Majoring in Idiocy
Rock Island, IL
A man’s ignorance is sometimes not only useful, but beautiful–while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly. Which is the best man to deal with–he who knows nothing about a subject, and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, or he who really knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all?
—Thoreau, Walking
In this short segment from ABC’s 20/20 John Stossel asks, “is college really worth it?”
“It” here refers to the debt that students incur while in college, and the proffered answer to the question is “no.”
Stossel interviews three college graduates who can’t find jobs that pay well enough to discharge their debts. Each feels in some way the victim of a false promise, deceived about the much-touted post-graduation prospects. In the course of this segment we also see Senator Clinton tossing off a well-worn statistic—that on average college grads make a million bucks more than those who don’t go to college (a statistic the segment calls into doubt)—and then President Obama expressing what is apparently an unimpeachable national wish: that all our children go to college and get high-paying jobs.
Whereupon an “educational consultant” named Marty Nemko tells us that all this is bunk. A college diploma, he implies, is hardly worth the paper it’s printed on. It’s “like a hunting license for a job,” he says.
Not to credit the sources too much, mind you, but what makes all of this so dull is that it is all so obvious. If we frame the discussion in purely monetary terms, a college degree is not worth what it costs. It will certainly “pay off” for a lot of people, but for many others–and their numbers are likely to increase–it probably won’t, especially for those who borrow to attend a highly selective, which is to say a highly expensive, liberal-arts college.
And, again, not to credit the sources too much, but what makes all of this so disheartening is that it is cast in monetary terms in the first place—and exclusively. Clearly the value of an education must be realized in dollars. Education is no longer an end but a means only—and a vulgar one. In such talk as we meet here it is impossible to make sense of knowledge “acted upon, informed, or . . . impregnated by Reason.”
But such was Cardinal Newman’s great concern. “Reason,” he said, “is the principle of that intrinsic fecundity of Knowledge, which, to those who possess it, is its especial value, and which dispenses with the necessity of their looking abroad for any end to rest upon external to itself.”
Imagine that on a brochure sent out by the recruitment department formerly known as the admissions office.
No. We will look abroad for any and all ends external to knowledge, and upon them we will place its value. Thus do we turn education into a minor league or (to continue the base metaphor) a “farm system” for the job market.
And once you’ve done that, you make talk of “investing in yourself” necessary. You must borrow with the hope of a return.
I would not be misunderstood. I am not objecting in principle to the fact that a college education comes with a price—that is, with a price tag. I close the classroom door when I lecture because, as the old joke goes, “they’re lining up in the halls out there, and I don’t do this for free.” But I am objecting to the fact that whereas education does come with a price and a price tag, it no longer comes with a cost.
It does not come with a cost because colleges and universities are essentially diploma retailers obsequiously bent on making the shopping experience of their customers enjoyable and painless. Discounts are everywhere. Items are clearly marked. The choices are many, the objects glittery. Can I get you some coffee? Hot chocolate? Be sure to visit our café on the third floor. Please take the moving stairs. One of our associates will be glad to assist you.
Consider the distribution requirements that have replaced core texts and core courses, and behold with what dispatch the university flatters commodity consciousness. See with what precision institutions imitate desperate retailers when these same institutions trot out their pre-professional programs and permit the students in them to avoid any meaningful contact with philosophy, theology, history, literature, political theory, or languages, whether ancient or modern. See how cheaply science holds itself in requiring no knowledge of its own history, in cultivating no suspicion of its own methods, and in sponsoring no inquiry into its fundamental assumptions. Behold the options in this sleek package: business, business administration, accounting, or economics—take your pick. No need to bother with land use, resource management, ethics, or thermodynamics. Business-as-usual will have no hecklers.
For education presently conceived and presently practiced has but one goal: the mass production of idiots.
I’m speaking—I hope—in fairly precise terms here.
An “idiot,” from the Greek idios (“private,” “own,” “peculiar”), is someone who is peculiar because he is closed in on himself or separated or cut off. In short, he is a specialist. If he knows anything, he knows one thing.
