THE 'WHAT' OF EDUCATION: An Exchange of Views
an exchange of views THE WHAT' OF EDUCATION Greenwich, 'Conn. To the Editors: Your lead article by Oeie W. Sfcea in the "Spring Education Issue" of Jan. 30 is a personal insult to tiroser -who read...
...If Dean Shea knew what is going on in sociology, at Fordham as well as elsewhere, he wttg&A never faro written so naive an article...
...30 is a personal insult to tiroser -who read your publication for a thoutftil interpretation on mainline liberal establishment .'happen-ins;'After several reworkings of this particular hayrack (a Herculean labor of no small magnitude) there appeared absolutely no grant of steel let alone the Strrattest indication of a point All that Can be sale is that tbe positioning of the mound seems carefully placed sltbtty forward and-appropriately- slightly of the present course of the Wild horses of American higher education...
...Let me say at once, in answer to Dr...
...If we succeed, lthe student will be less happy out of his ignorance, less confident perhaps, but the potential for further development will at least have been tapped...
...They do not necessarily come to college for an education (liberally defined...
...they come to be prepared for jobs...
...If they really believed in Ae...
...JOSEPH t. FTTZPATMCK, S.J...
...No wonder "Western civilization is not only facing but is well into a second breakdown...
...In a recent class on Greek tragedy I found many <rfmy students unable to discuss the plays in other than Freudian terms...
...REV...
...Can we not teach others to love as wen...
...Such schools of literary investigation as the "new" criticism and the "new" and "newer" bibliography have rarified the literary experience beyond the grasp of ordinary readers, and not all of these care to be transformed into extraordinary readers...
...Anderson's letter first A few observations will suffice tb mark the level of its criticism...
...Professor of Sociology, Fordham University Salisbury, Md...
...In light of all this, Mr...
...WILLIAM F. ANDERSON ron*,N.Y...
...Shea implies, because of his classical education seems "especially able to resist political pressure...
...Shea is saying in hfc article, "The 'What' of Education," is that "Physics, Sociology, and Psychology" (an unusual triumvirate) should be stricken out of the college curriculum because they are manipulative...
...t belief it fc a matter of policy ia Ganft, at least in some of the prairie...
...This great man, Mr...
...His **bt*i hypofliesis" that we are moving tswftfd a new Middle Ages, there to by the priests of Behavioralism, white paying homage to the religion of sociat scieiace is just bold enough to seen* tmkg prophetic...
...Some erf the richest contributions to sociology can be found in the humanities...
...or Robert Nisbet just up the avenue from him at Columbia...
...Years ago, I remember having a discussion concerning the educational background of Solzhenitsyn...
...And, since colleges are part of that work), everything they do, including the teaching of classics, is affected by the.world's turmoil...
...Despite the impassioned radical diction, Dr...
...there is a profoundly humanistic orientation among many of the outstanding sociologists which he completely ignores...
...What seems less debatable is what my article said: that we ought at least to make sure that our students get a balance of discipline in their studies...
...On the other band, since the classics as humanistic disciplines assume that man is an undetermined and creative individual, the teaching of classics prepares a population of students for freedom and self-fulfillment...
...What was Mr...
...Although this term generally carries a pejorative connotation, it needn't and it shouldn't...
...it simply calls him a novelist...
...There is little in all this to warm a humanist's heart...
...to those who were at the time deeply concerned about our involvement in Vietnam, it seemed somehow plausible to question the relevance of our greatest poet and playwright Of course many Shakespearians laughed in derision at this "news"-and rightly so!- but I fear that it came as an apocalyptic revelation to some who should have known better...
...Fitzpatrick is arguing At!* the study of sociology prejres0dents for this, he is wrong The sod# scientists cannot make us stand in awe before die grandeur and nobjs style of an Oedipus or a Lear...
...Literary study has been mechanized and pushed to the thresh-holds of science: analytical bibliography has discovered the Hinman collator, for example, and literary scholars have learned to use the computer to digest and organize their "data...
...He is, of course, correct...
...Kramer, mat I am a firm believer in "open mliwfotfony for such a policy has been my own intellectual salvation...
