A fool who looks into a mirror should not expect to see a wise man looking back.

 (I wrote this a while back.  A friend forwarded an article to me which brought this to mind, so I am reposting it again here.)

I wandered into yet another debate on education, and promptly got called an anti intellectual. Such is what passes for debate these days: Just start calling people names, accuse them of arguing in bad faith, twist what your opponent said into something they did not say, show how the thing they did not say is patently ridiculous, blame them for saying the words you have put into their mouths and tell all your friends how you showed them. 

 

The 'debate' I briefly stumbled in on was about the current anti intellectualism of the current American administration. My position was that being against much of what is occurring at the modern university does not make one an anti intellectual. I should modify that a little: much of what is going on at universities is fine. However, there is much that isn't, and what is bad is both getting all the press and also growing. So I will repeat something I have said in the past: on the whole, I think education is a fine thing, and wish we had more of it going on these days. I work at a university, and every September I see the phenomena of all the fine young gods and goddesses returning to their universities, seeking not new knowledge, but to be confirmed in what they have already decreed to be true.

 

Over the years I have seen the changes to the books and course lists in my old field, English, and it is crushing to see. All but gone is the canon, replaced with comic books and graphic novels and books of recent vintage. If they wish to teach contemporary literature, then they should change the name of the program, and stop pretending what they teach are the works of the English language. The new students are not being exposed to old books and old ideas. They aren't even exposed to what is new. They are studying what is current, and of all ideas the current ones are always the most dated. What is worse, they are being exposed to ideas and matters to which they have already been exposed, and are spending thousands and thousands of dollars they do not have on an education in what they already know, and they fight tooth and nail to keep their horizons from being broadened.

 

"Who decided which books are the great works?" asked my colleagues in years past, many of whom are now professors themselves. "Why should we abide by their decisions?" Many of them claimed to hate the books they were asked to read, but at least they knew the books they hated. Now they have the power, they have decided on their own list of great books, demand all abide by their decisions, and are teaching their students to hate what they have not read or experienced. They are unaware in their blindness that they were asking the wrong question, and they were already on the wrong track in merely asking the question. The answer to their question was obvious to anyone who was not us, anyone who had worked in the field prior to our time: No one decided these were the great books. Scholars made no decision about the greatness of this work or that, they discerned the greatness of these works.  They believed there was such a thing as objective greatness, and discerning it in works of art, literature and music was no more controversial that 1+1=2.

 

CS Lewis once wrote that only the learned read the old books any more, and they, of all people, are the least likely to gain any benefit from doing so. Scholars in his time inoculated themselves against any benefit from reading by engaging in their schools of thought. When they read a work the questions they never asked is: "Is this true? Should I change my life based on what I have just read?" And so we read and read one 'text' after another, and are none the wiser for any of it.  In my time we had dozens of theories filling in for the historical point of view, all of which acted as inoculants to make sure you didn't catch any truths from the book. Feminism caused you to ask what was the status of women in this work, Marxism what the relationship was between the classes. Literary theory told you the book was ultimately an interplay of words in which the author tried to say something, but ultimately didn't. And so on. The idea that maybe these old authors knew something we didn't never occurred to them, because we were all so much smarter than they. After all, what could Chaucer know about living in hard times surrounded by disease and poverty? What could Milton possibly know about living in politically unstable times? What could the Romans possibly know about the dangers of greed and ambition and insane leaders that wrack our world today?

 

People ask what use is it to have an English or a history or a humanities degree these days, and the truth is there isn't much use in it at all. There never really was a use for it in the material sense, but it used to have a point, and that point was the belief that in reading broadly and allowing your mind to come in contact with the ideas of other ages and other cultures was that it may impart wisdom and perhaps some perspective upon the student. but wisdom is a largely forgotten virtue these days, and, like its close sibling common sense, it is often a curse to have it when surrounded by so many who don't.

 

The new professors who asked the wrong question and got the wrong answer now pick their works, not because they have discerned something worthy within the work, but through an act of will. We will study this work, not because it has something in it worthy of study, but because I say so. They have no insight, no wisdom to pass on, and it is reflected in their choices. Nor are their students seeking it. These new students are not looking for nor being offered windows into worlds not imagined, but only mirrors reflecting themselves endlessly, and a fool who looks into a mirror should not expect to see a wise man looking back, but many still do.