It was in anticipation of this idiot that Newman said, “Knowledge, in proportion as it tends more and more to be particular, ceases to be Knowledge.” Likewise, Emerson (to compare small men to great) said that “the soul holds itself off from a too trivial and microscopic study of the universal tablet”; “I cannot greatly honor minuteness in details,” he said, “so long as there is no hint to explain the relation between things and thoughts; no ray upon the metaphysics of conchology, of botany, of the arts. . . .” And Pope, in his indefatigable effort to remind us that we were made to walk upright and to contemplate the heavens, asked,
Why has not man a microscopic eye?
For this plain reason, man is not a fly.
Higher education lives in contempt of such writers and such notions. It prefers its specialists. It is itself an utterly idiosyncratic specialist specializing in specialists—in idiots. It advises students to borrow lots of money and recommends that they major in idiocy. (The consequences of this bad advice have been disastrous, as perhaps the state of this sorry country suggests, but that is a matter for another day.)
The idiot may have extensive knowledge of a given thing, but to the extent that he has no sense of where to place that knowledge in the larger context of what is known and knowable, and to the extent that he doesn’t know that the context for the known and the knowable is the unknown and the unknowable—to that extent his knowledge ceases to be knowledge and becomes a collection of mere facts, which, as Cervantes said, are the enemy of truth.
Again, I would not be misunderstood. In a manner of speaking we are all idiots, and anyone impertinent enough to get a Ph.D. flirts with idiocy every day of his life by virtue of the requisite and necessary specialization that attends the enterprise. That there are benefits to such specialization is, I think, unquestionable. It took a specialist to operate on my knee. It takes a specialist to make a fine cabinet or a good bookcase. But specialization is a limited, not an absolute, good, and it should never mistake itself for true intelligence. You may be an eminent Harvard biologist who knows a great deal about ants; you may be a brilliant if wheel-chair-bound British physicist who knows a great deal about string theory. But no amount of ants or strings or knowledge of how many ants can dance on the head of a string qualifies you to say that God is a delusion or human love a brain state. The world, said Thoreau, and rightly he said it (playing a variation on Hamlet’s theme), is bigger than our ideas of it.
We idiots, so closed in on ourselves, will more often than not fail to notice that ignorance is our default condition, that ignorance will always be our element, that knowledge is but a small blue patch in the cloud of unknowing, a tiny clearing in the vast forest of ignorance.
Being an idiot of the first order myself, I recommend as a precautionary measure “driving knowledge out of its categories,” as Wes Jackson and Bill Vitek say in The Virtues of Ignorance. I recommend as a second precautionary measure thinking of knowledge as a tool and of ignorance as a perspective. Such, at any rate, is the advice of one contributor to this fine book. By such measures and by the careful and humble discipline of broad learning we might arrive at the great Socratic conclusion.
I feel very sorry for the graduates who have been deceived by the diploma retailers. I am worried about the high school students who are being herded into the collegiate pens they do not belong in. I believe a great scam is being perpetuated against a lot of unsuspecting victims.
But a great scam is being perpetuated against a lot of suspecting victims as well. They are being told to borrow a lot of money for the privilege of majoring in idiocy. They are actually paying people to make them into idiots. The consequences are playing out before us. Everywhere you turn, an idiot is in charge. Not a stupid person, mind you, but an idiot. Look, for example, at the President’s economic advisors. Look, for example, at the deans and presidents of our colleges and universities. Look, indeed, at the professors of these august institutions. You will find scientists who have never read the Bible–and who could not tell you what kind of book it is; you will find Biblical scholars who have never read Darwin–and who also couldn’t tell you what kind of book the Bible is. (The Origin they take on faith.)
A solution would be to reform college curricula, to rethink the idea of the major, to insist that graduates know something. (I would require philosophy every semester, but who would teach these classes? Professors of philosophy? They love quarrels, not wisdom.) My great fear is that the keepers of the academy, themselves the victims of an education in idiocy, couldn’t recognize an educated man in a frat house.
