The term “education” is perhaps at once too familiar and too academic to seem to merit much contemplation. Moreover, the term has meant different things to people at different times, and often different things to people at the same time. But the situation hinted at in the first point is arguably a consequence of a change that has transpired in the context of the second. It is indeed possible to identify a definite trend in respect to the general understanding of the word “education” that has played out over the course of the last century. In an essential sense, education has to do with “leading out,” as is evident from the Latin etymology: ex- “out of,” “from” + ducare “to lead,” “to conduct.” Who or what is being led out? During the time in question, the scales of education have increasingly tipped from a traditional view grounded in philosophy and the liberal arts towards a modern, instrumentalist, and market-centered approach ordered towards knowledge in specialized domains and economic payoff. For this reason, the question of the nature of education is often disregarded on the basis hinted at in the opening.
In the traditional view, the student was conceived, as it were, as a garden from which the latent seeds of wisdom were to blossom forth. These seeds were to be “led out” through learning from the dark earth of ignorance by the care and skill of the gardener. The seven liberal arts were, in this conceit, like seven tools which the gardener would plie to tend the plot.1 Ultimately, the student was to become both the garden, the gardened, and the gardener, in a distinctly non-dual sort of way.2 While this was understood to be the end of education, to begin with it was understood that the student needed to be tutored, his capacities exercised and harmonized into a symphonic intellectual, aesthetic, and ethical character as by a conductor. This was the task of the doctor, which is, being interpreted from the Latin word, “teacher.” The doctor, then, is the gardener and the student his apprentice.
The modern, instrumentalist approach, by contrast, does not see the student as the occasion for the education of wisdom. Instead, the modern view sees the student as the object being “led,” and she is led to fill particular niches in the job market. Rather than a study in the liberal arts, the modern approach focuses on imparting specialized knowledge in particular fields to the student. This knowledge is, as a rule, of value merely instrumentally—as a means to attain the carrot of economic payoff that comes from proper assimilation into the job market or academic hierarchy. Education, in the instrumentalist approach, is a question of specialization3 in particular fields or trades. Education, then, is seen as a means to prepare students for definite occupations, offices, and research positions. The prioritization of the fields designated by the familiar acronym, S.T.E.M.—which is, being interpreted, “science,” “technology,” “engineering,” and “math”—is evidence of the trend indicated above insofar as the purpose of these studies is to lead the student to some particular career.
Naturally, there are advantages to each of the approaches outlined above. The specialized, instrumentalist approach to education in particular confers an immediate economic efficiency that would be unattainable to the traditional one. After all, proficiency in a single body of knowledge or skills can be achieved far more swiftly with concentration in that same body of knowledge or skills than it can by adopting a more comprehensive, interdisciplinary course of study. The results of the instrumentalist approach are attractive to employers because a student with a degree in computer science, for example, will be much more equipped to write code for a tech company than someone steeped in knowledge of the trivium and quadrivium and equipped to recite Chaucer. The specialization-instrumentalist approach is also attractive to students because it guarantees, or appears to guarantee, a stable career. Especially in the face of an economy that is unstable, this is a particularly appealing prospect. Universities, as well, have adopted the specialization-instrumentalist approach to education because they have embraced the consumer-model of education almost whole-cloth. In this paradigm, “the student is,” as it were, “always right” so long as she dutifully pays her tuition each term and hints at the potentiality of making generous contributions to the alumni society down the line. Whatever the market demands, the university, de facto, seeks to supply.
But many people are beginning to sound the alarm on some of the consequences of the fall of the classical model of education and the rise of the instrumentalist one. Apologists for the liberal arts have long lamented the fact that humanities departments are routinely compelled to justify their existence on the basis of an economic, utilitarian calculus that is fundamentally foreign to them and whose totalizing authority they often explicitly repudiate, and I think they are correct to do so. For this reason, I will refrain from staking my own objections to this replacement of liberal arts with specialization on a merely economic basis. Still, I will mention in passing that one meaning of liberal in the term liberal arts is “freedom from over-specialization in any particular field or area of expertise,” and this should not be unduly neglected in an age in which the job market seems to restructure itself with every generation and in which entire career paths can swiftly evaporate like lonely puddles in the noonday sun.4 Any career path that has been recently steamrolled by AI is but one casualty in the inexorable march of technological progress and evidence of a trend that began before any of us was born and will surely continue apace into the foreseeable future. Many employers are recognizing this volatility and preferring hires with broad knowledge bases to narrow ones5 because, as Whitehead remarked, “[specialization] produces minds in a groove.”6 Moreover, they understand that they are not hiring mere cogs, but individuals. In the two models of education outlined above, if the question is which of them treats students less like cogs, on the margin, the victor should be clear. If a university bases its model of education on student demand, and if student demand that is dictated by the economic prospects of particular courses of study, if those economic prospects change, for the university that doesn’t adjust its offerings accordingly, the writing is on the wall. In other words, even by the very logic of the market itself, the conclusion that the instrumentalist-specialization view of education is the correct one is far from foregone.