...To the Editors: Let me deal with Mr...
...Caveat ledor...
...The problem is part of the profound, cultural upheaval which is shaking the modern world...
...The What of Education" should be renamed "The Watt of Education" and given, at most, a gold star for its low voltage contribution to the apparent energy crisis in higher education...
...half of his letter refuting what he calls my implication that Solzhenitsyn had received a "classical education...
...Back to the point Each of our disciplines presents valid paradigms to our students...
...Has he ever heard of Peter Berger who is just across the river at Rutgers...
...Some years ago a. colleague of mine while I was still a graduate teaching assistant proclaimed his discovery that "Shakespeare is irrelevant...
...I strongly resist, however, the notion that the educational process should be prolonged by the addition of an "intermediate year" to compensate for the inadequacies of public education and to inculcate the basic skills that college but generally do not ftfsum.'-fbt fie* ia not entirely new...
...Or Robert Merton, or David Riesman at Harvard, or Lewis Coser at Stony-brook, or Renee Fox at Penn, or Werner Stark, right here at Fordham, to mention only a few...
...He sounds like Dean Shea...
...To be isarei it woidd be utopic to en-comfter competent Freshmen who have been properly trained to write and think* but I, for one, will not forego the jptaibaity of at least attempting totake up for such deficiencies as As I understand It, the problem that face* the liberal arts faculty is not the student'* educational but his motivational inadequacies, and that is why I believe Dean Shea's analysis cuts deeper 4a the core of the matter...
...Nor does the prospect of a more or less monolithic philosophical and critical approach in place of the present diversity of approaches cheer a liberal arts - dean...
...What is wrong with it, however, 4s flwt ft prisons die student every year, setting back the tiwttfaltr of tils already impeded nuttuffftii: And who would administer this intermediate year--the see-on Syitasa that has already failed oa its priseat scheduleto prepare him The college teacher can offer the esteinsratadent a widening horizon of experience, and, perhaps, stodeat deserves h, may treat him as an aduiti potentially perceptive aa* isirouy of knowledge...
...Many of our students appear,to be the pragmatic creations of a cosmetic society...
...Anderson seems to stand in greater need of a remedial reading course than of a reasoned reply...
...Lionel Trilling in his essay The Two Environments...
...301, is a sad indication that the deans and the sociologists at Fordham are not talking to each other...
...Somehow, Time magazine heard the proclamation and published it nationally...
...Of course, you can't trust those sly Russian biographers...
...AH those liberal sociologists of the fifties and sixties are aging fast...
...Mr, Anderson suggests that I am advocating that every student study classic* in the narrowest sense of that word...
...Although he later taught mathematics he was probably every night under the covers reading the original Virgil by bear-oil light...
...A five-minute piece of research produced the following quote from the' preface to One Day in the Life of Ivan Deniso-vich: "When he (Solzhenitsyn) was a boy, his father died, and he was brought up by his mother in the southern city of Rostov...
...The stu-deoti in tntn, will meet that challenge and apipiy himself, or reject it...
...But to get to the heart of Dean Shea's article, the problem he focuses on, the threat to individuality, freedom and creativity, and the relation of the curriculum to moral formation have little to do with courses in classics or sociology...
...It did not seem at all classical...
...Tb& article in fact argues far exposure of students to a broad spectrum of humanistic studies to include many cultures and ages...
...That he has found salvation through the andy of the classics...
...In positive terms.the word derives from the Italian dilettare-"to delight" -and it might be well for us to recall that naive delight that surely motivated us initially to study the arts...
...The very term "literary appreciation" recalls the sometimes precious scholarship of some decades past (Any approach, I fear, will perpetrate its excesses...
...Not necessarily a mere amateur, a dilettante is "an admirer or lover of the arts...
...value of their labors, could this have come about...
...They are representative of a large and influential segment of the profession, The Dean offers Solzbenitsyn as the bright and shining example of a man formed to freedom in the humanities...
...Interestingly enough, Mr...
...Beginning with the nineteenth-century defense of literary study as a means of improving the intelligence, and especially the intelligence as it touches the moral life, Trilling examines the nature of the moral life in our own age...
