The Old Masters Were Never Wrong

SOME THING IS ROTTEN IN THE STATE of liberal education. According to a panel convened by the National Endowment for the Humanities, "Most of our college graduates remain shortchanged in the humanities-- history, literature, philosophy and the ideals and practices of the past that have shaped the society they enter." Today's universities have lost contact with the educational tradition of the Renaissance because of extreme departmental specialization, the absence of intellectual authority, and the pressures of a consumer society. The important ideas and values of Western civilization are being ignored as colleges seek to produce skilled professionals rather than well-educated persons of character.

The solution to the problem is obvious. It does not lie in the cafeteria approach to higher learning in which every student must consume a little of each basic food group. This is supposed to produce a well-rounded mind, but a close look at the "well-rounded minds" thus formed will find them marred by holes. The college needs mandatory courses, taught by the best professors, which will provide an understanding of the important ideas and values of our civilization.

Unfortunately, serious obstacles stand in the way. We no longer agree about is important for an educated person to know. "Education cannot be discussed in a void," L.S. Eliot once wrote, "To know what we want in education we must know what we want in general; we must derive our theory of education from our philosophy of life." But modern America has no philosophy of life; if it does, it probably should not be taught to children. It is ordinarily hoped that a value-free education will allow students to form their own values. All too often, a value-free education simply produces value-free students. Moreover, the absence of a system of values in a curriculum ends up being a "philosophy of life" in spite of itself; the philosophy of indifference, an intellectual illness which often hides behind the tolerance of our society.

If some philosophy of life must be taught, what will it be? At the risk of sounding old-fashioned, the safest bet is the philosophy of classical antiquity. It is from the thought of Plato and Aristotle that Western intellectual history grows, and most problems can still be considered in the light of their philosophy. And what if the student finds that such and education is not to his taste. In the words of Flannery O'Connor. "Well, that is regrettable. Most regrettable. His taste should not be consulted; it is being formed."

Of course, some room must be allowed for experimentation and creative inquiry. And remember, higher education may seem stilling and chained to the ball of tradition, it has, in fact, been responsible for the dynamic and turbulent history of Western Civilization from the Greeks to the present.

Finally, whenever necessary, professors must re-learn the art of teaching the humanities. At a recent luncheon, a 93 year old former History and Literature tutor was invited to speak about the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. When he elected to discuss. "The Windhover," and "Felix Randall," I could not help chuckling; he had chosen the poet's two most famous poems. How naive! Then he proceeded to praise the noble ideals, sublime truths, and beautiful thoughts embodied in the two poems. I could feel the Harvard literati of today being overwhelmed with bored amusement at the sweet, old man. But it was he who really knew the poems and the poet. We were the silly fools who discussed a poem, written by a Jesuit priest and dedicated "to Christ Our Lord," as though it were written as an exercise in sprung rhythm and falcon imagery. To quote Porter University Professor W.J. Bate, it was we who were "unaware of the legacy of thought and the inheritance of idealism that had so long given literature its massive centrality and human relevance."

Professors must be able to speak about the serious questions of life. To act as though questions of human happiness, virtue, and right and wrong are irrelevant to history, literature, and philosophy, or are matters of personal opinion unsuitable for the classroom is to cheat the minds of students who must ask themselves the same questions. To quote Professor Bate again, "Most ask what life is all about." The purpose of a liberal arts education is ultimately to answer that question in its many forms with a mature knowledge informed by the insights of the artists, thinkers, and leaders of our past.