Notes Toward an Integration of Education and Citizenship
In case you didn’t get enough on Conservative Critiques of Academia (CCOA) when Rufus was trying to explore the idea of liberal bias, and whether it holds water, Phoebe Maltz and Withywindle have been going back and forth for the last few weeks. The notes that follow were written several days ago in reaction to this post at Athens and Jerusalem; I’m still in a bit of an NCAA-inspired emotional hangover and don’t have sufficient brainpower yet to seriously think about their more recent discussions.
I urge you to, at the very least, just go skim this post—glance at the titles on the list—so that you can follow what I’m talking about. Go. Okay, back? Good. Let’s get started.
1) Withywindle’s list is significantly more than the “liberal bias” accusation that Rufus explored a few weeks back. The list itself is an attempt to thread out the various CCOAs that Phoebe blasted for incoherence.
2) He offers sketches of six critiques, but I believe you could also make the case that, regardless of the individual criticisms offered, there are three types of CCOA: Virtue/Culture (1, 2, 3), Political (3, 4, and especially 5), and Practical (4, 6).
3) The Political CCOA is the one we’ve already talked to death—and I don’t just mean here at the League. Crazy anti-Western Men-Hating Leftists take over the He-Man Woman-Haters Club and proceed to demolish academic and pedagogical standards. Before you know it, you’ve got professors showing students how to use a dildo + power tool contraption. We’re going to ignore this one. If you want to leave a comment talking about how “liberal bias” is a conspiracy theory, that’s nice. But it’s not what I’m talking about.
4) For reasons of interest (mine and, hopefully, yours) that will become clear, let’s also set aside the Practical CCOA for the time being. (I’ve offered a “practical” critique of parts of academia here, if you’re interested, though I don’t think it’s an inherently “conservative” critique.)
5) This leaves us with the Virtue/Culture CCOA. Withywindle has already noted that a decision to inculcate virtue demands asking “Which?” or “Whose?” A Straussian and a Thomist might be able to agree that a university ought to promote virtue—but once they get down to particulars, that agreement will disappear.
5.1) This may be an easier question for a genuinely religiously-affiliated university. It is, in theory, easier for Notre Dame to settle on a broadly Catholic idea of educational virtue that manages to be coherent while allowing for academic quarreling than for my alma mater, which severed its Methodist ties long ago, to settle on such an outline. That is, it wouldn’t necessarily be against the mission of a religiously-affiliated university to choose between—to keep our example going—Straussians and Thomists. On the other hand, such a choice does present rather clear problems for a secular university.
5.2) Of course, my claim that it’s “easier” to solve the Virtue/Culture matter as a religiously-affiliated university requires that the university—or the religious affiliation itself—already have or be capable of developing some sort of philosophy of higher education coherent with its own values. While Jesuit institutions, in theory if not always in practice, do have a history of a Jesuit educational philosophy, one need only look toward Yeshiva University (Modern Orthodox) and the Jewish Theological Seminary (Conservative) to see that there is no such philosophy for American Jewry. The former has spent the last several decades trending right as an institution; the latter, once the monument of an integration of Jewish and Western higher education, has, as an undergraduate institution, become little more than an extension of Columbia and Barnard.
6) The question still lingers, unaddressed, of the way in which a non- or nominally-affiliated university could understand calls for “virtue” within its mission and structure. How do you even ask the question of such a university—the dominant form in American higher education?
7) A shift from “virtue” to “citizenship” allows us to ask the question with greater ease.
7.1) That is, rather than asking, “Is the inculcation of virtue a duty of the modern university/college?” we should begin by asking, “Is the promotion/development of good citizenship a duty of the modern university/college?”
7.2) My inclination is to answer, “Yes.” (It’s worth noting, however, that I am the product of a primary and secondary institution that quite clearly viewed this as part of its mission; I may have been brainwashed at a young age.)
