13 Apr Can Higher Education Be Saved?
We don’t pretend to have expert ideas about education. And we especially don’t pretend to have expert ideas about higher education. What we do have, however, is an out-of-the-mainstream theory about higher ed., why it has become so radically politicized, and why it has, as a result, become largely useless – especially regarding the humanities and the social “sciences.” Moreover, this theory also explains why we are not especially optimistic about the burgeoning conservative movement to “reform” the nation’s colleges and universities. We outlined the basics of this theory in the first part of The Dictatorship of Woke Capital:
[We] start our story in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1876.
Three years prior, a wealthy Quaker bachelor and railroad magnate named Johns Hopkins died, leaving the enormous sum of $7 million (the equivalent of roughly $150 million today) to found a hospital and university. This university was to be like no other in the United States. Whereas Harvard was founded to train Unitarian and Congregational clergy, Yale was founded to teach theology and religious languages, Dartmouth was founded to teach Christianity to Native Americans, Princeton was founded to serve as a seminary for Presbyterian ministers, and so on, Johns Hopkins was founded not just to teach but to “discover” as well. Johns Hopkins was founded specifically and purposely to create or uncover new knowledge. In his inaugural address, Daniel Colt Gilman, the University’s first president, declared that its mission would be “To educate its students and cultivate their capacity for lifelong learning, to foster independent and original research, and to bring the benefits of discovery to the world.” Or, as Johns Hopkins University puts it today, its job is not to teach its students the knowledge of the world, but to uncover “knowledge for the world.”
Modeled after Germany’s famed Heidelberg University, Johns Hopkins, in turn, became the model for the American research university more generally, an institution designed to produce new knowledge and to embrace “progress” as a defining value. In the physical sciences, this was and is both understandable and admirable. In the specific case of Johns Hopkins, the University’s benefactor wanted the hospital to be on the cutting edge of medicine and for the medical college to train physicians capable of keeping it there. And, for the most part, that has been the case.
Unfortunately, at the time, the standard Western post-Enlightenment philosophical weltanschauung still clung to the notion that a “science of man” could be developed to mimic the natural sciences. David Hume conceived of himself as the “Newton of the mind,” while Saint-Simone and Hegel both professed to discover the “science” of history. This “historicism,” plus that which Friedrich Hayek later called “scientism,” were the beliefs that human affairs were merely extensions of the physical sciences.
Historicism was the epistemological ethos of the German university during the nineteenth century, so it is no surprise that Hopkins, modeled on the finest such university, would be similarly enmeshed in this tradition.
In brief, the American university is designed specifically: A.) to focus on “progress” and B.) to foster the creation of “new” knowledge, even at the expense of passing on existing knowledge.
We note here that this peculiarity of the American higher education system is in addition to the general predisposition of American education more broadly to reject existing knowledge as a valid tool in pedagogy. Thanks in large part to the Progressive reformer John Dewey, American education is specifically set up to deprioritize teaching existing knowledge in favor of teaching “thinking skills.” Again, this is addressed in The Dictatorship:
At the time, and for a great while afterward, Dewey was seen by many as the American philosopher, the only thinker who really mattered. Today, however, Dewey is best known as a pioneer in education.
Dewey considered himself neither a Marxist nor a Socialist of any sort. And yet he—in conjunction with his tireless promoter Sidney Hook—probably did more to inculcate Americans with post-Enlightenment leftism than any other person. Like Mill and Kant and Hume and the rest who came before him, Dewey disdained the idea of an existing body of acquired human social and moral knowledge that could and should be passed down from generation to generation in the form of custom and tradition. He believed that knowledge was not something that could be learned but something every individual student had to discover for himself. Dewey was dogmatic about this. He denigrated the traditional practice of focusing on teaching such subjects as reading, writing, mathematics, and history, and promoted the teaching of social and “thinking” skills instead. This, he thought, would be the salvation of mankind, learning to think without preconceptions.
