

Ah yes, perhaps among the reasons for the cultural revolution.

mao just wanted the masses to worship ONLY him.

To the continued moral decadence of the existing masses from the Middle Kingdom....

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/mao_zedong

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cultural_revolution

RE: "The complete want of style, the crude, characterless
or sadly swaggering methods of expression, are the key characteristic of our age. Gone is the ideal to bring to life the disciplined, practical, and well-thought out as a sacred duty....The teaching profession today embodies the spirit of bureaucracy. Only a narrow mind.... solely interested in problem solving or
financial or social advancement."

Aye, off with the Olde in order to beckon the New. How far have we progressed [away] from the progenitors of fascist thought?

"Man has acquired one by one a sense of his home, a sense of the neighborhood where he lives, a sense of his geographical region, and finally of the continent. Today he is aware of the whole world. He doesn't need to know what his ancestors did, he needs to know what his contemporaries all over the world are doing....
He must feel himself to be at once axis, judge and motor of the explored and unexplored infinite."

http://discourses.typepad.com/blog/2012/06/hark-a-clean-break-from-the-past.html

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filippo_Tommaso_Marinetti

Footnote:

L'empereur des Français was a Genius rare endowed with Unnatural Talents Godgiven & REFINED thru HARD WORK.

How many of us are there who fit the bill?

http://www.paulcooijmans.com/genius/rar_disc_genius.html

[YT]

Prof. Kao,

Who knows, perhaps you are the Scharnhorst of our Time?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_von_Scharnhorst

[kao_hsien_chih]

Yale, Harvard, and Princeton (and the like) will always offer solid liberal arts education. The question is whether the taxpayers of various states find it fit to offer liberal arts education.

I actually have somewhat of a mixed feelings on this count: FWIW, the Ivies have gotten a lot more democratic in their admission and financial aid packages last few decades--they are much less elite-oriented than before (although to say that they are not would be a blatant lie.) Many students for whom a good state university would have been the only practical option in the past can wind up at Ivy League schools. That lessens the "need" of state universities to offer real liberal arts education, as there are fewer students who demand such coursework--although it makes it even less desirable for students interested in real intellectual endeavor to choose state universities, thus driving the cycle further. This begs the question, whether they should continue to do so. I'm tempted to say that they should, so that liberal arts should not be the exclusive domain of the socioeconomic elites...but Ivies themselves are much less for socioeconomic elites than they were before.

[YT]

Dr. Brenner,

You said:

"You may find it instructive to look at the status of the Liberal arts such unlikely places as China, Singapore and the Gulf states. Of course, it is possible that the Chinese Mandarins, Singaporean technocrats and Gulf sheiks are also dupes who need a Jamie Dimon to straigthen them out - a Jamie Dimon who was hired out of Harvard Business School by Sandy Weill on the recommendation of Dimon's father and Weill's partner at American Express. The two teamed up to take over a loan sharking business on Long Island. The rest is history."

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2012/06/a-student-speaks.html#comments

Well sir, there's a sucker born every minute.

[Arun]

NY Times has a good article from which I quote:

"Dr. Sullivan said that online education was no panacea — and indeed, was “surprisingly expensive, has limited revenue potential and unless carefully managed can undermine the quality of instruction.”

And while she agreed that she is, indeed, an incrementalist, she stressed that that did not mean she lacked a strategic plan.

“Corporate-style, top-down leadership does not work in a great university,” she said. “Sustained change with buy-in does work.”

Many public university presidents, past and present, said that those on the boards of the leading universities — typically business executives without much experience in academia — do not always understand the complexities of leading a large research university, and the degree to which a president can succeed only by persuading.

“Everybody thinks university presidents are hierarchical and top-down,” said Donna E. Shalala, president of the University of Miami, and a former president of the University of Wisconsin and secretary of health and human services. “But we are not corporate chieftains, and we cannot rule from the sky. We are more like tugboat captains, trying to get our ships aligned and pulling them in the right direction.”

The great research universities, she said, have achieved their dominant position in the world through shared faculty governance, and leaving faculty both academic and research freedom.

“It was a lot easier to run a cabinet department than the University of Wisconsin,” Ms. Shalala said. “There are a lot of different constituencies at a university, and the president cannot be successful without buy-in from all of them.” "

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/26/education/public-universities-see-familiar-fight-at-virginia.html

[Babak Makkinejad]

It is mostly because they all have Ph.D.s and thus Know-it-alls.

It is like herding cats.

[YT]

Prof. Kao,

RE: "The question is whether the taxpayers of various states find it fit to offer liberal arts education."

Sad truth but thanks.