Friday, March 6, 2009
Social Change again
I would argue that the swing to a "social change" agenda, whatever that might be, is not merely a result of '60's radicalism and Foucault, but is essentially a response to the changing role of education in the United States. Bear with me for a moment...: if the old Ivy League model of liberal education (which I only cite to identify an American version of Humanism) essentially prepared upper-class kids to be upper-class leaders in a classed society (all big assumptions, but accurate, I think, if overly-simplified), it necessarily had to fall apart when middle-class and working-class kids flooded the universities. In this sense, the "social change" model is simply a response of good teachers to higher education's imperative to prepare the next generation of leaders. Has college really become the new high school, as I've heard at least one Harvard-educated PhD argue with a disdainful "the barbarians are at the gate" tone? I don't know, but I think the article Dave posted below hits the mark when it talks about the demand for a 'practical,' usable kind of morality. What Hitler has in common with Mao and Gandhi is that all present stuff (texts?) to be studied, as do Teresa de Ávila, Francisco Franco and Juan Goytisolo. The Humanist's job is to critique, not just read, these texts, be they ancient or contemporary. I think moral critique is essentially what we do. It was definitely what Erasmus and company were doing.
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4 comments:
Good point about the moral critique.
I do think that poll, in the way it was constructed or at least represented in the article (we don't have direct access to it) sets up a false opposition: classics vs. social change. The notion of "classics" has come to embrace many contemporary texts, and is constantly redefining itself (not without much wailing and gnashing of teeth among academic conservatives). The word "classics" in the survey seems to be used as a euphemism for "teaching students to blindly follow the status quo," and that would be a silly and erroneous idea.
Agreed! The false dichotomy is one that many academics also fall prey to, I think, and therein may lie the problem.
I think there is a game that goes on, much to the detriment of universities in general. Some professors really do use their position to advance a personal idealogical agenda. I have observed this at my university (these instructors tend to be "liberal," but not always). They are a minority, but their actions are picked up by the media, and broadcast to the world. Then activists (usually "conservative") start yelling that academia is a breeding ground for radicals led by lazy, do-nothing professors, and that we should do something, like cut professor salaries and abolish tenure. No one wins in this situation, and the liberal arts are the easiest target because they don't seem to produce any "practical" (read "short term") benefits to society.
The historical perspective to this argument is illuminating, and I would only add that when the middle-classes started going to college it was just as much or more about getting ahead, trying to get a good job than becoming a leader. Now we have everyone going to college, which is terrific, I think, but complicated when our students expectations don't meet their preparation and curriculum, particularly general education, if there is any of that left with clear objectives. Many students really don't know what they want yet, and studying literature and the canon seems to force a student to make choices, defend them, while offering enough complexity and ambiguity to make things less than clear cut. Sounds like a good preparation for the real world to me.
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