7.3) This brings me, again, to my critique of Professor Bailey’s power-tool demonstration: I argued against it on a practical basis—as a gimmick of little or no pedagogical value—and as a breach of the university’s (and the individual professor’s) broader obligation to the communities in which they exist.
8) Define your terms!
8.1) By “citizenship,” I do not mean patriotism. I most certainly do not mean the kind of dangerously malformed patriotism that might be summarized as, “America! Fuck yeah!”
8.2) My definition, unfortunately, is going to fail to be precise. By “citizenship,” I do mean a concept that rests somewhere on the nexus between Porcher neighborliness and a kind of Pomoco “stuck-with-[civic]-virtue,” a broadly construed concept that includes, in addition to those already mentioned, the development of stewardship and a healthy dose of idealism to argue with the cynicism of experience. (Not to overwhelm, or even to balance out, but to argue with.)
8.3) If I attempt to drain from my concept of “citizenship” all the Wendell Berry and Jewish-inflected thought, I’m left with the fact of an individual who inescapably exists within community(ies)—who therefore inescapably lives in relationship to/with community.
8.4) A re-statement of my prior question: “Does the modern university/college have an obligation to develop in its students an understanding of how to live in relationship to/with community?” My answer remains yes.
8.5) A further refinement: rather than merely “how to live,” “how to live well.” I’d be willing to concede the insertion of the adverb for the sake of the greater argument, but I would continue to answer, “Yes.”
9) This is not a call for didactic training in place of university education. A liberal arts education, effectively constructed and carried out, involves an education, through literature, history, etc. of how to live well.
9.1) Without citizenship, I find it hard to develop a defense of the liberal arts/humanities that is not, ultimately for their own sake—that is, I find it hard to develop a defense that insists upon their intrinsic value.
10) But I’m not arguing, CCOA-style, for a return to old-timey liberal arts education. I think the liberal arts are inherently valuable and should be an integral part of an education; I do not think they should be all of an education.
10.1) For example: The (admittedly botched) floating of an idea at Northwestern several months ago that would require extracurricular participation. One can see how this idea could be developed in a way that a) doesn’t allow IM sports to count, b) does not take away from academic requirements, and c) insists upon students engaging in the communal or civic life of Evanston or Chicago.
10.2) Jason Peters, FPR bar jester and Professor of English, leads his students in the development of a community garden.
10.3) Etc.
11) In my experience, there is nothing inherently “conservative” about this line of reasoning—at least not if we limit “conservative” to political conservatism. To the best of my knowledge, Morton Schapiro and Northwestern’s administration are hardly right-wing. My friends and acquaintances who have called for improvement in a university’s devotion to citizenship have, in fact, almost uniformly been liberals.
12) This is a CCOA only if society itself has become a conservative cause.
12.1) If this is the case, we’re in much worse shape than I had realized.
I find it hard to believe that notions of citizenship or the great books/great men/great invention the Athens and Jerusalem post argues for is possible as a neutral concept (sorry, unlike A&J I Won’t Capitalize Every Concept Like It’s Some Special Invention Of Mine Instead Of Just A String of Common Nouns).
It’s very hard to divorce American conservatism from white male tribalism.
To illustrate, A&J say “[w]e should not waste time on pop culture, peasant studies, black studies, womens’ studies, gay studies, postmodern physics, etc.”
For starters “postmodern physics” is made up. For all of their cloying pretention, they just can’t help themselves. But what of black/womens’/gay studies?
Yes, these fields developed after A&J’s unarticulated cutoff date for Serious Academic Stuff. However, there is no reason to think that when a group either develops a coherent identity (GLBT) or has more access to higher education (black, female), it’s not a serious endeavor to do what white males have been doing for centuries. There have been excesses and some pretty strange theories bandied about in those fields, but that’s what happens when a new field is in flux. Look at pretty much every scientific field over the centuries.
