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Essays, Opinion, & Commentary |
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The American Teacher and the Restoration of Society (Continued)
Because there is widespread acceptance of the idea that our public schools aren't doing what they should, there is much talk today about "education." Yet most academics, let alone ordinary people, don't know what the word means. For 2,500 years there was a common approach to learning, and it was primarily literary. Herodotus read Pindar, Plato read Herodotus, Plato taught Aristotle, Epicurus read Aristotle, Horace read Epicurus, Seneca read Horace, and all read Homer. This relationship of almost personal connection among living and dead thinkers did not end with the advent of the Christian era, but the Bible usurped the place of Homer. The classical authors, Aristotle and Virgil in particular, acquired much authority among the literate through the Middle Ages, with Aquinas drawing heavily on the former and Dante following the latter through the Inferno. All this was common knowledge, but that is my point. Until 70 or so years ago, men received a similar education based on a circumscribed literary tradition. Mathematics, however, was always an important part of education, being a "sister science" to philosophy -- Euclid's Elements was a standard classroom text up to the beginning of the twentieth century -- but the same continuity obtained; Cicero "discovered" the tomb of Archimedes. In the past, therefore, the educated had a common base of knowledge upon which they could draw for their discussions. They were thus able to carry on the dialogue across cultures and centuries which is aptly called "the Great Conversation." This traditional liberal education served many purposes. In the past, it was the foundation for all the professions, of which there were three: law, medicine, and clergy. But, more importantly, this education was considered requisite preparation for aristocrats, and was often crowned by the "grand tour" of Europe. In America, the Ivy League schools were "the last resorts of aristocratic sentiment within the democracy," and used to "have the vocation of producing gentlemen as well as scholars," but this ended after World War II, in large part due to the egalitarian effects of the GI Bill (Bloom, p. 89). In the eighteenth century, when science reached its maturity, the physical sciences began to be studied more, but the classical education remained intact. During this time, the "scientist" becomes a more common figure. Benjamin Franklin continues to serve as good example of this type of man: a scientist and inventor, eminently practical -- but still classically educated. But, early in the so-called Enlightenment, Jonathan Swift understood the nature of science and the dangers it represented, and he satirized scientists in Part III of Gulliver's Travels, "A Voyage to Laputa." At the Academy of Lagado, a parody of the Royal Society, which Swift visited in 1710 (Chalker, p. 356), Gulliver sees a scientist who had spent eight years "upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers." He told Gulliver he "did not doubt in eight years more, that he should be able to supply the Governor's gardens with sunshine at a reasonable rate" (pp. 223-224). Another chamber held a terrible stench, as well as a scientist employed since his first coming to the Academy in "an operation to reduce human excrement to its original food, by separating the several parts, removing the tincture which it receives from the gall, making the odour exhale, and scumming off the saliva. He had a weekly allowance from the Society of a vessel filled with human ordure, about the bigness of a Bristol barrel" (p. 224). To us they are our priests and the shapers of our world, to Swift they are filthy, disheveled men begging money for their worthless projects. Swift understood the danger that Scienza Nuova posed to the classical educational tradition he valued so much, of which he was a recipient, and which he vigorously defended in The Battle of the Books -- in which the ancient ones prevailed over the modern -- and elsewhere. He also recognized the wider danger it posed to the traditional order he passionately subscribed to. He did not share the Enlightenment enthusiasm for science, but rather saw it for what it was. After summoning the ghost of Descartes to talk to that of Aristotle, the latter tells Gulliver not only that Descartes' vortex theory is "exploded," but "predicted the same fate to attraction [Newton's theory of gravitation], whereof the present learned are such zealous asserters. He said, that new systems of nature were but new fashions, which would vary in every age; and even those who pretended to demonstrate them from mathematical principles would flourish but a short period of time, and be out of vogue when that was determined" (pp. 242-243). Thus, Swift's understanding of science is consonant with that of Kuhn and Appleyard. And Swift shows he is of the same opinion as Lippmann regarding rationalism and the multitude: Gulliver says, ". . . such constant irreconcilable enemies to science are the common people" (p. 230). Swift saw where science was going, and would not have been surprised at the "Newtonian killing systems" of World War I (Appleyard, p. 115), and even anticipated the hydrogen bomb and nuclear stalemate, according to Michael Foot (p. 29). By the latter half of the nineteenth century, Nietzsche had witnessed what Swift anticipated, and he knew from experience (to him, the most important source of knowledge) that "the scientific view is deadly to culture" (Bloom, p. 202) and like Swift, he attacks the scientist. For example, he writes:
The growing importance of the physical sciences during the eighteenth century was necessarily accompanied by a rise in the study of technical, specialized fields, corresponding to the erosion of "a social order alien to the mercantile spirit" (Janet Adam Smith quoted by Tillotson, G., Fussell, P., Jr., Waingrow, M., & Rogerson, B., p. 13). During this time, the pejorative "virtuoso" was applied to specialists, and, alongside science, specialization also received satirical treatment by Swift in Gulliver's Travels. The Laputans, who live on a floating island, are theoretical mathematicians, their heads being "all reclined either to the right, or the left; one of their eyes turned inward, and the other directly up to the zenith" (p. 200). These specialists are so preoccupied with their narrow studies that their wives occasionally commit adultery in front of them without being noticed. They aren't interested in anything other than theoretical math, and eat equilateral triangle-shaped meat and "praise the beauty of a woman" by describing it in terms of "rhombs, circles, parallelograms, ellipses, and other geometrical terms" (p. 205). "Imagination, fancy, and invention, they are wholly strangers to, nor have any words in their language by which those ideas can be expressed; the whole compass of their thoughts and mind being shut up within the two forementioned sciences" (p. 206). Michael Foot notes "how up to date these gentlemen appear" (p. 8). During the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century, the problem of specialization exploded. Toward the end of the century, Nietzsche wrote:
According to Nietzsche, these "specialists" and "nook dwellers" occupy a low place on the natural "order of rank," and he laments "how utterly our modern world lacks the whole type of a Heraclitus, Plato, Empedocles, and whatever other names these royal and magnificent hermits of the spirit had" (p. 123). For Nietzsche, the philosopher must attain "his proper level, the height for a comprehensive look, for looking around, for looking down" (p. 124). For Nietzsche, "Facing a world of 'modern ideas' that would banish everybody into a corner and 'specialty,' a philosopher -- if today there could be philosophers -- would be compelled to find the greatness of man, the concept of 'greatness,' precisely in his range and multiplicity, in his wholeness in manifoldness" (p. 137). The reader may object that Nietzsche is here talking about philosophers -- his "philosopher of the future," in particular -- and ask what this has to do with education. To which I answer, everything. For these characteristics of a philosopher, though lacking in most professional educators today, are to be highly desired in our ideal teacher of the future. Some of the greatest teachers who ever lived were philosophers; I can name a few -- Socrates, Diogenes, Rusticus -- but most have been lost to despairing posterity, owing to the low status accorded teachers by our culture. The King of Macedon could have hired whomever he wanted to tutor his son, and, to the exclusion of the sophists, went outside his kingdom to procure the greatest philosopher in the world.
Today, we often hear phrases like "specialized education" and "professional training." But "specialized education" is an oxymoron. Accounting, engineering, law, and medical degrees may be practical and useful accomplishments, but none of these signify an education, and never did. And as for "professional training," animals are trained; men are educated. These phrases are the slogans of salesmen trying to sell us a commodity -- and worse, attempting to turn us into one so we can sell ourselves. True education does not pander to the vicissitudes of the marketplace. It deals not with the transitory, but with the eternal. I have thus tried to set out the underlying problems which prevent us from having good schools. First, science has undermined our religions, invaded our private certainties, and corroded our culture. Second, the American regime has degenerated from a better sort of democracy into a worse sort. Third, ancient Greek culture has contributed to America's low opinion of its teachers. And, fourth, our society is ignorant of what the word "education" means. I turn now to the solutions. |
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