Whose Is the Voice of Modernity?
FITCH, ROBERT E.
Whose Is the Voice of Modernity? On Education and Freedom. By Harold Taylor. Schuman. 320 pp. $3.50. Reviewed by Robert E. Fitch Professor of Christian Ethics, Pacific School of Religion In...
...Taylor has no illusions about the famous "Harvard Report," gives us a good critique of Hutchins's neo-scholastic formalism in education, and has interesting suggestions on how to enliven the curriculum in the humanities and social sciences...
...Unfortunately, they are stamped today by the cautiousness of their more cowardly elders...
...And I cannot forget a student in an undergraduate philosophy class of my own a few years ago who told me that Aenesidemus was all wrong about youth and old age-that now it is only the old folks who keep their enthusiasm and ideals, while it is the young who are cautious and skeptical...
...The thought of each essay is graced by intelligence, enlivened by touches of satire, and expressed with persuasive ease and clarity...
...For I doubt that this sort of liberalism is able any longer to protect itself...
...I do not remember that the "youth revolt" of the 1920s was in any way inhibited by the conservatism of the older generation...
...Taylor prefers the younger generation to the older...
...Nonetheless, I suppose that what makes this book appealing is the spirit of intelligent and humane modernity that prevails throughout...
...Taylor likes to claim the support of John Dewey, but this is the sort of thing that Dewey explicitly repudiated...
...Apparently, Mr...
...Why is it that Mr...
...Of course, there can lie no quarrel with Mr...
...Taylor stands courageously with the ultra-liberal wing of democracy and gives charitable consideration to the unhappy predicament of those teachers who are obliged to appeal to the Fifth Amendment for protection...
...But is it enough...
...Taylor's championship of freedom...
...The last and longest essay in the book treats of Communism in relation to academic freedom...
...He does believe in "intrinsic disciplines," but he is opposed to "external factors and pressures...
...Taylor recommends...
...It seems that he would like to remove from life as well as from college what in one place he refers to as the "curse of duty...
...Nobody "elects" an economic depression, or a world war, or a cold war...
...We discover at once that Mr...
...Could it be because the teaching profession-unlike the professions of law, medicine and the ministry-is deficient in positive standards by which to measure itself...
...We are, of course, in agreement with him when he says that the community of scholars ought to be the sole agency for controlling its own personnel...
...The overall ordering of the material, however, suggests that "prejudice in favor of the haphazard and taste for organic disorder" which Mr...
...Taylor sees freedom and discipline as contradictories rather than polarities...
...But, regardless of what you can get away with in an experimental school, one wonders if life doesn't have more required courses than electives-the hard core of a prescribed curriculum which one may evade only at the peril of failure...
...What it still needs, from some counselor outside its own ranks, is just a quiet little talk on the facts of life...
...There is one chapter which makes one believe that he must have been an excellent teacher of philosophy...
...Taylor keeps slipping into subjectivism, so that he can speak of "private truths," tell us that "all truth is private," that "learning is a private affair," and that "individual conscience is the ultimate test of morality...
...And he makes plain his support of a considerable list of virtues: honesty, kindness, unselfishness, humanity, idealism, critical intelligence, honor, cooperation, fair-mindedness, sensitivity, courage, charity, independence, generosity, moral principle and personal integrity...
...Reviewed by Robert E. Fitch Professor of Christian Ethics, Pacific School of Religion In this book, the President of Sarah Lawrence College offers us seven essays that deal variously with moral values in education, the function of the humanities, the education of women, the role of the college president, the meaning of philosophy, and Communism in American colleges...
...And when we hear how important it is for people to "be themselves," we wonder whether this is Aristotle, or John Dewey, or just our dear old friend Professor Jean-Jacques Emerson Polonius...
...One is the intimation that we must take it in a package deal-political liberalism and "modern art, modern education, modern literature, and modern life in general" - all or nothing...
...He declares that young people need "breathing space, wider views, freedom to grow" and a chance to "be themselves...
...Here Mr...
...It seems that young people are naturally tolerant and liberal, and have the makings of an attractive moral philosophy of their own...
...If so, then because the past is precious it should be heard with respect, considered with sympathy- and protected...
...All this is admirable...
...There are just two things which trouble me about this modernity...
...The other is the question whether Mr...
...Taylor's voice is any longer the voice of modernity...
...If men and women are to preserve their liberties under these circumstances, they must know how to "take it" as well as how to "dish it out...
...Could it be because too many of its members had fallen into the same subjectivism and relativism which Mr...
...One may sympathize with this bias in a college teacher and still wonder if his reporting is accurate...
...At any rate, when free men will not discipline themselves, they need not be surprised if others take on that task for them...
...Taylor tells us he likes to exercise in his administrative responsibilities...
...Or is it now the voice of the past-of a very particular piece of the past that flourished between the end of World War I and the beginning of World War II...
...There is another which indicates that he must now be the sort of college president under whom a faculty would find it a delight to serve...
...But then why did it fail to do so at a critical moment...
Vol. 37 • May 1954 • No. 18
