Going First Class On The Titanic:
Pro-Choice and Education in The Post-Modern World
(Career Before Character)
"In all ages of Christianity, the great reformers of the world were educated men. Who have been the fathers of Protestantism, of Bible translation, and of the diffusion of Christian light, learning, and science in the world?" Speaking of a host of reformers including Wycliffe, Tyndall, Luther, Calvin, and John and Charles Wesley, he added, "And who, of all of these, was not nursed and cherished in the bosom of a college." --Alexander Campbell.
We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had no been visited by Orwellian nightmares.
But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another-slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who want to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. —Neil Postman
Changing Face of The University
The shaping force of the university began to change during the Enlightenment era. By the 19th century there were four fundamental problems that were addressed within the new university paradigm: (1) Problem of Bourgeois Society, (2) Problem o Work, (3) Problem of Education, and (4) Problem of Christianity. The following briefly touches on the origins of each issue.
I. Problem of Bourgeois Society
A. Man cares for himself and family, and common good; thus he is both bourgeois and citizen. Hegel
B. Rousseau on Bourgeois and Citoysn - "Le patriotisme efc l'humanite' sont deux vertus incompatibles. . ." Lebtres de la Montagne. Rousseau's, Emile (Herder's praise of him in his youthful poem. Per Mensch; Meinecke's, Hiatoricism (ET); Troeltsch 's Historicism and Its Problems.
C. The French Revolution 1739 (Third Estate—Masses or the people besides clergy and nobles).
D. Basis of all democratic states - "1789" "declaration des droits de l' homm' et du citoyen" - Note distinction between homme and citoyen, i.e., what does the State do to homme (cf. Freedom of the rational will which forms the world as though it were it's own).
E. Bourgeois Society and Absolute State - Hegel experienced three great political events: (1) In his youth, the French Revolution; (2) As a grown man. Napoleon's world rule; and (3} The Prussian wars of liberation.
II. Problem of Work: 19th century - work and education became the substance of the life of bourgeois society (Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolution)
A. Hegel - Work as self-renunciation in forming the world; "To work means to destroy or curse the world" Hegel discusses the theme of work three times (1) Jena Lectures; (2) Phenomenology; (3) Rechtsphilosophie. He describe its spiritual character as being primarily a 'negative attitude' toward nature. Work is not an instinct, but a product of 'reasonableness, 'a mode' of the spirit.
B. Marx - his analysis of work concentrated upon the problem of economics; as the expression of the real conditions of life (contra the Biblical view of sin and salvation).
C. Nietzsche - work as dissolution of devotion and contemplation.
III. Problem of Education: Relationship of Work and Education
A. Work demands too much time.
B. What is the 'purpose' of the knowledge acquired by education? cf. Situation as historic origins of the Two-Cultures Problem, i.e.. Science and Humanities: Knowledge for what?
C. Nietzsche's criticism of education, present and past "Symptoms of the atrophy of education," fragmentation of knowledge via specialization.
IV. Problem of Christianity
"All the possibilities for a Christian life, the most single-minded and the most superficial, the . . . silliest and the best though-out, have been tried out: it is time to discover something new." —Nietzsche
A. Hegel and D. F. Strauss's Leben Jesus and the Paradigmatic Revolution in The Tubingen School (see my essay, "D. F. Strauss and His Hermeneutical Paradigmatic Revolution").
B. Dialectical Movement of Geist through all cultural linguistic forms. No temporal, historical, cultural expression of the Geists movement toward absolute freedom can ever be absolutized. cf. Historicity of all reality, including Christ, Bible, Church, etc., and the Authority Crisis.
C. Strauss's Reduction of Christianity to Myth.
D. Feuerbach's Reduction of Christian Religion to the Nature of Man (Essence of Christianity, 1841).
E. Kierkegaard's Paradoxical Concept of Faith and his book. Attack Upon Christendom.
F. Sustained Critique of Civilization (Natural vs. Artificial; Free man versus political/cultural slavery, i.e., bondage). The coming of Freudian psychoanalysis and his naturalistic critique of Christianity and theism: psychologization of all reality. The long road of subjectivism is at an end. This road began in 17th century Cartisianism and concludes in the turn Eastward and inward.
Enlightenment and Education: Sapere Aude
"The university as a phenomenon of western culture was from the very beginning a pagan institution." (Eta Linnemann, Historical Criticism of The Bible, Methodology or Ideology? (Baker, E.T., 1990); W. P. Fuchs, "Universifcat" in Paedagogisches Lexikon (eds) H. H. Groothoff and M. Stallmann; 1198ff.
In the European Universities where the foundations of Scholasticism, Humanism, the Enlightenment, German Idealism, etc., the education system became even more deeply rooted in the image of man taught by classical antiquity. The Freemason, Wilhelm von Humboldt, played an especially strategic role in this development (Gottfried Meakemper, Falsche Propheten unter Dictern und Denken (2nd ed. Barneck, 1983); W. Humboldt, (chief intellect of the University of Berlin) "Higher Learning in Berlin" in Great Ideas Today, ed. R. M. Hutchins and M. J. Adler, Reforming Education, The Opening of The American Mind (MacMillan, 1988); Lutz von Padberg, "Gegen die Aufspaltung von Glauben und Denken," Idea Dokumentabion 33, 1985. (We often hear such demagogical chicanery as "As anyone can see. . ." "Everyone must recognize. . ." "The conclusion is inescapable. . .")
The pagan presuppositions of European Universities are brilliantly characterized by Eta Linnemann by the following ten characteristics: "The die was cast . . .