...These * are not "marginal" sociologists...
...Anderson then spends...
...To the Editors: Dean Shea's article, "The What of Education" [Jan...
...They want specific training, not abstract knowledge...
...Shea trying to say...
...Many of these sociologists and psychologists are no less speculative than Plato or Augustine or Hegel...
...Anderson suggests that I am advocating "striking Physics tie article was its need to naafetain balance mong,disciplines...
...30], I should like to offer still another interpretation of the problem -perhaps I should say the challenge- that faces the humanist/teacher in this seventh decade of our twentieth century...
...It is the particular challenge of the humanist/educator to demonstrate to such a student flie folly of this wasteful and limited perspective, to turn him around intellectually and force him to question his values and his motives, to make him aware of his ignorance and to make him thirst for knowledge...
...Kramer's position is well argued, and, certainly, the twofold goal of education he posits cannot be gainsaid: 1) "the preservation of culture," and 2) "the development of critical thinking which can see die limits of our society and have the imagination to offer alternatives...
...This variation on the "straw man" response raises, however, a further question...
...and same of the richest contributions to the humanities in recent years have come from the social sciences...
...but we also need to pursue something that is much more basic...
...Those who have been "saved" of course can be easily converted...
...It would be hard to find a more impressive array of humanistic scholars than these, all of them distinguished sociologists who probably know more about classical literature than many a professor of , the humanities...
...Remember, today's liberal is tomorrow's conservative...
...Shea's crowning argument for a classical "literary and philosophical" education concerns die "great Russian novelist Solzhenitsyn...
...If the Dean is looking for one of the sharpest attacks on an excessive empiricism as well as an excessive abstractionism in sociology, he need not look to the classics...
...This subject was brilliantly discussed by the late Prof...
...But if, God forbid, we must reeducate ourselves to enjoy that which we have dedicated our lives to (and certainly this will not apply to all teachers in the humanities), and if we must better learn how to convey that enjoyment to others, then so be it For if we cannot meet this basic challenge, we shall become highly-skilled anachronisms, and deservedly so...
...GEORGE W. SHEAs and sixties are aging fast...
...A strange argument, indeed...
...And-1 write from the experience of hatfeig taught Freshman English \ for years than I care to reckon...
...I doubt if many students get beyond the Introductory Sociology course without having to read Mills' book...
...He concludes that it has less to do with the categorizing and judging of deeds, or with abstract ethical systems, and more to do with the selection of individual styles and group tylet, wbjch we crt cuwires...
...Mills insists that a scholar cannot perceiv* the meaning of contemporary sociological phenomena unless he sees them in the total historical, and cultural background out of which they have emerged...
...One last note for Mr...
...Fitzpatrick points out that there are many "humanistic" sociologists...
...Our best minds in graduate schools should be facing this unique and obvious challenge by turning out specialists who are also not only competent but dynamic generalists...
...GEORGE W. SHEAA...
...Furthermore, the individuality, freedom and creativity which an his central concerns win not be possible in our emerging world unless we come to understand the complexities of that world and how to deal with them...
...He forgot that, long before Solzhensyn, Pitirim Sorokin and Nicholas Timasheff had been hunted by the Communists and fled to the West- as Solzhenitsyn did to devote their free and creative gifts to the development of a sociology that has much to say about the tragic and heroic of human experience...
...But why should this, be so, and why have hu-staafsfe acquiesced so timidly to their are demise...
...Anderson and any others who enjoy separating sheep from goats by applying the labels liberal and conservative...
...God has already bemv pnmoimced dead, and Humanism now indeed be dying...
...What we are witnessing is in fact the growth of a broad social scientific philosophy, disguised as a science, based on metaphysical and epistemo-logical assumptions that are rarely questioned, and, in spite of some dittgence of qpraioii withm rant* gaiety mtoteant of hikjsophifs with essentially alien bases and methodologies...
...This certainly is a "bold hypothesis...
