Why Aren’t College Students Learning Anything?

National Review ^ | June 13, 2018 | Brad Polumbo

[clee1]

And many years ago, you’d have been correct... a liberal arts education was valuable.

These days? Waste of time and money.

[Political Junkie Too]

Quite a number of years ago now, I earned a liberal arts degree. Throughout my program... I was taught that, when reading literature, I had to consider the times in which it was written. Context was important. We also looked at “great themes:” life, death, love, honor, and so forth.

Sorry for hacking your quote, but it made for a good segue for my post on why college students aren't learning.

I recently watched a Jordan Peterson video of a lecture and Q&A with students at Lafayette College. I've seen much of his themes repeated over many videos, but this one seemed to nicely express a thought of what students are supposed to learn from liberal arts studies. As is typical with Peterson, he wanders around the subject with great detail until finally coming back to make his final point. It's no different with the clip I'm going to link at the bottom.

But first, let me summarize my take on it.

The student questioner asked Peterson about his thoughts on truth versus nihilism (the rejection of religion). Peterson often weaves riffs of Nietzsche, Jung, Freud, and Dostoevsky, and he does so here, too. He beings with Nietzsche's "God is dead" to start a journey that Christianity's "God is the highest truth" ultimately leads to its demise, meaning that one who finds truth (science and nature) ultimately rejects religious doctrine.

Peterson takes this rejection to the next step, which is Jung asking that if God is dead (meaning the morality of right and wrong), then what replaces it? Nietzsche says we're free to create our own new way; Jung says we should rediscover the values of the past. Peterson cites the ancient Egyptian story of Horus rescuing Osiris from the Underworld as a 6,000-year old example of a repeating theme throughtout humanity of people learning good versus evil through reviving the lessons of those who came before.

Peterson then concludes with "That's what you're doing in University when you take a liberal arts course or degree. You're resurrecting your dead ancestors so they can live again in your form, but in conjoined union with you. You're the vision that gives the dead past its vitality and spirit. That's the purpose of being educated; that's your initiation. What you do when you're initiated properly in that regard is that you develop a comprehensive philosophy of good and evil, a deep philosophy of good and evil, and that protects you against the confrontations with malevolence."

It seems to me that university students today are missing this lesson. They are at college for a different purpose these days.

Jordan Peterson Lecture and Q&A at Lafayette College - Truth vs. Nihilism question.

-PJ