But it only makes sense to quibble over means provided that the ends have already been established. “Success,” in each of the conceptions of education outlined above, has a very different measure. For contemporary education, this measure is extrinsic to the individual person and is essentially bound to the particular discipline of study. Hence, through education, the student is “lead forth” to some particular career path. For the traditional liberal arts approach to education, on the other hand, the measure of success is intrinsic to the student him or herself. The end of education was to bring to flower the full intellectual, aesthetic, and moral capacities of the individual him or herself, and a curriculum consisting of studies in the divers liberal arts was seen as the best method to do this. It is, because ordered to the human person, free, or liberated from being bound to any ulterior field or area of expertise. If a student studied in the liberal arts leaves a job, he takes his learning with him. If a student trained to be a specialist leaves his job, by contrast, his learning stays behind, as it were, unless he can find the same job again. When “the rains descended, and the floods came,” woe unto “the foolish man, who built his house upon the sand.”7
People might object that the classical ideal of education was reserved from the privileged elite and can never be a concern of the profanum vulgus. And, historically, this estimation has been, to a large extent correct. But gone are the days when a legitimate aristocracy governed on behalf of all. We no longer envision the ideal of philosopher-kings8 reigning over us any more than religious authorities; already in the sixteenth century, Luther famously advocated for “a priesthood of all believers.” Of course, such a call would have rung distinctly hollow if not for the democratization of Holy Writ by the invention of the printing press in the generation just prior to his own. These heralded times of revolution in our conception of society and its government with the result that today, we expect every citizen to take part in the democratic process of government. But this makes little sense without a populace whose individual members have at least cut their teeth on philosophy, ethics, and history. It need not be question of doing away with specialized fields to recognize the imperative of personal and political life that we maintain one foot in the liberal arts. Lacking this learning to quicken and fortify our minds, popular sentiment will become prey to propaganda and demagoguery. The people risks being played like a pixelated marionette and “democracy” will be hollowed out and displayed as a mere façade to legitimate the reign of oligarchs and tyrants. As Jefferson famously observed: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”9 It’s hard to imagine that Jefferson had in mind studies in finance or mechanical engineering as the antidote to ignorance. Indeed, the Founders of this country were not subject to narrow technical training in their educations, but were rather almost unanimously nourished by the classical tradition and we have, perhaps till now, reaped the inheritance of their learning.
Legend has it that Churchill, when asked whether funding should be cut from the arts to support the war effort, gave the terse reply, “then what are we fighting for?” It’s a question that S.T.E.M. does not equip us to answer, but it is a question that is not, by this token, unanswerable. We should do away with the narrow prejudice that “what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know,” as Russell so eloquently expressed this attitude,10 and recognize that we are collaborating together to write the biography of our own lives and the biography of our shared life in humanity, and in this task, “human nature could not easily find a better helper,”11 in Plato’s words, than education. For my part, I don’t think that the job market is the best standard to measure the success of education, and it is certainly not the only one. Our professional lives are a part of our total lives, but not the only part. In the same way, the economy is one aspect of society, but it can never be the only one any more than the stomach can be the only organ of a body. “Man does not live by bread alone,” as it has been said.
To summarize the argument above, two divergent approaches to education are being weighed in the balance of society today. One of these approaches consists in training human beings to be specialists. The other is seeking to exercise and “draw out” the intellectual, aesthetic, and moral capacities of the human beings themselves. These two ends are not necessarily exclusive, but they represent two radically different conceptions of the purpose of education in respect to where the emphasis of instruction is placed and, by extension, two radically different conceptions of the ends of personal and social life. As formal institutions of higher learning, universities will ultimately embody the educational philosophy that individuals and civilizations espouse. Quo vadis, universitas? “whither goest, University?” is a question to which the university and common good alike require an answer. I hope, with this short essay, to have laid out what is a stake with this question and, moreover, to have cast my lot with the flourishing of students rather than their commodification.
to wit, ars grammatica, ars logic/dialectica, ars rhetorica, ars astronomia, ars musica, ars geometria, ars arithmetica
St. Thomas Aquinas writes, in Commentary on Boethius’ “On the Trinity” V.1.reply to 3:
The seven liberal arts do not adequately divide theoretical philosophy; but, as Hugh of St. Victor says, seven arts are grouped together (leaving out certain other ones), because those who wanted to learn philosophy were first instructed in them. And the reason why they are divided into the trivium and quadrivium is that “they are as it were paths (viae) introducing the quick mind to the secrets of philosophy.” This is also in harmony with the Philosopher’s statement in the Metaphysics that we must investigate the method of scientific thinking before the sciences themselves. And the Commentator says in the same place that before all the other sciences a person should learn logic, which teaches the method of all the sciences; and the trivium concerns logic. The Philosopher also says in the Ethics that the young can know mathematics but not physics, because it requires experience. So we are given to understand that after logic we should learn mathematics, which the quadrivium concerns. These, then, are like paths leading the mind to the other philosophical disciplines.
