A few musings

At some point, I need to re-read Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind. It was a timely critique of higher education when it was published back in 1987 (that book was a surprise Christmas gift from my parents back in the day), and perhaps is more urgent today. Actually, there are a lot of books that would fall under the "cultural criticism" category that deserve a re-read as time permits.

 I won't try to summarize Allan Bloom's book for this post, as I would be drawing on a nearly 40 year old memory, and that's not something I wish to endeavor, but I can discuss a few things I think need to be reformed if higher education is still going to meet our needs as a society. 

Let's start with one elephant in the room: the K-12 system in the US has been in decline for the duration of my adulthood. Think about this: none of my grandparents ever graduated from high school. They either worked small family farms or did manual labor. And yet, they had a better grasp of the arts, philosophy, and literature than the typical college graduate of today. What happened? Too much to mention in a short blog post. But I have noticed a general trend away from teaching critical thinking and more and more teaching to the test. The George W. Bush era arguably accelerated the descent of K-12 education. Note that I am not saying that our instructors are sub-par or about to make some crackpot claim about schools being too "woke" or any other moral panic verbiage. Our nation simply does not offer the educational opportunities that even my age cohort would have taken for granted. By the time one graduates high school, one likely has never been to an art gallery on field trip, or to a local symphony (assuming one still exists), or to a play put on by a local community theatre company. Maybe the kids get exposed to some Shakespeare, but that's hardly a given. If asked to evaluate the merits of an argument, my impression is today's high school graduate is probably going to parrot talking points from a podcaster, peers, or perhaps extended family rather than independently look at the claims made on each side of the argument and offer an informed evaluation. The sort of reflective thinking that these nascent young adults are perfectly capable of demonstrating has been left to go to seed. 

I used to say that my job was undoing the damage caused by the K-12 system, as that system is overwhelmed with all sorts of metrics and standardized tests - none of which have much of anything to do with the sort of reflective thinking we once expected beginning college students to have. Of course, higher education is also in decline in the US, and is probably going to get worse at least for the short and medium term. I am part of that last generation who went to college not just to learn the ropes before finding that entry level managerial gig, but to actually get a well-rounded education (and yes, of course to party as well - social skills are fundamental). The very degree programs that made all that possible are increasingly on the chopping block. I will accept the claim that getting a philosophy degree is not exactly "practical" in terms of getting that first job after graduation, but the skills learned are crucial on their own merits, and have the fringe benefit of making one a better employee to the extent that a job requires critical thinking skills. Majoring in a language may not seem like the obvious strategy for a job where you will work in a cubicle, but one learns in the process not only a different way of thinking but also a knowledge of a culture or set of cultures one would have been ignorant of otherwise. Faculty in higher education aren't exactly reinforced for educating their charges in critical thinking. We're busier than ever completing paperwork to justify our own existences based on some metrics devised by some political appointees that are tangential to education at best.

Institutions of higher education in the US have turned their backs increasingly on the expectation of excellence. Oh, don't get me wrong. There is tons of lip service given to professional development. Just don't count on support for your efforts if you end up on faculty. You'll be reinforced for looking "good enough" based on whatever metrics are used as evaluation and nothing else. The system reinforces mediocrity, especially for those of us who make our lives nurturing our undergraduate students. I have certainly learned the hard way that the sort of ambition that leads to advances (however minor) in our respective fields is unwelcome. Ambition to become an administrator is possibly more accepted. Ambition that leads to errors and fraud are also apparently okay as long as nobody looks to closely. That's just the way it is anymore, as I see it.

We didn't get to this already low point overnight, and I am not sure I am the best person to talk to regarding how to improve the educational system so that it at least continues to function in the service of further developing our global civilization. Education needs to be valued. It's a fundamental need. That means as a society we need to do something radical: fund education from preschool all the way to colleges and universities. At all levels of education, age-appropriate experiences that foster critical thinking, that provide a basic understanding of how our society works (government, civil society, etc.), and foster a genuine appreciation of the arts and humanities as well as the sciences are a must. A student graduating from high school with some basic knowledge of Plato and Aristotle as well as Lao Tzu and Sun Tzu would be a good start. A student graduating high school who understands that the anime they were watching referenced a specific work of art or a play would be a good start. With more funding comes greater expectations, and we as a society need to be up to the challenge. But to get there, so that I can actually do my job the way I intended when I began teaching full time about a quarter of a century ago, we need a massive cultural shift toward valuing what educators do, encourage educators and students to express independent views (whether popular or not), and funding the institutions charged with that task. W do that and we might just have some hope of surviving as a society for the duration of at least this century. On our current path, we'll be lucky to have taught a generation of students how to craft AI prompts to generate reports that have no substance. I don't see how we survive as a society under that dystopian set of circumstances. I wish I could be more optimistic.