Weaver on Education

History has always been a sobering discipline because it presents the story not only of man's achievements but also of his failures.
-Richard M. Weaver. "Education and the Individual"

Education

Nothing can be plainer, when we consider it, than this fact that education is discriminative. It takes what is less good physically, mentally, and morally and transforms that by various methods and techniques into something that more nearly approaches our ideal of the good.
-Richard Weaver. "Education and the Individual."

Education

The adherence of the universities to the military involve the neglect and have carried far enough the betrayal of the university's fundamental reason for existence, which is the advancement of man's search for truth and happiness. It is for this purpose alone that universities receive and and should receive the community's support. When the university turns away from its central purpose and makes itself an appendage to the government, concerning itself with techniques rather than ideals, dispensing conventional orthodoxy rather than new ideas, it is not only failing to meet its responsibilities, it is betraying a public trust.
-J. William Fulbright

Henry Adams

Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.
-Henry Adams

Higher Education?

Since the purpose of higher education is-yes-education, all other activities should be made to justify why they exist on campuses at all. Examples of extraneous activities that impede teaching and learning include new administrative officers (like a "director of collaborative engagement"); varsity athletics (the University of Vermont sends its softball team 2,533 miles to play against Stanford); and undergraduate amenities (five-story climbing walls). Top-heavy faculties should also be scrutinized (75 percent at Stanford have lifetime appointments, as do 73 percent at San Jose State) since senior professors are less involved with teaching.
-Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus. Higher Education? pp. 237-238. (2010)

College Football

First, I must preface this by stating that I received my graduate education at the University of Alabama. Granted this was in the mourning period for Bear Bryant but being at Alabama was a football education in itself. I am not, however, going to write of the glories of the Crimson Tide. Instead, I will focus on the general stink that is College Football circa 2011.
A week does not go by where there is not news of some football program under investigation for some sort of rules violation by some major program. USC has had to forfeit a national title, Ohio State fired its head coach and so on. Now we have revelations and accusations about the University of Miami, the "U". Miami has one of those programs that has long tiptoed around the border of compliance. The most recent accusations do not look like tiptoeing, but, rather, obliteration. Payoffs to large numbers of players, prostitutes, abortions, and so on. If the accusations are validated, it would make SMU's violations of the mid-1980s look juvenile.
What is the solution? The usual suspects call for stipends to be paid to players and end the folly of amateurism. This does not solve the problem. There will still be boosters willing to give bonuses.
There is one alternative that no one dares mention.
BLOW IT UP!
End big-time athletics. It all goes back to the basic question: what is the mission of the university? Is it to be a farm system for the National Football League? Let the NFL spend some of its billions on a farm system and let universities get back to their priority.

Have Things Changed?

The diploma madness has infected students and schools with a constant concern for getting the correct number of credits in the required areas of schooling. Diplomas turn schooling into working for grades in required courses to achieve a piece of paper for entrance into the job market. - Joel H. Spring. "Sociological and Political Ruminations", in The Twelve-Year Sentence. (1974) pp. 152-153.

Why Can't They Learn?

Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa. Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. (2011)

Almost everyone wants to get into college, but how much do undergraduates really learn once they're there? According to Academically Adrift, the answer for many students is not much. The extensive research of the authors draws on survey responses, transcript data, and the College Learning Assessment, a standardized test administered to students in their first semester and again at the end of their second year. Their analysis reveals that a significant proportion of students demonstrate no significant improvement in a range of skills including critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing. Arum and Roksa argue that for many faculty and administrators they will come as no surprise- instead they are the expected result of a student body distracted by socializing or employment and an institutional culture that puts undergraduate learning close to the bottom of the priority list.

This is not a disturbing work to anyone who has spent time in a college classroom. There exist many deep problems but they are not insoluble. Colleges and universities suffer, not from a lack of vision, but from what is known as 'mission creep". 'Mission Creep" is trying to do so many things that none of them are done well. For the institutions of higher learning, there needs to be a return to First Principles: what are we here for? Are we involved in higher learning or vocational education? Are we something to fill the schedule for 18-21 year olds? Students also need to have a concrete idea of why they are going to college, something more than delaying major life choices after high school. Parents must also have an idea of what getting a college education entails. They must be more actively involved.

I can be whatever I want!