Blanket denunciations of black/womens’/gay studies as things that aren’t worthy of study and general attacks on students (as if we could just get new, better ones) betray the tribalism that pervades CCOA.Report
A couple things:
1) While A&J does periodically engage in (at least borderline) blanket denunciations of parts of academia they don’t like, the post I was talking about is, indirectly, getting at the fact that blanket denunciations aren’t enough. W. wasn’t endorsing any of those 6 as written, but trying to summarize them — (and the Random Capitalizations of Big Mundane Topics was partly sarcastic).
2) More importantly, the idea (or word!) “citizenship” doesn’t appear in the post at A&J and the virtue discussion is separate from the canon discussion — I’m honestly not certain here whether you’re conflating my introduction of a concept of citizenship as a “neutral” substitution for virtue with run-of-the-mill, not-quite-coherent editions of CCOA, or keeping your guns narrowly on A&J. If it’s the former, then: I wasn’t aware that being a good citizenship has become a wholly conservative/tribal/whatever you wanna call it. (See 12.1 in the main post.) And I’ll further repeat that the people I know who have been most strident in calling for a university that promotes citizenship — who beat me to it by several years, in fact — are WELL to my left. As in, one of them, a dear friend, is the one whom I joked was going to get thrown-up by the right as the poster-girl for radical academia when she took the section she TAs on a field trip to an protest of a GOP Congressman. (She’s neither white, nor male, nor tribal.)
3) For the record, I see nothing wrong with teaching Toni Morrison in college courses. Just teach her well. As Eliot pointed out, the literary tradition rearranges itself with the creation of any work, no matter when or where, that merits being considered part of the literary tradition.
So my point is, I guess — I think you’re not only talking about something completely different than what I was talking about, but you’re also missing the point of that particular A&J post. There are some there that DO do what you say, but not that one.Report
RJ, I tried to figure out what I disagree with about what you wrote. It’s not your point that blanket denunciations of black/womens’/gay studies often stem from white male tribalism because I’ve certainly seen that before. In fact, I agree with the general thrust of what you’re writing here. But here’s my nit:
“I find it hard to believe that notions of citizenship or the great books/great men/great invention the Athens and Jerusalem post argues for is possible as a neutral concept…
It’s very hard to divorce American conservatism from white male tribalism.”
I don’t think theories of citizenship or the great books are neutral concepts at all- but nor do I think they’re necessarily conservative domains. I mean they often are- but I don’t think liberals or anyone else should be unable to theorize about citizenship or great books for any particular reason. Hell, I work with plenty of liberals who spend all day thinking about the great books.Report
I suppose I could stand to be a little more precise in my words. It’s not that liberals care only about “average” books or are some sort of stateless global village types. It’s that whenever I hear someone complain about the academy and advocate for “great books,” nine times out of ten they’re talking about a closed canon instantly recognizable to their grandfathers’ generation.
It’s not quite a dog whistle in the higher education reform debate, but it’s close.Report
Right, but the main problem with the traditional canon, as I understand it, was that it was closed and deficient. People would say, “You need to read the Iliad- it’s good for you!” but refuse to read the Shahnameh or the Mahabharata. The answer to that, it seems to me, is to keep adding to it. But, you know, reading the Iliad is still good for you.Report
The problem wasn’t the canon, it was the cannoneers. That old reprobate Harold Bloom groped his female students for many years at Yale. Nothing was ever done about it. Sunt superis sua iura.Report
You can’t add to it indefinitely. Something has to go to make room.Report
Wait, what? Canonizing as a zero sum game? Now, sure, the curriculum needs to fit within four years, and so, alas, we can’t teach every great book. But the canon itself needs to limited? I don’t know- you can read a lot in one lifetime. And the traditional great books program could probably be read in a few years.Report
Yes, a person interested in literature can read “a lot in one lifetime,” but if the great books are something every educated person should read, it needs to be something a physics, biomedical engineering, international relations, archaeology major, etc. can get through in four years while also studying something else.Report
Well, then you’d have to do it as a sampling- with the current sort of curriculum, I can’t see how it could be anything but a small sampling. Of course, I think that’s how most colleges do it now. Even the Saint John’s list is that, although it’s a very good sampling.Report
I’d argue the Canon is replete with hoary old bologna, especially in the Dead White Victorian Ladies department. Can anyone justify Jane Austen? Or George Eliot? Dante in Italian, maybe, but wasting more than a week on the intricacies of 13th century politics is bollocks. That moonbat Wordsworth is another candidate for the chopping block, Shelley ditto. Milton… jeebus, where did that ponderous old versifier gain his lasting reputation?