Reminds one of the old Chinese saying:
For a return on the investment in one year, plant rice.
For a return on the investment in a decade, plant fruit trees.
For a return on the investment in a century, educate men.
Yes, well you’re on to something here, Peters, though one probably shouldn’t foul one’s own nest. However, being human we do seek the the truth of stuff in our finer moments and that’s the highest compliment I can give and so you got it.
Yes, every semester a course following Voegelin (Hey, Caleb!) and in the end you’ll have young adults capable of engaging in dialectics, of conjuring a thought, and the wisdom to seek the love of God. Now, that would be a worthwhile education.
The most important essay yet published on the Front Porch.
Is the production of these idiots an outcome of our rat race society, or is the rat race society an outcome of the mass production of idiots?
Such are the wages of the crowding attendant to Industrialism and her Sexy Bustier , Social Democracy. It is counter-productive to the conveyor belt’s proper progress to confuse the line with philosophy…particularly for the youngest entrants to the line. Best to specialize and physicalize so that the rapid hand movements suffice for meaning. When the feeble old-timers outlive their usefulness to the production of all that satisfies our wants, then they can be put out to pasture to wallow in philosophy and perform their penultimate role admirably: Marrying Intellect with Dour Cynicism, thus providing the proper warning to the young industrialist, safe and secure in their alloted car on the Social Ferris Wheel…… that it is best not to think too hard lest one becomes, heaven forfend, negative.
Philosophy is, among other things, an art of satire and when one is young and full of dreams, satire impinges on the task of maintaining one’s gullibility. But perhaps this is the bright side to the current scene. With job prospects slipping through the hands of the youngest, they will have time for satire and philosophy and hopefully, put on a better show than the busy drones of the last 50 years who have amply demonstrated the limits of gullibility.
Mr. Peters, I thank you, once again, for your writings. Keep up the good work!
Now that is calling a spade, a spade! And then taking the spade and throwing it through the window of the Dean’s office.
I’m afraid the whole Post Secondary Education System as we know it has become so rotted out by the profit principle that it can never be saved. The accreditation system that has been constructed to validate the “Job Hunting license” granting ability of these institutions requires such specialized idiocy.
My feeling is that the only way a truly well rounded Liberal Arts Education can exist is to place it outside of the Diploma Mill System. It would require a non-accredited institution to arise that focused on true education, for educations sake, and flipped a great big bird at the accreditation system. Such an institution would be unable to issue a “job hunting license”, which would free it and it’s students to pursue knowledge w/o concern for the whole rotted system as it currently exists.
It wouldn’t take much to run such an institution. A few committed professors, a roof over their heads, and some desks. I’d imagine you could drum up enough social misfits to fill the seats and cover expenses. Heck, I’d enroll just to listen to visiting Professor’s Cheeks and Sabin
Thomas, nothing stops you from starting such an endeavor. Indeed, that’s the beauty of what can sometimes still be called “freedom.” The problem is that such an endeavor isn’t free, and most people don’t sit around with “freetime” on their hands. A few of us here in these parts have book clubs, discussion groups, and Bible studies in which we wrestle with “the tough, but worthwhile, questions of life”; but most of us are still accountants, engineers, and professionals by trade.
My view is that if your degree wasn’t around one hundred years ago either in a trade or in a university then you’ll probably be out of luck, and a job, when all of this economic “stuff” hits the fan. I’m talking about the marketers, financial consultants, Professional Counselors, and other trendy degrees. I like the thought of returning to vocational schools outside the confines of the modern university as most of us know them, with apprenticeships and long periods of “learning the ropes.”
I decided to stay at home, work while in school, avoid every ounce of voluntary debt, and learn a trade that will probably survive even after the roaches are dead: accounting/taxation. I figure if my patron saint was doing it before he got a higher calling, it’s good enough for me.