1. after the Middle Ages resorted to pagan philosophy as the means of gaining intellectual orientation;
2. after humanism declared man to be the measure of all things;
3. after the Enlightenment had decided to acknowledge as truth only that which had been arrived at inductively;
4. after the starting premise of Descartes had gained acceptance, according to which the only possibility of verification was through conferring validity to doubt;
5. after Leasing, in agreement with Reimarus, had proclaimed the "ugly ditch" between "contingent facts of history" and "eternal truths of reason" and made popular through Nathan the Wise the idea that no one can say what the true faith is;
6. after Kant wrote his critique of pure reason and his conception of "Religion within the Bounds of Reason" began to gain acceptance;
7. after Goethe's Faust implanted in every cultured person the idea that "our view is barred … from seeing spiritual reality" and what--according to the exchange between Faust and Gretchen—one should think of religion;
8. after Schleiermacher had drawn the consequences from Kant's criticisms of reason and attempted to ground faith in human religious experience rather than divine revelation;
9. after Seraler's point of departure in criticism of the Bible, a result of Enlightenment philosophy, began to gain acceptance in biblical exegesis; and
10. when an atheistic historiography had established itself.
Secular Education and The Two Cultures: (Post WWII Educational Crisis)
On October 1956 in New Statesman, British scientist author C. P. Snow published his first essay on "The Two Cultures", arguing that the intellectual life of Western society was being dangerously split into two .warring camps, with scientists on one side and literary scholars on the other (Cambridge university Press published the monograph on this theme; see S. Jaki’s brilliant critique in his "One Hundred Years of The Two Cultures"; This is a much superior essay than Snow's). The problem in meeting this challenge, according to Snow, was the worsening overspecialization of the professions, resulting in a "gulf of mutual incomprehension" between their two great branches of learning (cf. media and communication theories are saturated with Derrida's Deconstructionism. This thesis is the ultimate destruction of the Two Cultures problem by the annihilation of the light, logic, communication and any possibility of community consensus - see my critique of Structuralism and Deconstructionism). Jacob Bronwski further elaborated on this issue. He sets up a dialogue in which the character representing science attacks the literary intellectual:
You cannot bear to have other people enjoy themselves in any way but yours. That is what you find distasteful; that is what outrages you about the success of technology. . . . The ranks of The Philistines are full of literary critics and they are not full of scientists. . . . There are no critics in science, no high priests who only expound and guard the godhead.
While beneath these rather superficial attitudes. Snow found a deeper level of division. Scientists, he wrote, tend to see the human condition as tragic, but they see that social conditions can be vastly improved using the products of science and technology. "That is their real optimism, and its an optimism that the rest of us badly need." By contrast, "the traditional culture responds by wishing the future did not exist." This conception, Snow concluded, is over romantic, tantamount to "taking an optimistic view of one's individual condition and a pessimistic view of the social one." Snow then proposed a solution for increasing understanding between The Two Cultures, through education. But this would entail an educational paradigmatic revolution, (cf. Kirk, Adler, and Bloom's critiques of education and culture are guided by a "Restoration Principle", the restoration of Aristotle, while Hash's restoration concern is to the authoritative word of God.)
The continuing arguments over Snow's work may be seen as one indication of its continued relevance. Some respondents, including anthropologists Froeich Rainey and Sol Tax, believe the gap between the disciplines has narrowed. Others, including the viewpoint expressed by The National Academy of Sciences former president Philip Handler: "I believe that there is a greater consciousness of this gap, but it widens, if anything, where once there was an attempt to build bridges one now finds distrust and alienation." Recent opinions expressed at National Conference on Higher Education contained two dominant themes:
(1) The first theme was that educators and our educational institutions must address the value problems (egs. McGuffy Readers, Christian values in school texts till the 1940's, relativism and pluralism transmitted through the "Value Clarification" thesis of Kohlberg and Piaget since the 1960's-1990's.
(2) The second theme addressed the pragmatics of institutional survival In the 1980's and 90's. Most of these discussions focused on the issue of increasing enrollment through connections with industry (cf. Roundtable - "Looking to The 21st Century"). The main concern centered on how to get a "bigger slice of the pie" of corporate education and believed that the future health of their institutions required reaching out to serve this "market" (cf. the irrational proliferation of "community colleges," "junior colleges," etc., at tax payers expense—also undercut possible future survival of many "small community colleges." The cost is enormous, the failure is inevitable (regarding our own Logan County educational fiasco). We must remember that the Education Lobby is the most powerful lobby in Illinois. See the former educational secretary, William Bennett's Nation At Risk. The Educational establishment is not salvageable, only an educational revolution can address its flaws.
Still others insist on a reformulation of the argument. Says Lewis Branscomb, vice president for research of IBM, "The big cultural gap is not between intellectuals and pragmatists." Writer Alvin Toffler says that the "two cultures have become two thousand cultures. As we leave the 'industrial age' and move into the 'information age,' we become more diverse . . . The result is a fragmentation of once neat categories."
One of the more extensive responses to our problem comes from science historian, Gerald Holton, who has been involved in several attempts to revise the science curricula. The aim of these projects, he says, is "to show, as part of a science curriculum, that a proper understanding of science involves its sources, its effects, its dynamic relation with the rest of culture." (Cf. this integration would require (1) A Christian World View; (2) A critique of dominant philosophies of science; (3) The controlling of philosophies of education in our culture.)
Has Education Helped? Translating Technical Data via Media
Karl Popper is more worried about what Is happening to education in 'the humanities (see also Walter Kaufman's The Future of The Humanities). Popper notes that some institutions devoted chiefly to the education of scientists and engineers have made great efforts to bridge the gap by introducing departments of philosophy and literature. But,