There’s a metric buttload of the Canon which belongs in the library, not on the syllabus.Report
I took postmodern physics to mean relativity and QM. If the clockwork universe, which encourages responsible behavior with its implications of inevitable consequences, was good enough for the Founding Fathers, it’s good enough for us.Report
When hearing “postmodern physics”, I immediately thought of this.Report
But that was amazing. We need lots more of it, not less.Report
We have more of it.
Look at Breitbart. Look at O’keefe.Report
Fortunately, you can’t make me look at either of them.Report
I’d look at ’em, if they were whipped for a good long while, nailed to crosses and left to groan in the hot, hot sun of Tucson, Arizona. I’d tack up Matt Drudge, too.
Where’s that maniac Mel Gibson when he’s needed?Report
The Sokal Affair put a lot of egg on a decent amount of academic faces. Then, as now, the arguments against such acts appeal to trust and the importance of the establishment assuming good faith on the part of folks who show up to participate.
The arguments for, then as now, point out that sunlight is not only the best disinfectant, but, seriously, look at how dumb these folks are! Dumb!Report
Meanwhile, the Great Financial Collapse hasn’t embarrassed right-wing economists one bit.
Odd, that.Report
Not the Time Cube guy?Report
I dunno about that White Male business. Quite a few Black and Hispanic people of my acquaintance are profoundly conservative. While it’s true the debate has been dominated by a few Old White Dudes who held the microphone for far too long, I would counter with the example of George Washington Carver, the preeminent black conservative of his day. There are many others.Report
once they get down to particulars, that disagreement will disappear.
One “dis” too many?Report
Looks like it. It figures that the sentence that took me the most tries to get right is still the one I wind up botching. Fixed now.Report
“This is a CCOA only if society itself has become a conservative cause.”
I’m starting to think it’s much the opposite, sadly.Report
Opposite as in “because” rather than “only if”? Or some other part of the statement?Report
I think society was once the conservative cause, but frankly cannot think of any instance in which that’s still the case. Oh, lip service is still paid to ‘society’, but no work is done towards strengthening society and, in fact, all bullwarks are to be removed if they’re at odds with the ‘market’ or the politique.
The problem here is that there’s no such thing as a “free-market conservative”- it’s a complete oxymoron. Marx was wrong about plenty of things but the old cultural conservative was sure right about that. When you defend both traditions and the solvent of all traditions in the same breath, most of your values are lip service at best, and your defense of culture becomes a petty grudge for the tastes of the middle class.
I mean, what you’re referencing in this post is a perfect example of what I mean- the university is a pillar of society- it’s fundamental to the life of a free society and thus a bullwark against the reach of the state. So, let’s attack the thing and call ourselves “conservatives”, shall we? No, the word is “reactionaries”. When you want all social institutions to be brought in line with your political party, you are no longer defending society- much the opposite.
At one point, there still were conservatives in American life. Now? It’s something else- but it’s not conservatism.Report
Although he had no direct connexion with any political party, Kipling was a Conservative, a thing that does not exist nowadays. Those who now call themselves Conservatives are either Liberals, Fascists or the accomplices of Fascists.
— “Rudyard Kipling” by Geroger Orwell, 1942.