Of course, all of this is tied into several other social ills beyond the scope of this essay, like false individualistic materialism, crumbling family structures, and inept public (and private) governance. I’ll no longer ask what seems to be a recurring question “what can be done about it?” since the answer is in each of our own two hands, and their holding each others’ in subsidiarity-solidarity.
Edifying essay. Calling out university education in part as retail is very incisive. When I was in grad school, my time as a graduate teaching assistant was one of the major things that convinced me I didn’t really want a PhD and definitely did not want to become an academic. The students, particularly in the 100 level survey classes, were lazy, incurious, and surly, but had a very strong sense of entitlement to a passing grade, no matter what their level of participation and achievement in class. It was an outrage to give a failing grade; I *had* to curve the grades, give the gentleman’s C, etc. because they (their parents) had paid real money for this and awarding failing grades was messing with their career path. Sadly my professor went along to get along, and the university administration was concerned with other things than their students actually learning something and walking out in 4 years as educated people. Things were so bad, the school required graduating seniors to take a test to prove basic writing proficiency in English (this was in the mid-90s, just checked, they still require it).
I suppose it doesn’t help matters that they are also entering college as idiots, secondary schools having also failed them, by and large.
Over 30 years ago I dropped out of a PhD program in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology long before I got to the ABD stage. There were a number of factors that led to that decision, but I decided one evening when I was reading some of G. Evelyn Hutchinson’s work. (A phylogenetic tree of his intellectual descendants is shown here. It was old already when I was in grad school, but I have known some of the people in that tree, as well as descendants not shown, and had my branch of that tree picked out.
I realized that for me to be successful, I would have to drop a lot of my other interests and concentrate just on my specialty. I think I could have been successful at that, but I was not willing to pay the price of dropping my other interests. Hutchinson kept up many outside interests, and so did some other people I knew, but I was not as smart as they were. I did not have the capacity to do that.
And even Hutchinson, polymath that he was, had made what seemed to me some shallow, superficial comments on issues of religion and philosophy.
So instead I dropped out and have a job where I get to poke my nose into a lot of peoples’ specialties. Jack of some trades, master of none.
As to what our schools should do, well, I need to get back to my job as a jack of some trades now, so I’ll spare you my rants on that subject. But I have a lot of them in store.
Dear Prof Peters,
As always, I look forward to your essays. I think there is some hope (among Catholics) with Colleges like Christendom who focus on the classics and great books.
I am not sure if reading FPR gives me hope or hopelessness, but I always appreciate your writing.
Peace and grace,
-jp
Jason, You are of course right in every particular. Russell Kirk was saying the same things 60 years ago, and generations before him knew the same truths. What must be added is that “education” is the Great Progressive Faith, and also the great progressive hoax. Universal “public” education was a product of the same mentality and the same generation that gave us the income tax, direct election of US Senators, the Federal Reserve, the Food and Drug Administration, and the War to End All Wars. The educational “institutions” they bequeathed have metastasized into the idiot-producing factories that you describe. We are all Progressives now.
Franklin said, “He who hath a trade, hath an estate.” I tried to teach my students that bit of wisdom (it got me through graduate school with three children without debt); it’s still true, and should take the place of the ubiquitous proposals for whatever it is that almost every “educational institution” calls for. An idiot with the skill of a welder will always have a chance for an honorable life. An idiot with an MBA rarely will.
Amen. This essay says many of the things I’ve said myself since beginning grad school, most of which I’ve stopped saying only out of exhaustion at hearing myself say them. A cultural institution that was, in this country, born from the church has been adopted by the mall.
Let’s start a new school. I suspect we all know what it would look like.
“[Life] is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
In a way, idiocy is not as much related to knowledge (specialized or vast or deep), but rather to meaning. The world is thus populated by idiots with a diploma and idiots without one. The present elite’s mission is to calm the idiot. An academic degree proves in the first place that the graduate is an idiot cured of fury. In other words, the lack of meaning appears to him/her as a natural phenomenon.
