Toward a Rebirth of Glorious Irrelevance

One last rumination on the topic of academic indoctrination.  The photo, above, is of the actual Elsinore Castle, the setting for Shakespeare's Hamlet.  This photo is irrelevant to the topic, for reasons that should become apparent.

I certainly agree with J. David Bell that professors should be up front about their own convictions and do all in their power to welcome divergent points of view. In my own teaching, I’ve done just that on numerous occasions. Still, as a dean, I’ve heard from students who were reluctant to enter into any sort of point-counter-point with professors who seemed so much more articulate and better informed than they were. I’ve heard from other students who did dare to speak up, only to feel embarrassed at having their ideas discounted in front of the class. There are, of course, ways to handle these situations gently and constructively, but there will always be students who are timid or hypersensitive or both.

The fact remains that many of us have confronted students with issues they’re just not ready to tackle. I know I have, and in one respect, that may be a good thing. Education is supposed to take us out of our comfort zones and challenge us to think long and hard about that which we think we know and believe. A certain amount of pain, I suppose, is a necessary concomitant of intellectual growth no less than physical growth. Still, I don’t think it’s wise to try to engage students in the burning issues of the day.

My own college experience is a case in point, or counterpoint. I was an undergrad from 1969 to 1973. These were the last years of the Vietnam War and one of the most contentious periods in recent history. The country at large had turned against the war, and I’m fairly sure all my professors were against it. Yet the war was never discussed in class. On a couple occasions, when a student or students would press a professor, he or she would acknowledge his or her opposition. But that was as far as it went. The class was inevitably steered back to 17th-century literature, medieval history, or whatever the topic was. From time to time, that seemed to reinforce the ivory tower stereotype of the academic profession—as if the professor couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to the events shaking our world. But I have since come to realize that this refusal to engage publicly in the debate reflected a certain wisdom.

First, the academic profession encourages people to take the long view. The things that seem so self-evidently true at one point in time are sometimes revealed to have been delusions, and highly destructive ones at that.

Second, I think academics of the old school really thought that it wasn’t their business to engage with the passing scene. They saw their role as teaching us to read closely and to think critically and ethically, but with texts that had stood the test of time. In other words, they gave us the tools, but they left it up to us to decide how to use them.

Something my dissertation director at Penn, Professor Peter Conn, once had occasion to say to a group of us graduate students comes to mind. “Our role in academe ,” Conn remarked, “is not to solve problems. It is to identify and articulate problems with grace and clarity.” Whether Conn was being wholly or even half ironic, I’m not sure. But I have come to take his words at face value. Too many of my colleagues in higher education today, it seems to me, see their role as inspiring and mobilizing their students to solve some pressing problem or right some wrong.

My own undergraduate days, ironically, coincided with the great call for “relevance.” Students were beginning to demand that their curricula be “relevant”—in terms of preparing them for specific jobs and to engage with the issues of the day. And while my professors resisted the call, the academy in general did cave in to those demands. Some of the changes were necessary and good. But, personally, I think we have oversold higher education in terms of career preparation, earning potential, and social responsibility. It just may be time for a rebirth of glorious irrelevance! --EFP

Indoctrination Revisited, by Way of Supporting the Troops

Yesterday, my friend Josh Bellin posted a great essay to his blog about why he doesn’t “support” the troops.  (http://bellsyells.blogspot.com/)  His essay was inspired by a troubling encounter with the principal of his daughter’s elementary school.  Josh’s daughter’s class had been required to write “letters of support to the troops in Iraq.”  Josh objected—and quite rightly in my view—to requiring children to take a moral position they are not “qualified to take.”  Josh’s position reminded me of one of my favorite essays, William G. Perry’s “Examsmanship and the Liberal Arts.”  Perry reminds us that “too early a moral judgment is precisely what stands between many an able student and a liberal education.”

     The best way to “support the troops,” in my view, is to demand a clear and cogent explanation for why putting them in harm’s way is absolutely necessary.  I think Josh would agree. 

     But Josh also got me thinking of how conservatives take it as a given that liberal professors indoctrinate their students.  Having been one of those bête noires, a liberal professor, myself, I don’t think we indoctrinate.  But, in a subsequent reply to my comment on his piece, Josh supplied le mot juste.  We may not indoctrinate, but we certainly “proselytize.”  And it happens in high school and in college. 

     The teenage daughter of a young friend, for instance, used to come to us full of received opinions and instant outrage about the dangers of global warming, worker exploitation by Walmart, and the unwholesome nature of McDonald's food.  In the words of the poet, “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”  She clearly wasn’t ready to engage in the complexity of these issues.  But the well-meaning high school teachers who attempted to raise her consciousness were just taking their cues from those of us in higher education.  How many freshman composition courses these days are built around sustainability and other green issues?  Personally, I agree with all those positions. But as a former professor and dean, I know how easily students are intimidated by a teacher or professor who seems really well-versed in a topic, and I question whether classes built around such topics really give a fair hearing to divergent points of view. 
      I say this having long ago taught a course of my own design called "Vietnam in Fact, Fiction, and Film." The course was very much one-sided. Having studied the history of our involvement, I knew all about the cultural and historical misapprehensions, as well as the cynical Realpolitik, responsible for that original "wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time." And I fervently believe that the revisionists who have come along since, trying to justify that war as in our strategic best interests or even as a “noble cause,” are wrong. But the fact remains that, having only so much time, I did not give much time and attention to other points of view. And some students were probably afraid to challenge me. I may not have been indoctrinating, but I was proselytizing. 

     I'll add something that may at least serve to prime the controversy pump. Counting my Naval Academy time, I was a full-time academic for 16 years, and if there is one thing I have learned about the academic profession, it is this: Academics are no more open-minded than anyone else. They're just better at articulating and defending their prejudices." Hence, I side with Stanley Fish, who once admonished us all to "save the world on your own time." --EFP