Wednesday, February 2, 2011

What is education for?

"Mr. Pullman's Compass," (Editorial) in The New York Times, February 1, 2011, at p. A26.
Brand Blanshard, "What is Education For?," in The Uses of a Liberal Education and Other Talks to Students (La Salle: Open Court, 1973), pp. 73-93.

It was reported this morning on television that several American politicians believe it is a "mistake" to prepare all students for a four-year college or university experience. We are told that it may be wiser to ensure that a number of young people -- especially many of the poor, African-Americans possibly -- will attend vocational training schools rather than universities.

How much better for all of us it would have been if this advice had been followed by George W. Bush. Mr. Bush and everyone I know would have been happier if George W. Bush had attended computer repair school or learned to be an electrician as opposed to wasting his time at Yale and Harvard Business School.

Naturally, none of the politicians making this helpful suggestion have opted for vocational training when it comes to their own children. This is strange. America's Republican politicians who share this mind-set are confident, however, that "refrigeration repair" or "automobile mechanics" (perhaps the wonders of barber college) will be just fine for other people's children.

I am sure that U.S. Senator Marco Rubio would have been very happy with his own construction company in Miami as distinct from having to learn so many speeches with big words written by others.

Two characteristically American assumptions concerning education are on display in this controversy -- a controversy which is not sufficiently intense in my judgment. People are not fully appreciative of the implications of what is being proposed: First, Americans often believe that education is concerned exclusively or primarily with the kind of job that a student will obtain after graduation; secondly, more controversially, it is assumed that different educational experiences should be afforded to persons not on the basis of individual aptitude, but for class reasons alone.

These controversial assumptions are, surprisingly, frequently shared with our British friends these days who find themselves -- under the reign of David Cameron the First and, they hope, the Last -- in a related controversy regarding UK libraries and access to higher education because of rising tuition fees.

Before commenting on the suggestion that our children should learn to fix air conditioners rather than attending Yale or Oxford Universities, I wish to examine the debate in the UK. Please do not cut back on BBC America, Mr. Cameron, or any other cultural programs exported to the colonies.

"The austerity cuts in Britain -- part of the government's overly harsh deficit reduction plan -- have provoked many outcries, but few quite as eloquent as a speech given recently in Oxfordshire by Philip Pullman, author of the highly regarded trilogy 'His Dark Materials.' The subject was the Oxford county council's plan to stop financing 20 of its 43 libraries -- because of cuts in national financing -- and hope that they would be run instead by volunteers."

Perhaps hospitals in poor neighborhoods in Britain could be staffed not by expensive medical professionals but by kind-hearted "volunteers." This will save a great deal of money for the public treasury to spend on additional weapons systems to be tested in Afghanistan. Tariq Ali, no doubt, favors this suggestion. Irony?

Besides all of the other advantages, this suggestion will lead to a drastic reduction in the number of poor people living in the British isles. Poor Brits may be tempted to vote for Labour politicians. "We" do not want this dangerous electoral tendency to find an outlet in "today's Britain." If I could, I would persuade the MP from Tunbridge-Wells to raise this issue at Question Time with the Prime Minister: "Will the Prime Minister agree that depriving poor children of books is a bad thing?"

"[Mr. Pullman's] speech [is] worth pondering for its defense not just of the value of reading but of the open democratic space enshrined in public libraries. Libraries, he said, remind us that 'there are things above profit, things that profit knows nothing about ... things that stand for civic decency and knowledge and the value of simple delight.' ... "

Libraries and universities seek to democratize learning and excellence in a national culture. This is a controversial and, weirdly, threatening notion to some people. Conservatives may be frightened that, with access to Shakespeare or Plato, ordinary people will begin to ponder all of the ways in which they are not so free and necessary improvements in society. It never ceases to amaze me that there are people so frightened of intelligence that they wish to destroy its achievements wherever they detect them. Genius and those who admire works of genius infuriate some people. Weird.

