[lit-ideas] Re: Liberal Education, Socrates and Practices

AK's educational ideals are generally laudible and I applaud him for having
attained that degree of literary and philosophical imagination necessary for
being possessed by such vision and passion. Just a few comments.

1. I don't know what to make of his claim that the humanities are in
competition
with natural and social science, as if the playing field that is "the research
ideal" is one all these disiplines share. As far as philosophy goes,
it holds its own in its own court. Indeed, philosophy would lose what is
distinctive about its problematics, questions, and issues if it came to play
that game. Certainly the field of Education has been cannibalized by the social
sciences in our colleges and faculties in Canada, US and the UK, to the
detriment of the ideals AK holds.

2. Speaking of Education, it is unfortunate that the most articulate and
informed voices for liberal education these days pay short shrift to the
importance of cultivating the imagination in professional schools and programs.
Isn't it precisely the future teachers and administrators, the engineers and
nurses, the lawyers and physicians who so often lack the attitudes,
dispositions, values and vision required for authentic pursuit of a practice?
Perhaps this lacuna is attributable to the odd idea that only disciplines of
inquiry - ie, philosophy, literature, history - possess that intrinsic worth
which is to be appropriated by the student for its own sake. Professional
practices possess their own intrinsic worth and can be pursued as such. And, of
course, they can be pursued instrumentally. But then so can philosophy and
science and the other liberating disciplines. Socrates loved and pursued
philosophy as a practice much more so than simply as a discipline of knowledge,
and he taught us to view both it and the life it formed as a craft to be
learned and continuously examined. 

3. AK displays genuine courage in using such an expression as "the common
ground
of ... humanity" in articulating and justifying his vision of the liberating
power of cultivating philosophical and literary imagination. The past 15 years
at least have witnessed a brutal assault on this educational ideal emanating
from various pomoist quarters. Even the likes of a Martha Nussbaum are targeted
for accepting too much from the dead, white, straight, middle class guys. I
would only recommend to AK that the real problem with the idea that factors
such as gender and race constitute unchangeable facts about oneself isn't in
seeing them as unchangeable, but rather in seeing them simply as "facts" about
oneself in the first place. A needed concession to a reflective version of pomo
is that such factors are constitutive of our very identities, not properties
which we can alter without a transformation in our being the particular selves
we understand ourselves to be. So, yes, on the truth of the premise that the
common ground of our humanity is an essential liberating ideal in education,
the inclusion of different voices into the conversation of personkind can only
further articulate and corroborate that truth. 

Thank you RP for sharing this text with us. And I know that the reputation of
Reed is more than a tad beholden to you for its many achievements over the
years in liberal education.

Walter O.
MUN

Quoting Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>:

> Sept. 26
> 
> Elevating the Great Books Anew
> 
> In his new book, Anthony T. Kronman argues that the American college  
> curriculum is seriously flawed for not giving students a true  
> grounding in the classics that explore the human condition.  
> Education?s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on  
> the Meaning of Life (Yale University Press) mixes Kronman?s assessment  
> of the problems in academe with a set of proposed solutions. Kronman,  
> the Sterling Professor of Law at Yale University, responded to  
> questions about the book.
> 
> Q: Why have our our colleges and universities ?given up on the meaning  
> of life"?
> 
> A: Those who teach in our colleges and universities are nearly all  
> graduates of Ph.D. programs, in which they learn to measure success in  
> higher education by the standards of the research ideal. From the  
> vantage point of that ideal, the question of life?s meaning ? of what  
> I should care about, and why ? is too large, too sprawling, too  
> personal to be a subject than any specialized scholar feels  
> comfortable tackling. The research ideal has squeezed this question  
> from the field of respectable topics, especially in the humanities,  
> the disciplines with the oldest and deepest connection to it. The  
> humanities today seek to compete with the natural and social sciences  
> on the ground of the research ideal. But this is a competition they  
> can never win. In the process, they have distanced themselves from the  
> one question which they, of all the disciplines, are best equipped to  
> address.
> 
> Q: You note that there are places, like Columbia University, which  
> have maintained requirements based on the ?great books? traditions.  
> Are there other programs of this sort that you respect? Would you like  
> to see colleges go as far as St. John?s College?
> 
> A: Yes, a number: Reed College has a required year-long humanities  
> course for freshmen, who prepare for their freshman year by reading  
> the Iliad the summer before. Carleton College has a similar program,  
> and the Directed Studies Program at Yale, in which I teach, is another  
> example. Directed Studies is an elective program that takes 120  
> students each year. They study philosophy, literature, history and  
> politics in a common curriculum that begins with Homer, Herodotus and  
> Plato and ends with T.S. Eliot, Wittgenstein and Hannah Arendt. While  
> I admire St. John?s immensely, and believe that its program serves as  
> an admirable counterweight to the directionlessness that prevails at  
> most colleges and universities, I do not think it necessary to go as  
> far as St. John?s does. My proposal is a modest one: let?s make some  
> space in the curriculum for the organized study of great works of  
> philosophical and literary imagination, recognizing that students (and  
> faculty!) have many other worthwhile things to do as well.
> 
> Q: Many say that the era when more people had a common program of  
> great thinkers was also an era when the student body was more  
> homogeneous, wealthier, etc. Would you apply your ideas in different  
> ways at Yale and at an urban, open admissions public university?
> 
> A: Even our most elite colleges and universities have become vastly  
> more diverse than they were a half century ago. That is a wonderful  
> thing. But the works of the great thinkers are our common heritage.  
> They belong to us all. It is wonderful to throw open the doors of our  
> colleges and universities ? but terribly sad then to deprive those who  
> were excluded in the past of the chance to become friends with Plato  
> and Tolstoy and Jane Austen and Descartes. The great books program at  
> Columbia was instituted in 1919 precisely to insure that the  
> university?s increasingly diverse student body had a shared  
> educational experience, and the opportunity together to explore the  
> perennial questions of life?s meaning. That should be our aim today,  
> not just at places like Yale, but in all our colleges and  
> universities. Indeed, I believe the appetite for such a venture may  
> very well be greater at our country?s less elite schools.
> 
> Q: You write critically of the diversity movement. What?s wrong with it?
> 
> A: Diversity, per se, is not a bad thing. Indeed, it?s a very good  
> thing. Everyone benefits from the experience of going to school with  
> others unlike themselves. But the idea that one?s experience and  
> values are deeply shaped by gender and race ? facts about oneself that  
> can never be changed ? encourages the view that our power to reflect  
> critically on our values and to change them is severely limited. And  
> that idea strikes at the heart of the liberating promise of all  
> liberal education. Students who accept this view will not see  
> themselves as standing on the common ground of their humanity, but be  
> inclined, instead, to think that others who do not have the same  
> defining, and unchangeable, characteristics must approach the question  
> of life?s meaning in fundamentally different ways. That undermines the  
> spirit of shared engagement on which any authentic and enlightening  
> approach to the question depends.
> 
> Q: If a college president read your book and called you and said, ?I?m  
> impressed ? what are three things I can do right away?? what would you  
> say?
> 
> A: First, consider creating an elective program modeled on the  
> humanities course at Reed, or Yale?s Directed Studies Program. Second,  
> give the faculty who teach in the program special recognition for  
> doing so (perhaps in the form of some additional leave time to insure  
> that they don?t feel torn between research and their commitment to the  
> program). Third, require students to read three books that deal with  
> the question of life?s meaning during the summers before each of their  
> four colleges years. Fourth, make the subject an issue in your own  
> talks, especially your talks to parents, and try, whenever possible,  
> to damp down student and parental anxiety about the need to prepare  
> for a career.
> 
> ? Scott Jaschik
> 
> The original story and user comments can be viewed online at  
> http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/26/kronman.
> 
> © Copyright 2007 Inside Higher Ed
> ---------------------------------
> Robert Paul
> reed.edu
> 
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