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logo    Uneducating American Educational Institutions


Two more books have been written about the failure of our universities to truly educate. (Derek Bok: Our Underachieving Colleges, and Harry Lewis: Excellence without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education.) Such books are published periodically in America, and although their theses are true, nothing changes, and that nothing changes requires an explanation.

There are two major impediments to building an authentic educational system in this country.

Perhaps the definitive study of our educational system is Richard Hofstadters Anti-Intellectualism in American Life in which he shows how the American mind was shaped by early Protestantism, especially the Protestant notion that every person is qualified to interpret scripture on his/her own, which over time became generalized into the ideas embodied in two aphorisms well known and often cited in AmericaThere are two sides to every story, and Everyone has a right to his own opinion. Both of these, of course, are false, but they are nevertheless accepted without question. When your banker tells you your account is overdrawn, try telling him that that's only his opinion, that it isn't yours, and that there are two sides to the story.

The other impediment is the American addiction to vocational training, which goes back to the founding of our earliest colleges. They were not founded as educational institutions, but rather to provide vocational training for members of the Protestant clergy. This tradition has not only flourished in the American university, it has been expanded into colleges of almost every vocation one can think of. And the creation of our land grant colleges after the Civil War, extended this tradition into the public domain. A & M colleges of various names popped up everywhere. What there is of the Liberal Arts in these institutions is scant and came much later. How many students studying literature, philosophy, classical languages have been asked over and over again, What can you do with that?

Of course, it was and still is possible for a person to become truly educated in any of these institutions, but only if he/she has an extraordinary devotion to learning and has the ability to choose his/her own curriculum. The planned and canned curriculi known as majors cannot produce educated people. These programs merely train people for vocations.

This American addiction to opinion is exemplified in the frenzy that our media engages in, the most current example being the arrest of a suspect in Jon Benet Ramseys murder. Without hardly a fact being known, opinion makers of almost every stripe are being asked to give their opinions on all aspects of the case. It is also exemplified by the television networks grilling programs such as Meet the Press and Face the Nation in which journalists who have no special knowledge of any subject question politicians and political appointees to governmental positions, all of whose opinions are known well in advance.  Anyone who has read George Will's columns or the columns of any of the regulars on these programs knows exactly what their opinions will be on any question, and no one learns anything by listening to him or the others express their views every Sunday morning. The same can be said of any spokesman for the administration or any congressman.

But this addiction is even more insidious. One can truly wonder how people can become so exercised over posting the Decalogue in public places when there is not one scintilla of evidence in all of recorded history that knowledge of the Commandments has ever improved human behavior. One can truly wonder how our President and the other members of his administration can continue to believe that the war in Iraq is going well in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. And one can truly wonder how some people can continue to doubt that the emission of carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the atmosphere is causing global warming even though the evidence available almost amounts to a certainty.

The explanation for each of these absurdities lies in our addiction to opinion. When opinion is the summum bonum of a nation's intellectual life, fact, truth, and reality are irrelevant. The advocate of posting the Commandments in public places doesn't care that there is no evidence to support their effectiveness. The President doesn't care that reality contradicts his views. Evidence is irrelevant.

America does not have, has never had, and in all likelihood will never have an authentic educational system, and no book, study, or argument will ever change anything. (8/25/2006)