“Centenary College of Louisiana fosters a rich intellectual and social atmosphere. Students work within a strong community to create personalized, distinctive experiences. Building lives of integrity, our students explore the unfamiliar, invent new approaches to understanding, and connect their work and lives to the world at large. Centenary students enjoy a vibrant college life and achieve superior preparation for futures still unimagined.”
One future that will be unimaginable for its students is understanding Latin. “Unfamiliar” to them will be the language of the West for more than a millennium. Some “connections” they won’t make “to the world at large” is the self-understanding that comes through linguistic and literary knowledge of the language at the root of their own. Gosh, they won’t even learn the meaning of the word “integrity,” much less be likely to achieve it in their studies. Nor will they understand the word “idiot,” either, which will be a further profound obstacle to self-understanding.
Why? Because the numbers aren’t there. Classics will cease to exist at Centenary – and, I predict this will not be the last school where this is the case – because of the need to “invent” new programs for yet “unimagined” futures.
The only way we will actually be able to live in “unimagined futures” is by erasing the past. That is, by destroying the conditions in which imagination can flourish. Then, every future is “unimaginable,” since we will simply be living in an echo chamber populated by idiots busy creating “personalized, distinctive experiences.” This is “higher education.”
“because of the need to “invent” new programs for yet “unimagined” futures.”
I was riding in to DC on the Metro rail today, and like everyday I see people reading the free dailies that are handed out at the Metro entrance. As usual, there was a backpage ad from George Washington University, with its ad slogan “Bring us your Ambition!” Today’s ad featured the GW “Security and Safety Leadership” master’s degree.
GW’s “ambition” and its idiotic programs also remind me of Prof. Deneen’s post a while back on monocultures:
“The schools that are supposed to educate human beings for responsible lives also are undergoing transformation into a monoculture. Their aim is to create a mobile army of itinerant vandals, laborers in the international corporate culture whose one and only aim is to produce a monoculture of economic growth.”
We’re producing people with a special skill? Oh no! I supposed my mechanic’s technical school should have taught him some Shakespeare along the way? In an information based economy, like the modern US, it is impossible to be a renaissance man/woman, it is feature of our society, not our students.
Yes the education system is horribly flawed, but it is not because of training idiosyncratic skill sets. Rather, I point the finger at horrible national and state policies made by non-academics and a plethora of ignorant non-academic bureaucrats at the reign of most higher-learning institutions.
George F,
“….a graduate is an idiot cured of fury”.
This made my morning. That and “meaninglessness” as a new age Natural Phenom. Whoo boy, you’re on a roll there.
This was a difficult read for me, Jason, because I’m currently a coming to the end of a two-year-long process of proposing a redesign of our general education curriculum. Would that the intellectual and material infrastructure existed for us to stand firm on the side of the classic understanding of humane learning, but it does not. Friends University is a fine, small, non-denominational Christian school, that offers its students a good education. But it is not swimming in money; it is tuition-driven; its students mostly live at home or with friends and commute to campus for a few hours a day; and it is dependent upon appealing to donors and parents and prospective students that for the most part wholly (and, in some frustrating cases, enthusiastically) embrace the Zeitgeist: assessment, outcomes, productivity. I can mock the worst parts of it, but I like my students and my job and my colleagues and my paycheck too much to absolutely refuse to acquiesce.
And so I, with a dozen (often equally reluctant) colleagues, have gone along with developing a proposal which mandates certain competencies (writing, mathematics, communication, computer literacy, etc.), requires some exposure to religion and foreign languages, then leaves everything else (humanities, history, the sciences, literature, citizenship, music and drama, etc.) to be satisfied, under a set of goals: “Knowledge and Skills,” “Values and Beliefs,” “Critical Thinking,” and “Global Awareness.” The goals themselves, of course, presume specialization, and hence, strictly speaking, idiocy; there is not concern for the whole person here, no concern for the soul. But I fool myself into thinking that some semblance of the liberal arts will remain, regardless. I hope so, anyway. I am fearful that the proposal will be shot down by the faculty…and that the administration will respond by not letting the faculty design the next reform, but rather will hire some consultants to come in, and impose it upon us a from above. The lesser evil certain appeals to me, in this case.
