This piece is EXCELLENT, the best written and most to-the-point i have seen up to this point. I used to teach in prison education and was always trying to get these points across. Thank you for getting them out there so succinctly and clearly. It’s kind of a pity that these days on campuses people desperately have to be reminded that this is what liberal education is about and what it’s good for. Your piece is timeless.
This is all well-put, but it is a reminder of this: it's not how much experience one has, or what kind, but what one learns from it. I know "liberally educated" people whose take-away was that since there are so many opinions, nobody can know what is true, and what really matters is one's own opinion. To be offered the smorgasbord with no guidance is almost worse than nothing: it can give a wealth of famous people to quote in order to justify what one already wants to do, freezing one's priors into place.
One of the most important points made by the author: "A sure sign that a college or university is failing in its promise to provide a liberal education is the prevalence of ideological dogmatism and intolerance, and the presence of groupthink."
"Even for students in professional and vocational programs, supplementary courses in the liberal arts contribute to forming them as practitioners of the examined life"
That's assuming, of course, that those supplementary courses are real liberal arts courses, and not woke garbage in disguise.
Unfortunately, you are confusing the real life results of a liberal education with the philosopher' lesson. I have run into many who went to colleges and universities that I am sure you would consider as institutions promoting a liberal education. And yet almost as many people pass through that educational experience and come out with the same illiberal, and mostly vile, opinions and misrepresentations of a personal philosophy. The MAGA nut cases are backed by many educated in the system you refer to.
Absolutely. History is real and should not be re-written but at the same time the company I work for is adding inordinate numbers of annual mandatory training courses that all trace back to legitimate woke topics but get to be too much of a good-but-misunderstood thing. In the end it all has a negative impact on the fight against racism and intolerance because a great many people will just fight it simply because we get smothered by it.
This is a fantastic idea, but one that's been abandoned or corrupted by the majority of higher education institutions in this country and beyond. We shouldn't be surprised by this: the universities in Weimar Germany were fertile breeding and recruiting grounds for National Socialism (something that's often forgotten) regardless of academic specialization. In fact, many leaders within the SS had advanced degrees and above-average grades.
Also, the more the college degree in the US becomes nothing more than a high school diploma you have to pay for, the more this ideal fades into the background. It's a shame, but it's the reality the Baby Boomers created and passed on to the following generations.
At the 30,000 foot level, i.e., "what does it mean to live a life so that one can 'die well'?", it is all about one's commitment to knowing and telling the truth about what is good and true, *even at a great personal cost*.
But for purposes of FAIR, we can boil down some maxims:
1. We either act and speak by a consistent, articulable set of principles, or we do not. If we don't, our arguments deserve no respect. We should suspect anyone whose invocation of principle always leads to a convenient outcome for them.
2. Whenever we bring an argument to bear that finds fault with someone else, we need to first ask ourselves if we are willing to have that argument used against us. Otherwise, it is Orwell's Animal Farm, where everyone is equal, but "some are more equal than others".
3. If we can't model 1 and 2 using our liberal educations, then we have either (a) learned nothing or (b) learned primarily from Machiavelli and Marx. That is, all that matter are wealth and power, and the job of "getting justice" is to get those things for one's self and one's friends.
Watching the elite colleges and universities struggle to teach this and live by it has been one of the saddest experiences of my life.
This piece is EXCELLENT, the best written and most to-the-point i have seen up to this point. I used to teach in prison education and was always trying to get these points across. Thank you for getting them out there so succinctly and clearly. It’s kind of a pity that these days on campuses people desperately have to be reminded that this is what liberal education is about and what it’s good for. Your piece is timeless.
This is all well-put, but it is a reminder of this: it's not how much experience one has, or what kind, but what one learns from it. I know "liberally educated" people whose take-away was that since there are so many opinions, nobody can know what is true, and what really matters is one's own opinion. To be offered the smorgasbord with no guidance is almost worse than nothing: it can give a wealth of famous people to quote in order to justify what one already wants to do, freezing one's priors into place.
One of the most important points made by the author: "A sure sign that a college or university is failing in its promise to provide a liberal education is the prevalence of ideological dogmatism and intolerance, and the presence of groupthink."
"Even for students in professional and vocational programs, supplementary courses in the liberal arts contribute to forming them as practitioners of the examined life"
That's assuming, of course, that those supplementary courses are real liberal arts courses, and not woke garbage in disguise.
Unfortunately, you are confusing the real life results of a liberal education with the philosopher' lesson. I have run into many who went to colleges and universities that I am sure you would consider as institutions promoting a liberal education. And yet almost as many people pass through that educational experience and come out with the same illiberal, and mostly vile, opinions and misrepresentations of a personal philosophy. The MAGA nut cases are backed by many educated in the system you refer to.
As are the woke nut cases. Ideological straightjackets are not the exclusive domain of one political ideology.
Absolutely. History is real and should not be re-written but at the same time the company I work for is adding inordinate numbers of annual mandatory training courses that all trace back to legitimate woke topics but get to be too much of a good-but-misunderstood thing. In the end it all has a negative impact on the fight against racism and intolerance because a great many people will just fight it simply because we get smothered by it.
This is a fantastic idea, but one that's been abandoned or corrupted by the majority of higher education institutions in this country and beyond. We shouldn't be surprised by this: the universities in Weimar Germany were fertile breeding and recruiting grounds for National Socialism (something that's often forgotten) regardless of academic specialization. In fact, many leaders within the SS had advanced degrees and above-average grades.
Also, the more the college degree in the US becomes nothing more than a high school diploma you have to pay for, the more this ideal fades into the background. It's a shame, but it's the reality the Baby Boomers created and passed on to the following generations.
Brilliantly written and argued. About to quote (with attribution, of course) in some writing I'm doing.
I like this!
Maybe we could think about what education means and why exams are needed? Here are my ideas:
https://dompaynetutoring.substack.com/
At the 30,000 foot level, i.e., "what does it mean to live a life so that one can 'die well'?", it is all about one's commitment to knowing and telling the truth about what is good and true, *even at a great personal cost*.
But for purposes of FAIR, we can boil down some maxims:
1. We either act and speak by a consistent, articulable set of principles, or we do not. If we don't, our arguments deserve no respect. We should suspect anyone whose invocation of principle always leads to a convenient outcome for them.
2. Whenever we bring an argument to bear that finds fault with someone else, we need to first ask ourselves if we are willing to have that argument used against us. Otherwise, it is Orwell's Animal Farm, where everyone is equal, but "some are more equal than others".
3. If we can't model 1 and 2 using our liberal educations, then we have either (a) learned nothing or (b) learned primarily from Machiavelli and Marx. That is, all that matter are wealth and power, and the job of "getting justice" is to get those things for one's self and one's friends.
Watching the elite colleges and universities struggle to teach this and live by it has been one of the saddest experiences of my life.