Monday, August 30, 2010

Is a liberal arts education for everyone?

David Warren, "Universities: Who Needs 'Em?" (InsideCatholic, August 23, 2010):
... But what I find more interesting, in reading accounts of the mediaeval universities, is the speed with which they allied themselves with Bishops against Pope, with Court against Church, with Law against Spirit, and, when they were being spiritual, with the spirit of secession in all of its instinctive and demonic forms.

Conversely, they were from their beginnings the flag-bearers of bureaucracy and regulation....

More deeply, by freeing students from the oversight and discipline of religious orders, and then creating a class of professors out of former students, the mediaeval universities were formulating a new kind of man -- the public intellectual, quite full of himself -- the sharp edge of whose intelligence would be honed to serve adolescent dreams of power and control, with endless voyages into "pure theory."

One hears the echo through the ages of Benedetto Gaetani, papal legate and future Pope Boniface VIII, gone to Paris in 1290 to express the exasperation of the Roman Curia -- not only with the intensely meddlesome political posturing of the university, but also with its venal attachments to worldly vested interests. To a professoriate flouncing their reputation for the "higher" education, Gaetani cries: "It is all trivial!"

And to the smug looks on many hundred faces, he declares: "We are called by God not to acquire learning to dazzle mankind, but to save our souls!"

Now -- please -- I am not against learning, and to some degree, not even against learning as an end in itself. Nor am I actually against universities, in principle; or at least, not yet. But I would like to wonder aloud if the time is not approaching to pull the fiscal plugs on all of them, and start over from the monastery again.
This is food for thought, especially in light of the talks to which we were recently treated by Fr. Joseph Koterski, S.J. (Fordham) at Sacred Heart Major Seminary. One of the more interesting things he did was to question whether most Catholics need any theology at all, let alone philosophy. Rather, what they need is catechesis and spiritual formation. He contrasted the "learnables" with the "developmentals," suggesting that the latter have been overly neglected in our culture -- especially (but not only) secular culture. Of course, he added, seminarians need the "learnables" too, and even theology and philosophy -- but perhaps not in the way they're often taught, where they are taught apart from the practical concerns of the "developmentals."

In one sense, I think that the value of the liberal arts has been unduly marginalized in modern times by disciplines with demonstrable utilitarian value -- professional programs in business, computer science, engineering, economics, physical therapy, nursing and restaurant and hotel management come to mind. By contrast, the problem with liberal arts disciplines is that they have no demonstrable utilitarian value -- things like literature, history, art, philosophy, and theology come to mind. Further, since the only kind of value recognized these days seems to be utilitarian value, the liberal arts are generally assumed to be valueless. What is not recognized, as Josef Pieper would be quick to point out, is that some things have value for their own sake, as ends in themselves. To understand the nature of human beings and the real world has considerable value, even if it has no demonstrable utilitarian value. Knowing who we are, where we came from, and our purpose in life, is important in itself, even if it doesn't get us a job or earn us any money.

Having said that, I firmly agree with the premise that a liberal arts education may not be for everybody, anymore than everyone is called to the priesthood or to a career as professor of philosophy. What every everyone needs for his salvation, however, is a proper catechesis in order to be formed in the knowledge and service of our Lord Jesus Christ through His Church (see the Catechism of the Catholic Church). What everyone needs to be more fully human, furthermore, is something that Mortimer Adler spent the last half of his life promoting, which is a basic grasp of the common wisdom of philosophy, not philosophy as a specialized discipline, but philosophy on the level of commonly accessible concepts by which to understand and talk about the world and human nature (see his Aristotle for Everybody).


[Hat tip to J.M.]

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:51 AM

    At haec studia adulescentiam alunt, senectutem oblectant, secundas res ornant, delectant domi, non impediunt foras, peregrinantur, rusticantur.

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  2. c matt2:21 PM

    Well, essentially that is what most universities aspire to be -part trade school, part liberal arts. The larger ones can afford to house both those who want to learn a trade (busines, engineering, science and on the graduate level law and medicine are also trades) and those who want to learn for its own sake - the arts, literature, etc. At the undergraduate level, they try to impart at least a minimal level of knowledge about the liberal arts for those on the trade path, which is probably not a bad thing.

    Unfortunately, most on the trade path are little interested in things not directly related tot heir chosen career, and likewise few of the professors who teach the liberal arts are really interested in those on the trade path as well. In fact, many college professors are little interested in teaching at all, and rather focus on their research and publishing.

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  3. Yes, these studies do sustain youth and entertain old age, enhance prosperity, offer a refuge and solace in adversity, delight us when we are at home without hindering us in the wider world, and are with us at night, when we travel and when we visit the countryside. Which, of course, is the point Victor Frankel made in Man's Search for Meaning about those who best survived Auschwitz not being necessarily those who were physically the most fit, but those with some sort of "interior" life, whether intellectual and/or religious.

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  4. C Matt,

    You are so right. That point was driven home when (1) I realized that 4/5 of the student body at my previous institution in NC were registered in trade majors (like "Healthful Living" or "Kinematics" -- both euphemisms for what used to be called Phys Ed); (2) a new dean was hired who proposed reducing the required liberal arts "core" to an 8-hour course "team-taught" by faculty from various departments in the "humanities" (so that History professors might be teaching Kant, and Philosophy professors might be teaching the American Revolution); and (3)Introduction to Philosophy was made into an elective course option alongside bowling ... in a student body dominated by knuckle-dragging mouth breathers who couldn't distinguish philosophy from pit pork barbecue.

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