Education

We all yearn for the respect of others and want the comfort of knowing we fit in. For some blue staters, their divide with red staters is a satisfying sign they belong; they are the kind of people who vote for John Kerry; that is a different kind of person than those who vote for Bush. Indeed, some quite openly remarked that they didn’t want “that kind of person” in their party. Some red staters had similar feelings. For some, politics is a social arbiter.

Our complicated feelings about belonging and insecurity about status were brought home as we began minor remodeling. I asked a friend’s advice on books & one he suggested was Class: A Guide Through the American Class System by Paul Fussell. It doesn’t deal with aesthetics but status. Since we are not going to convince anyone we range very far into middle class, status advice isn’t terribly useful. (While I am used to being held in some esteem by my colleagues and students, my status dropped under withering looks from the Home Depot advisor. There is my own lack of style in figure & clothes; in addition, somehow I had never noticed the basics of knob – excuse me, fixture – configurations.)

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Via Melanie Phillips comes a disturbing story about educational trends in the U.K. Apparently the GCSE science curriculum, studied by all pupils from 14 to 16, will no longer have much actual science in it…

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I have come to the conclusion that contemporary academia, at least within the humanities, has become just plain corrupt.

Corruption might seem to be too strong a word, but what else does one call it when we have a group of individuals who have taken money and assumed positions under false pretenses? After all, when a person assumes the position of judge he implicitly states that he will try to decide impartially between competing cases based on the standards of law. If we find out that the individual in fact always intended to rule for one case over the other we would call that judge corrupt.

Likewise, we created universities to be places of teaching, research and intellectual inquiry. Implicit in the assumption of the role of a tenured professor is the obligation to struggle to be open minded and objective. We pay professors to honestly investigate problems and try to provide answers. If we find out that professors already believe they have all the answers, and that they view their positions as mere soapboxes for their own political beliefs, well, then that is corruption.

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Belmont Club, commenting on a debate about war between Victor Davis Hanson and Ronald Edsforth, argues:

The possibility of heaven is purchased at the risk of hell and the gift of fire balanced by the danger that we should set ourselves ablaze. The Leftist impulse is at heart a longing to be rid of the burden of freedom. What was the dreamed-of Worker’s Paradise except the same old places repopulated by the New Soviet Man?

Wretchard, with his usual wit, notes the tragic nature of man; with that we see both diminished options and enlarged heroism.

The desire for a cocoon – the fear of challenge– is perhaps most characteristic of the modern academic world. And, thus, it is not a surprise that such professors have been moved to find answers in Arthur Miller rather than Sophocles, in Foucault rather than Shakespeare. They view courses in the great books with suspicion (note Foster’s point below.) But Sophocles’ tragic vision energizes us. Responsibility and risk-taking (when necessary and it costs us, not merely because we can) exercise the muscles of maturity. Without these we have no authority, even over our own lives. Challenges make us conscious of what it is to be human.

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The University of North Carolina has been offered a substantial donation to create a new program in Western Cultures. 70 faculty members have signed a petition demanding that the university reject the money and stop talking to the foundation which is offering the donation.

The stated reason is that the foundation, which is conservatively-oriented, “has made many professors uneasy due to its financial support of organizations often critical of the university.” (Quote from article here.) Critical of the university?…the horror! There are also assertions that the negotiations between the foundation and the university administration are lacking in “transparency,” a charge that the administration denies.

It’s hard for me to believe that the negative response to this proposal doesn’t have something to do with the general negativity toward western culture which is prevalent in many “progressive” circles.

(hat tip: Common Sense and Wonder)