NMSU Prof -
We’re producing people with a special skill? Oh no! I supposed my mechanic’s technical school should have taught him some Shakespeare along the way? In an information based economy, like the modern US, it is impossible to be a renaissance man/woman, it is feature of our society, not our students.
A university is not supposed to be a vocational technical school. If someone needs or desires training for a trade, then learn a trade where those things are offered. Universities are supposed to offer an education, not skill training. I suppose this corruption of the idea of the university is what has led us to the point where you can’t get a university education at many universities.
And your second assertion is just flat out false, though I admit I’m stuck at “information-based economy” – just what is that supposed to be, anyway?
I’m just sharpshooting here, but “computer literacy” as a core competency? Really? Do they actually suspect students are going to matriculate in this day and age not knowing how to operate a computer? Good grief.
NMSU Prof,
There is nothing wrong with certifying someone in a practical trade and encouraging young men to pursue vocational training or a career in business. Not everyone, after all, can, will, or should become the next Shakespeare, or even a reputable Shakespeare scholar.
Indeed, it would be somewhat grotesque to certify a student as really having understood Shakespeare.
The real problem with four-year universities in America is that they abandon rigorous programs in the liberal arts in favor of glorified vocational training (e.g., many business programs), but allow these four-year universities to continue to describe themselves as liberal arts colleges.
Steve K.
Do they actually suspect students are going to matriculate in this day and age not knowing how to operate a computer? Good grief.
Well, actually, yes–though there are two answers to that question. The first answer is that “competencies” baseline requirements, to be demonstrated and then passed on. If you did well in high school English, you may not have to take the basic composition course. Ditto if you scored high on the math portion of the SAT. In regards to computers, if you can test out of a basic computer usage course, then you automatically get the credit for it, don’t have to physically take the course, and go on to the next subject. Most students will, of course, test out, which is fine: it just establishes that they are competent with the tool, that’s all.
The second answer is that, in teaching a competency, we often expose serious, deep ignorance, which our choice-driven, technologically-enabled age often allows people to ignore. This is well known in writing: someone may be able to communicate adequately, but they can’t right a decent paragraph to save their life. It is just as real in computers: student may be able to eloquently and detail dispute about apps on their cell phones, but how many can actually format a document? Not all of them, I can testify of that.
Omnes solo Euclidem lingua in Graeca annos quinque transcribere debent. Id debet figere omnia.
David, ad quid figimus omnia, dum legimus Graece Euclidem?
Steve K., point well made. We must have cross-posted.
I graduated with a degree in Classics from a well-respected liberal arts college. The professors were very well meaning, extremely intelligent, and generally very able teachers. They are being forced to make cuts, much like any other Classics department.
Ideally, I would be up in arms over such a proposal – no more Latin? No more Greek? The whole history of the West, reduced to English translations?
But really – it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter one bit. My ‘classics’ education wasn’t holistic. I was never required to take ancient philosophy. Aside from some Augustine in a medieval Latin seminar, the ancient world and the Christian world were never tied together. The fragments of a “classical” education were there, but only the fragments. Nothing tied them together. The department has no telos, no overarching goal. I wasn’t being taught Latin and Greek, Homer and Cicero, to inform myself, to become a better man, to learn the origins of things. I was being taught these things so that I could pass graduate school competencies and become a Classics professor myself. At best.
So, when Dr. Deneen mourns the passing of yet another Classics department, I’m apathetic. What kind of a classical education were they really offering?
“For mere improvement is not redemption, though redemption always improves people even here and now and will, in the end, improve them to a degree we cannot yet imagine. God became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man.”