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What would Orwell have said about those who opposed intervention waaaay back in 1942?Report
Since England had been at war for three years, I doubt the subject came up much.Report
Actually, he called the pacifists “objectively pro-fascist”.
http://orwell.ru/library/articles/pacifism/english/e_patw
The subject came up enough.Report
Oh, and to clarify, I don’t bring this up because Orwell was right so much, I bring it up as evidence that, on this, he was wrong for reasons bundled with the reasons that he was wrong about the pacifists.Report
Thinking about it now, I think I might have written my last line differently — I was feeling a little pre-emptively defensive at times, mostly thinking about the responses you had to deal with earlier when talking about higher ed.
What I meant — but what I didn’t actually say — was that society ought to be something valued in a non-partisan way.Report
Oh I understand your meaning then. And I agree with your point. I’m just a bit glum on the possibilities.Report
I think maybe the definition I’d feel most comfortable with is that the inculcation of seriousness is a duty of the modern college/university. Does that mean moral seriousness? Well, I’m not sure that seriousness isn’t the precondition of virtue- well, or that virtue can exist without seriousness.Report
One thing Latin did for English for which I’ll always be grateful was to give us the word “grave” — not in its present sense, but more or less as an equivalent of the Latin word of the same spelling, dealing with both physical weight and moral seriousness. The word — both in English and Latin — has a reality (a near visceralness?) that has always made me prefer it to seriousness — especially when talking about the type of seriousness you refer to. We need gravity. But if I go around talking about “moral gravity” my friends will think I’ve either lost my mind or am merely being pretentious. Or both. Which may be symptomatic of the problem…Report
To return to Mr. Wall’s fine OP, I followed 2010’s Texas Schoolbook Massacre with great interest.
Not from the breathless fulminations and half-truths by the [need I say lefty?] academic establishment and MSM—and their leading source of “news,” some entity calling itself the Texas Freedom Network.
The core conservative objection to the original Texas curriculum was that it had been taken over by what might fairly be called the “marxist” [small “m”?] interpretation of history: more anthropology than history, really: the stories of the masses, raceclassgender natch, but also, culture, customs, what kind of food the indigenous folks ate, etc.
To cut to the relevance to Mr. Wall’s OP, the changes take this shape, from Kindergarten [below] then onward:
“In Kindergarten, the focus is on self, the self, home, family and classroom. The study of our state and national heritage begins with the study of the celebration of patriotic holidays and the contributions of historical people.”
becomes:
“In Kindergarten, the study of the self, home, family and classroom establishes the foundation of responsible citizenship in society. Students explore state and national heritage by examining the celebration of patriotic holidays and the contributions of individuals.”
[Bold face mine, as most germane to Mr. Wall’s point.]
The rest is worth skimming [link below]. Excised from the previous text is “food, clothing, and shelter” as well as “folktales, myths and legends; and poetry, songs and artworks.”
This may seem harsh, but the idea is to return to the study of history rather than the “softer” science of anthropology. Also excised in the same passage was using the song “Grand Old Flag” and a children’s biography of George Washington as teaching tools.
Further reading of the curriculum changes shows the continual substitution of “good citizenship” and study of the substantive contributions of individuals [including many minorities] to the state and nation, for the flabbier study of “people” and folkways.
I applaud. Dunno if Mr. Wall will, but it hits his point.
The university level, I dunno. I’d be satisfied if the modern liberal arts graduate could even articulate what is meant by “Athens and Jerusalem.”
And as an aside to Mr. Wall, I very much appreciated the mentions of Leo Strauss and Thomas Aquinas. I personally am of the Thomist stripe, with an affection—albeit not a complete agreement—with Strauss. Near the end, Strauss’ classroom was “full of priests”—their agreement substantial in his exquisite critique of modernity, the Platonist’s and the Thomist’s [and in their/our/my view, mankind’s] common enemy.
______________
ref: Final TEKS changes [PDF]
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index2.aspx?id=3643
Now, there were many stupid proposals made by the righties on the board during the debates, and a great media-internet sensation was made of them. But few or none actually made it into the final document, and I pass in advance on any discussion that doesn’t reference the actual final document.
It’s also interesting to skim, just to see how sausage is made, since the original text and the new text are color-coded. Oy.Report