Posted on 01/27/2009 5:09:15 PM PST by bahblahbah
A few years ago, a faculty committee at Harvard produced a report on the purpose of education. “The aim of a liberal education” the report declared, “is to unsettle presumptions, to defamiliarize the familiar, to reveal what is going on beneath and behind appearances, to disorient young people and to help them to find ways to reorient themselves.”
The report implied an entire way of living. Individuals should learn to think for themselves. They should be skeptical of pre-existing arrangements. They should break free from the way they were raised, examine life from the outside and discover their own values.
This approach is deeply consistent with the individualism of modern culture, with its emphasis on personal inquiry, personal self-discovery and personal happiness. But there is another, older way of living, and it was discussed in a neglected book that came out last summer called “On Thinking Institutionally” by the political scientist Hugh Heclo.
In this way of living, to borrow an old phrase, we are not defined by what we ask of life. We are defined by what life asks of us. As we go through life, we travel through institutions — first family and school, then the institutions of a profession or a craft.
Each of these institutions comes with certain rules and obligations that tell us how to do what we’re supposed to do. Journalism imposes habits that help reporters keep a mental distance from those they cover. Scientists have obligations to the community of researchers. In the process of absorbing the rules of the institutions we inhabit, we become who we are.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Amusing. No where will you find more mundane uniformity of thought than on the Harvard liberal arts faculty. Not a very impressive bunch.
That sounds like professorial conceit, actually.
Doubt combined with ignorance is meaningless. You have to at least know something before you can doubt it. My opinion of academics has plummeted in the years since 911. It was never high, but I wouldn't trust most of these people to educate anyone. Its hard for me to put a value on four years of Halliburton rants.
The current conceit is that profs have a higher calling than to teach mere facts, they are teaching you how to think. But the reality is pretty disappointing; these are not people you should trust to teach anyone how to think. Its pointless to deconstruct something if you haven't first learned how to construct it.
What these Harvard academics really want is a rationale for breaking down traditional beliefs like Christianity, traditional values like patriotism and love of family. Having done so, they impose an iron conformity with Leftist ideology. No one is allowed to question Obama or any other Demonrat, conservative speakers are shouted down or hounded off campus, people who disagree with the Left are committing “hate speech,” etc. etc.
A silly and dangerous conceit. Whenever I hear tripe like this; I wonder if the speaker truly believes that if everyone merely thought for themselves, they'd all come to the same opinion? Education is nothing but the systematic process of training a student to think like someone else, and not for themselves. Why so many hours spent reading and studying the thought patterns of the great minds of the past, if all you have to do is "think for yourself"™ and reach the correct conclusion?
I’ll agree with William F. Buckley about those guys. Someone grab a Boston phone book.
Does this mean that we can tell them that all the liberal, diversity, and welfare stuff they learned in high school was a bunch of crap?
It should also be noted that despite the sneers of the left, intelligent people created western civilization, and their complex and elaborate ideas have survived the natural selection of more than 2,000 years of criticism.
Before students should be gleefully told to disregard that much learning, in favor of their ignorant opinion, they should have considerable understanding of what they are disregarding.
“Relativism” is bandied about today, when, to a great extent, it just signifies ignorance, arrogance, and self-importance. The culture of western civilization is truly brilliant, and few people walking around today could best even a small portion of it.
Students should not be assigned lessons touting how brilliant they are. Precisely because they are not brilliant, and to a large extent, neither are the teachers they study under.
"Relativism" is so 15 minutes ago. These people are the rotting aristocracy of a bygone age. They just don't know it yet.
The purpose of an education is action. Everything else is detail, much of it unneeded.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.