Dewey was obsessed with the idea of “critical thinking,” or, as he preferred to call it, “reflective thinking.” The key to Dewey’s pragmatism was the belief in the idea that man should not be taught knowledge, but, rather, should be taught how to attain knowledge on his own.
Americans like to think of colleges and universities as the places to which young men and women go in order to learn the secrets of the universe, to learn history, mathematics, economics, engineering, and business administration. They see higher education as the means by which young people are enlightened and edified, trained for careers, and shaped into well-rounded and well-read members of society.
Some of this does take place, of course – a great deal of it, in fact – but it’s largely through the efforts of individual faculty members who see their personal responsibilities and goals in quite different terms than does “the system.” And even they can’t escape the system altogether.
Texas, North Dakota, Louisiana, Florida, and Iowa have all taken steps over the last couple of years to limit or abolish faculty tenure at state colleges and universities. We agree with legislators in these states and with conservative reformers more generally that the tenure system is broken and badly in need of fixing. But we think they are wildly mistaken about the reasons this is so.
Presently, tenure requires publication, and publication, in turn, requires the “advancement” of knowledge, i.e. the creation and documentation of “new” ideas through “original” research. And while such advancements are important and can be exceptionally valuable – especially in the hard sciences – in the social sciences and humanities, the very idea reinforces and perpetuates the belief that teaching subject matter is far less important than creating subject matter. It buttresses the idea that original research is always and everywhere an incontrovertible good and that it should take precedence over the solid, competent transmission of the existing body of knowledge. In our estimation, this is a huge mistake and the biggest flaw with tenure. It exacerbates the “system’s” already mistaken focus.
What this suggests, therefore, is that the current efforts on the part of conservatives and “free thinkers” to reform or remake higher education are likely to end in disappointment.
Much has been made, for example, of the reforms mandated by Governor Ron DeSantis at the New College of Florida. Among other things, DeSantis has prohibited the use of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” criteria in faculty and staff hiring decisions, has defunded all DEI departments, has demanded an end to what he calls “ideological indoctrination,” and has insisted that the school add “general education core course requirements that are ‘rooted in the values of liberty and western tradition.’”
This is all well and good. And we appreciate the effort. Nevertheless, the New College’s mission statement still avows that its purpose is to provide “a distinctive academic program which develops the student’s intellectual and personal potential as fully as possible; encourages the discovery of new knowledge and values while providing opportunities to acquire established knowledge and values; and fosters the individual’s effective relationship with society.”
We suppose we should be pleased that the school mentions “established knowledge” at all. Still, it’s clear what the focus here is: to “develop…intellectual and personal potential,” to “encourage the discovery of new knowledge and values,” to “foster an…effective relationship with society,” all the while merely “providing opportunities to acquire established knowledge” (if we absolutely have to, we guess).
It is also worth noting that the school believes that its mission includes “allowing our faculty to teach challenging courses and critical thinking skills to last a lifetime.”
It seems to us that if Governor DeSantis wants his reforms of the New College and other state colleges and universities to be successful, then a great deal more overhaul is necessary, starting with the very purpose of the schools. If he truly wants to make a difference, then he absolutely must eliminate the “discovery of new knowledge” stuff – at least at the undergraduate level.
The other day, California Governor Gavin Newsom was in Florida and made a video at the New College, where he complained about the reform efforts, decrying the “politicization” of the school. These efforts have, he said, limited free speech, scared the faculty, and bullied students. The hilarious part is that he thinks this makes the New College unique; he thinks that even if this is all true that it somehow distinguishes this one college from all the rest. We have news for him. This is what nearly ALL college campuses have been like for at least the last 80 years. This is the result of the “progressive” university. This is INARGUABLY the status quo on campus. And yet he’s never noticed or cared before because it’s all met his ideological predispositions and suited his political ends.
To fix the American university, we must focus on “providing opportunities to acquire established knowledge” above and beyond all else. Let the rest go.