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Steve K.,
Knowing how to use a computer as a tool is important, but lots of people figure it out without taking formal classes, just like a lot of people figure out how to have sex without having formal classes in it. I’d rather save valuable classroom hours for things that are not likely to be learned any other way.
I’m not sure why it’s called “literacy,” though. My guess is because people can’t think of good reasons for conducting these classes, so try to dignify them with a name that sounds important.
Many such courses that I’ve seen are mostly a waste of time. They teach students things that are obsolete and don’t teach them the things they need. And even when they are well taught and relevant, they shouldn’t be taking up valuable course slots.
[...] Rufus F. Something’s in the air: over at the Front Porch Republic, Jason Peters rails mightily against universities as “diploma retailers” turning young people into “idiots”. [...]
It’s funny, “crunchy” educationalist John Taylor Gatto complains of the exact opposite – that students are being taught too much instead of learning the “idiotic” specialist knowledge required to pursue a vocation successfully.
Stephen, ad solum. If it was good enough for Aeneas, it’s good enough for me.
Nick the Greek, I don’t think that is an accurate representation of Mr. Gatto’s views. He does not claim students receive a liberal education, but one designed according to the purposes of the elites.
T. Chan – in lesson one of Gatto’s essay ‘The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher’, he talks about teaching a vast array of different things which are portrayed as being disconnected from each other. He seems to regard confusion as the inevitable by-product of a liberal education.
Nick the Greek — I skimmed it briefly; he doesn’t appear to be criticizing a liberal education (which at any rate cannot be given to children at the primary level except for the necessary foundation of grammar, etc.), but the encyclopedic approach that schools take — trying to stuff children with all kinds of facts that really do not have much relevance to them at that point in life. The same sort of criticism can be levelled at how they teach science, without criticizing the value of knowing the sciences. A liberal education is more than “studying the humanities” — the best exponents of a liberal education give it an order as well.
Well I am a little disapointed – in that education – especially higher ed – seems much too easy a target for your wicked weekly commentaries.
As for idiocy – yeah – idiocy abounds but seriously – has there ever been some glorious time when idiocy didn’t run rampant? So our system of education has given us the income tax – well – previous systems gave us WWI, WWII, and even – phrenology! I’m tempted to add the enlightenment to that list but enlightenment bashing is becoming so cliche nowadays. I am giving up on the search for 100% intelligent life on this planet – humans are clearly prone to idiocy.
Now I would agree that idiocy at Universities in the past is easier to tolerate than the stuff one has to deal with every day. So yes – there is much to be disgusted by in the current system. I am getting very suspicious though of reform proposals – it occurs to me that part of why we have such a mess now is because we had such a fervor for educational reform in the 70’s.
Part of my loss of faith in reform comes from the observation that every time we implement some grand solution to our discontents – we simply create new problems. The indebtedness of undergrads seems a good example. Some schools (naming no names here) now refuse to do loans for undergrads – providing only grants. The problem though is that only those elite schools with big endowments can afford this sort of thing so we risk – if the trend continues – a situation wherein we have a two tiered system – kids who can get into the wellendowed schools will have no/little debt versus kids who end up in less fortunate schools will continue to have piles of debt. Which is worse – everyone has piles of debt or some have piles of debt?
I suspect that the rush towards everyone going to college was an attempt to obscure the fact that there simply were no longer sufficient decent paying jobs for all those 18 – 22 year olds. Four years of college keeps em out of the unemployment stats. Part of the dilemna now is that it is becoming clear that the BA doesn’t help you get a decent job but there aren’t a whole lot of decent jobs for skilled labor either. People will turn more towards skilled labor type training as opposed to college when the opportunities for such jobs are there.
And despite all the high tech – I agree – most kids cannot even format a document.
America at work may be described fairly as an Idiocracy. The rationalized American workplace, think McDonalds, think Excel spread sheets, think men pushing mice through the ether world, puts a high value on efficiency. The result is the steady demand for Idiots which our corrupt educational institutions and government bureacracies, in their mind numbing ignorance and puritan yankee zeal, have committed themselves to supplying. For cash. Lots of it. And the result has been the big box stores and strip malls all along the interstate that have strip mined small town America of dignity, place and people.