Cf. John 20:15
She, supposing him to be the gardener…
I am reminded of a delightful quote by Robert Henlein, from his novel Time Enough for Love (1973) that doesn’t belong in the body of this essay but can, it is to be hoped, sparkle in the back pages:
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
It’s hard to ignore that fact that one reason why the economy might be so volatile is precisely because people have neglected the forms of study that allow them to conceptualize questions related to ethics and the common good of society to the extent of demanding representatives who embody the virtues of character befitting of a person in that office. In other words, the economic situation that seems to justify opting for the instrumentalist approach to education might actually be a result of several generations not having opted for the traditional liberal arts one.
Notwithstanding the seeming challenges for psychology and other liberal arts grads entering the job market, employers identify the skills often associated with liberal arts majors such as critical thinking, creativity and oral communication as being most important.
A survey of 400 employers conducted by The Conference Board, Corporate Voices for Working Families, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, and the Society for Human Resource Management found that applied skills such as oral communication, critical thinking, creativity and teamwork “trump basic knowledge and skills, such as reading comprehension and mathematics,” for career success.
This is no surprise to Val DiFebo, CEO of Deutsch NY, the New York-based arm of a national advertising agency. DiFebo says the creativity and critical thinking skills associated with liberal arts majors set them apart. For success and innovation in her industry, DiFebo believes a liberal arts education might be better than a specific career-ready degree.
“I find that liberal arts thinkers are the ones that try to problem solve and don’t just draw on experiences and skills from school,” she says. “When interns tell me they’re majoring in marketing, I wonder if that’s the smartest thing. This industry changes so rapidly; I’m not sure what you’d learn as a marketing major would prepare you properly for what marketing will look like in the future.”
But it’s not just creative industries that are seeking liberal arts majors. Boston-based litigation consulting firm Charles River Associates serves the financial services and technology industries but overwhelmingly recruits liberal arts graduates.
“We are hiring almost exclusively from liberal arts schools,” explains CRA Vice President Monica Noether.
Noether points to the intellectual curiosity of liberal arts grads and says that it’s “exactly the kind of thinking [that] good liberal arts programs do to train their students.”
A.N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, (197):
[Specialization] produces minds in a groove. Each profession makes progress, but it is progress in its own groove. Now to be mentally in a groove is to live in contemplating a given set of abstractions. … the abstraction abstracts from something to which no further attention is paid. But there is no groove of abstractions which is adequate for the comprehension of human life.
24Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: 25And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. 26And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: 27And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.
“philosopher-king” is φιλόσοφος βασιλεύς. Cf. Plato, Republic Book V:
until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now called kings and leading men genuinely and adequately philosophize, that is, until political power and philosophy entirely coincide...cities will have no rest from evils.
letter to Colonel Charles Yancey, 6 January 1816, in P. L. Ford (ed.) Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1899) vol. 10
Russell, Religion and Science (1935), 243.
Plato, Symposium:
And since I believe, I am trying to persuade everyone else that in the attainment of this goal human nature could not easily find a better helper than Love. For this reason I declare for my part that every man should honour Love, and I myself honour the study of love and practise it to an exceptional degree. I urge everyone else to do likewise, and now and ever I praise the power and bravery of Love as best I can.
One thing that we might consider is setting up our own institutions outside of modern academia. After all we require far less resources than scientists - Mortimer J. Adler points out that philosophy in its broadest sense is simply the study of life as it is a therefore does not require much in the way of special equipment. Traditional scholars too are generally content with a reletively frugal lifestyle, finding contentment in things of the mind rather than pricy material luxuries. Modern technology also allows us to access almost any study materials we choose with very little effort. All in all modern universities seem to offer very little to the dedicated humanities student that couldn't be provided with less expense in more suitable surroundings.
For example this universtiy offers degrees without debt - just funded by students' hard work https://www.drbu.edu/
University is turning into profession school. Knowledge as opposed to profession which always could be afforded only by upper classes always had a tiny market and relatively low demand. Opening universities to all in the last two centuries created the demand for learning practical knowledge and skills for the future employment. Schools names should be changed, as many universities are not universities in the classical sense.