For the power of man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please.
-C. S. Lewis. The Abolition of Man. (72)

C. S. Lewis on Education

The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts.
-C. S. Lewis. The Abolition of Man. (24)

Teaching

The good teacher emulates Socrates and Christ, neither of whom was popular with the majority of his hearers, nor wrote articles or books, nor held degrees-honorary or earned-from recognized institutions of lower or higher learning.
-Marion Montgomery. "The Segregation That Is Needed." in The Truth of Things. (39)

The State of Education

The Bridge Program in Math and Science at __________ is a three-week residential experience for 20 rising high school seniors. Selection of students is based on their academic performance and potential to contribute to and enrich campus diversity. This year the program runs from June 19 through July 9.

My alma mater, a liberal arts college of longstanding has established a bridge program. I am very familiar with such programs in the community college system where they have to accept everybody. But when a school that prides itself on its selectivity has to do so, something is not right.

The College and the Republic

Unrestrained freedom is anarchy. Restrained only by force and arms, is despotism; self-restrained is Republicanism. Wherever there is wanting the intelligence and virtue requisite for the latter, Republicanism expires. The complicated machinery of free institutions must have an adequate regulator; and that is to be found in our enlightened public conscience. This our Educational institutions- teaching as well the laws of social morality as of physical science- are omnipotent in forming. -Edmund B. Fairfield. "The College and the Republic." Speech given July 4, 1853. Reprinted in Arnn. Liberty and Learning.

The Northwest Ordinance

Article 3. Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged. The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians, their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent; and, in their property, rights, and liberty, they shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars authorized by Congress, but laws founded in justice and humanity shall from time to time be made for preventing wrongs being done to them, and for preserving peace and friendship with them.

A Liberal Arts Education: Why Bother?

Liberal education is the kind that deals not so much with means as with ends, not so much with the how of things as the why. In one sense this is irrelevant to the everyday pressures of life and especially the hard job of making a living. The doctor must know the body and its workings: does he need to know its purposes? The accountant must know the ways of financial transactions and how to keep track of them; does he need to know the purpose of business, or the best uses of the profits that it generates? The general needs to know how to assemble supply, transport, and deploy his troops so as to defeat the enemy; does he need to know if the cause of his country is superior to the cause of the enemy? Are these people in fact experts in the ultimate questions that are inherent in their activities, and would they be better at these activities if they were?
The answer to this question...is yes. Every self-governing person-every mother and father, every manager of a task or of other people-will find himself involved during his life with important decisions that reach up to the ultimate. Each must account to his Maker. Each must raise his children and answer these questions. Each must choose his field of labor and decide how honestly, diligently, and fairly he will pursue it. Each will face occasions when his own immediate interest conflicts with that of another, and each must decide then how to pursue it or when to surrender that interest. The ability to do so is the product of a liberal, as opposed to simply technical education.
-Larry P. Arnn. Liberty and Learning: The Evolution of American Education. (22-23)

Liberal Arts

In educational matters, as any old hand at curricular debate can attest, the best is frequently made an enemy of the good. And, all too often, it is an ideal and theoretical "best" held up to expose the shabbiness and shortcomings of a known and practical "good." Today as we struggle with the gritty and intractable realities of our own era, we are once again bludgeoned by fashionable memories of an idealized and romanticized past. Let us be sure it is not a past that never truly was. Let us be sure, too, that what is being measured against it is a present that really is.
-Francis Oakley. Community of Learning: The American College and the Liberal Arts Tradition. (72)

The Student of 2010

So here is where I take a step towards being an old fogey. The college student of today is a literalist. Nuance in language is beyond him. If everything is not explained down to the last iota (that's letter for you youngsters) the student of today does not understand. When giving a test to a class you must explain on the test that they will respond in ink. It does not matter how many times you have told them in the previous week that it will be in ink or they will be penalized, there will be at least one student writing in pencil. One might think that for an hour test it is understood you do not leave to go to the bathroom. No, you have to explain this as well. You write on the test do five identifications. Sure enough someone does six. You have spent the whole semester in the same class, you have taken every test there. A student will contact you after the final saying he missed it because he thought it was in another room. For the uninitiated one might wonder where teachers get there laughs. I'll tell you a little secret: go to the faculty lounge and hear them swap tales of the most outlandish excuses they've heard. Our students today are very creative storytellers, but most of them want to go into business. Many could be good storytellers, writers of creative fiction, movie screenplays and so forth: the raw talent is there. On second thought, maybe business is a good place for them.