"We" certainly do not want that kind of "unpleasantness" (discontent) among the masses. I am an "unpleasant" member of what is usually called "the masses." I want as much education as possible for as many persons as possible, regardless of their economic status or ancestry in Britain, America, and everywhere else. Universal education disconcerts people by hinting at the equality shared with a local immigrant working as a "domestic assistant" (maid or cook) or the homeless person asking for spare change that even poor persons (like me) are all too willing to give in our "fiscal irresponsibility." ("Jacques Derrida's Philosophy as Jazz.")

A person foolish enough to enter a philosophical controversy which he did not understand very well ended his losing effort to defend philosophical incoherence by complaining that his adversary -- me -- had refused the instructions of a "superior." ("Why I am not an ethical relativist" and "John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism.")

"Superior" is a category that had nothing to do with learning or intelligence for this person, there was no suggestion of "superiority" on the merits, but the concept of "superiority" was associated (for this sadly deluded debator) with money and what money buys in America, power. ("The Allegory of the Cave.")

For a person who is poor and maybe for any woman to prevail in debate on a controversial political or philosophical issue is an affront to the moral order and "unnatural." Much the same was said of women who wished to read a few centuries ago. Worse, some women demanded the right to attend universities or even to vote -- look what those suggestions got us! Nothing but trouble and Mrs. Tatcher along with Hillary Rodham-Clinton. Horrors. ("Master and Commander" and "A Doll's Aria.")

I refuse to be guided by my self-described "superiors" concerning issues I know better than these persons do or ever will know them. I do not accept the status of "inferior" -- in a moral or political sense -- on the basis of wealth. I presume to think and feel for myself in a very American and British way that inconveniences conservative governments on both sides of the Atlantic. Education and the arts, availability of books and beautiful things helps me to understand and cope with life's pains and mysteries, including the mystery of evil. ("The Wanderer and His Shadow.")

Education helps all of us to be fully human -- regardless of how we earn our living, even if we are lawyers or politicians -- if we are fortunate enough to have a job in these austere times. Not only should education and libraries be open to all, but the arts should be as widely available as possible to as many persons as we can include in aesthetic experiences.

I have seen the faces of spellbound persons (often not the persons you may imagine going to a theater!) seeing Shakespeare performed for the first time in their lives by professional actors. I want government that is concerned to provide such experiences to as many persons as possible.

As we say in New York: "What could it hurt?" Shakespeare is great because he speaks to all of us about what is universally human -- love, death, loss and the tragic, neverending struggle against evil that is not "all relative." ("Shakespeare's Black Prince.")

"Mr. Pullman is most brilliant in his attack on what he calls 'the greedy ghost of market fundamentalism.' What he registers so forcefully is the fact that a hidebound conservative approach to deficit reduction creates a social austerity far more harmful than the deficit itself."

Education is quite distinct from vocational training (which is an excellent thing!) because the process of learning and achieving a small measure of wisdom, however fleeting and fragile that modicum of wisdom may be for us ordinary guys and gals, is called "living a fully human life with meaning and purpose, beauty and goodness":

" ... to educate one's self was to be more completely human, to give this distinctive faculty [thinking] dominance and free play. If one did this, what would be the standard of the educated man [or woman]? As respects beliefs, adjustment to the evidence. As respects feeling, propriety to the object. As respects action, making the most of one's self consistently with the general good. In sum and in short, in all things be reasonable."

"I do not echo this counsel of the master [Aristotle] as a prescription for success. In a country where Jimmy Hoffa can be an idol, and attacks on UNESCO make thousands cheer, one can hardly rely on reasonableness as a winning card. But then success in the ordinary sense is not what education is for. The business of education is to show that nothing fails like success if that is achieved with inward emptiness, and that nothing succeeds like failure, if that is pursued by integrity of mind."

"The case for being reasonable is not that it will make one successful, still less that it will make one spectacular, but that without it everything else is apt to turn to ashes in one's mouth. Reasonableness is hard because it means keeping our human nature at all points in check. When Ruskin was called on for an epitath for his businessman father, he prepared one that he thought almost extravagant in its praise: 'Here lies an entirely honest merchant.' It would be high praise for any of us, when he has finished his course to have it said, 'Here was a fine scholar, a good soldier, a great executive.' In the light of what human nature notoriously is, it would be praise still rarer and higher if it could be said of us, 'Here was a really reasonable man.' ..." (Blanshard, pp. 92-93.)