...The Dean says nothing about massive modern technologies, the revolution in communication, the population explosion, the dangerous consequences of modem biotogkal aad medical techniques, the impact of atomic weapons, etc., etc* The real threat to freedom and creativity he locates in a poritivistic sociology the like of which it would be hard to find on college campuses...
...and their responses to reality and free moral choice will be much affected in later life by these paradigms...
...Can that initial love affair have been so superficial and fleeting that we have forgotten it...
...Much vital and necessary work is of course being done and I cannot -I will not-deny its importance...
...Few jobs indeed exist for the highly trained specialist solely dedicated to the ideals of "pure" research, at least in the humanities...
...This philosophy is to a large de-gi usurping the rote of more broadly based departments of philosophy, and is encroaching on the domain of the teachers of language and literature as well...
...Consequently the teaching of sociology prepares a population of students for conformity, predictability and normality, an un-crea-tive and manipulated people with little sjense of the tragic or heroic of human existence...
...In what does die "science" of these social scientists consist...
...Indeed many of the people responsible for the disordered world that provoked the Revolution had been extensively schooled in the humanities of which Dean Shea is so enamored...
...The Dean may have missed mis because he was reading Greek poetry instead of some significant sociology...
...It takes Sophocles and Shakespeare to do that...
...Anderson says that "my crowning argument" concerns (an interesting usage) the great Russian novelist Solzheititsyn, Solzhenitsyn is mentioned once to the article in a parenthetical clause...
...jored in physics and mathematics...
...He points oat, as I attempted to point out in calling out student* easenttofy creators, that we must mote and more examine life by esthetic c If Fr...
...So much for the destructive positivism Of sociology...
...In my view, those provided by the humanities are superior to those presented by the social scientists and speculators, especially in our time...
...To the Editors: Having read with interest the educational prognosis of Dr...
...But were it not for open admissions policy at a large*but-good Midwestern university, I would have remained an utterly ignorant barbarian, condemned to a life of clerical drudgery, and, no doubt, an unsuspecting victim "of demagogues and neo-fascists" (to use Dr...
...That all men will find salvation if they (like he) be-coffle students of Asctepiades and Ocero...
...It is the social sciences which, in large part, are helping us to do this...
...These raise two further questions, upon which I would like to comment I realize, as I do so> that either would Make the subject of at least another art...
...Briefly, Dean Shea argues that sociology as a positivistic discipline assumes that human behavior is determined, marked by uniformities and is therefore predictable...
...A new breed of dilettantes is needed to save the Humanities...
...This is a worthy ideal, wormfiy expressed...
...He completed' his ten-year school and enrolled at the University of Rostov, where he ma...
...JAMES M. WELSH Salisbury State College Reply New York, Ny...
...George W. Shea followed by the proposal of Professor Steven Phillip Kramer in a recent Commonweal [Jan...
...and will be, I hope, relieved to team that I too have read some of them...
...But the*e win toe something new and different to motivate him, at least the tell of something new and different amidst the remedial apparatus...
...Welsh quite correctly emphasizes the moral nature of the humanist's task...
...If humanism is to survive, we need to direct our imagination and energy toward the teaching of literary appreciation, else we face the danger of losing contact with that essential spirit that has traditionally vitalized and validated the study of literature, drama, music, and the other arts...
...This is, of course, debatable...
...To many it win seem quaint and oddly old-fashioned...
...They were hardly prophets of a world of dull and manipulated men...
...it calls for striking nothiffi Jt all flam -$*: curriculum...
...Happily both Commonweal and I received more thoughtful responses...
...I fear that I already know the answer...
...he will find it in what is now a sociological as well as humanistic classic, C. Wright Mills' The Sociological Imagination...
...What sociologists is Dean Shea talking about...
...Even Auguste Comte, who founded the discipline, was trying to apply a strange form of positivism to correct the disorder of society after he was convinced by the tragic consequences of the French Revolution that the humanistic tradition had little hope of doing so...
...Kramer's rather loaded terms...
...Perhaps what Mr...
...My article says nothing whatever about his education...
...If (heir methodology is neither statistical nor behavkwist, to what degree are then* conclusions, like those of science, either verifiable or universally applicable...
Vol. 103 • May 1976 • No. 11