Heretofor the University applied itself to providing wherewithall for passage through the desert, not to the desert. As Nietzsche warned “the wasteland grows.”
Gah! We were so close to overturning this. I think.
A few summers a go, to pay for my grad school, I was working summers in landscaping. I ran into three or four young guys that summer, all of whom had dropped out of college for the exact reasons you discuss here. College was stupid. Ridiculous. They had no interest in it whatsoever. Probably to their credit. One had even dropped out of engineering school and enrolled in a union-operated machinist program. Another, who had never declared a major, had dropped out to become a plumber’s apprentice. Another was running a crew for a wall-anchoring business. All of these guys were hard chargers, doing really well and learning a ton of cool stuff at the age of 19-22. They smoked and drank a lot, ran with loose women, and drove cars that cost too much, but at least they were paying for it themselves.
Not sure where they are now. With the economy in the tank, I am assuming they got laid off, and are now following government programs that insist the best way forward is to stop learning these things and go to college. Maybe they will all major in womens studies or sociology and the world will be more just because of it.
Maybe not.
http://www.sjca.edu
qed
Peters, incredible. Enough said.
While I suspect, based on your framing of examples, that we might have some disagreements about what constitutes an ideal curriculum, I am very grateful to you for writing such a thoughtful essay. I really couldn’t agree with your analysis of “higher” education in the U.S. more. Of the over 1600 accredited colleges and universities, only a tiny fraction function as anything other than vocational preparatory institions. Schools like the small Catholic university at which I teach, unfortunately, are handicapped by a dreadful endowment coupled with an administration with neither the vision nor the will to promote us as anything other than a means to the job market for kids coming out of high school. While the Arts & Sciences faculty is quite committed to the liberal arts ideal, the structural features of the admissions process, orientation, registration procedures, and paternalistic disposition toward our incoming students, coupled with an array of graduate programs (health, business, education) to which our students are shuffled, assure that our classrooms are filled with young men and women who grudgingly accept the imposition of a broad core curriculum with the confidence that it is only a pill to swallow before the “real” education begins when they focus on their majors by junior year. It’s not that nothing resembling Newman’s ideal can be found on our campus, it’s just that it always comes as a pleasant surprise when it does.
“My view is that if your degree wasn’t around one hundred years ago either in a trade or in a university then you’ll probably be out of luck..”
Yes, those new-fangled “computer science” degrees will get you nowhere!
Education isn’t an external process – you do it for yourself. If you weren’t interested before you were sent to school, you won’t be when confined to a classroom. It takes 100 hours to teach someone to read. After that, the educational system is a warehouse that keeps kids off the streets until they’re legal to work.
Anyway, Indian and Chinese grads, willing to work for $300 a month, are pretty much going to wipe the floor with American grads, who can’t read or write. Besides, Americans are often saddled with a half million dollars in debt by the time they get out – while the Indian taxpayer has absorbed the bill for them.
I really appreciate the views I’ve found here, btw. I’d come to conflate “conservative” with knuckle heads like Ann Coulter. It’s refreshing to find so much common ground and reasonable speech!
Patrick J. Deneen -
“One future that will be unimaginable for its students is understanding Latin. “Unfamiliar” to them will be the … self-understanding that comes through linguistic and literary knowledge of the language at the root of their own.”
English is a Germanic language, not Italic.
I agree, Mr. Peters, though I will join JP in pointing out that places such as Christendom College (VA) and Thomas Aquinas College (CA) do exist. On the whole, though, “higher” education in America has fashioned for itself a sad state of affairs. The continued existence of (and growing interest) in places like Christendom, TAC et al, however, is encouraging.
Laszlo – though English is Germanic in origin, an enormous amount of its vocabulary comes from Latin. Knowledge of Latin can and does lead to a better understanding of the English language.
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