Recently I've been reading early 20th century essays by Jane Addams, the dynamic activist, social reformer and anti-war crusader. Addams is best known as one of the founders of Hull House, a vital educational community center for civic engagement and neighborhood improvement in Chicago. Addams was a powerful force for democratic change in America, and she was also committed to the idea that education would serve democracy by allowing us to become more understanding of alternative points of view as we worked with one another.
Addams' father rejected her wish to attend Smith College, where she had hoped to participate in the liberal arts education of her day. So, following intellectual success at seminary, she continued her education herself by studying some of the great works Western Culture has to offer. She also studied the industrial changes of her time, including the dramatic increases in extreme poverty and extreme wealth as the 19th century turned into the 20th (sound familiar?). But at some point she began to wonder if she was forever preparing herself for action instead of taking action. Had her education become a delaying tactic for dealing with the world?
She relates that, when confronted with the horror of poverty in East London, what came to her mind was de Quincey's inability to issue a warning to a couple he saw in immediate danger until he recalled the exact words from the Iliad of a warning delivered by Achilles. Addams, instead of reacting to the grave situation before her eyes, found herself thinking of de Quincey's inability to react to a situation before his eyes. Education -- knowing the Iliad, knowing de Quincy -- had become an impediment to action. Were we "lumbering our minds with literature" instead of reacting to the "vital situation spread before our eyes"? This is what Tolstoy had labeled the "snare of preparation." Addams became convinced
[t]hat the contemporary education of young women had developed too exclusively the power of acquiring knowledge and of merely receiving impressions; that somewhere in the process of "being educated" they had lost that simple and almost automatic response to the human appeal, that old healthful reaction resulting in activity from the mere presence of suffering or of helplessness; that they are so sheltered and pampered they have no chance even to make "the great refusal."
We often talk about liberal arts schools as "engaged universities" and the importance of avoiding this "snare of preparation." We don't want only to "lumber our minds" with books and articles, wesbites and blogs. We want our education to prepare us for life -- not to help us avoid living.
Liberal education today should prepare students for life, and many colleges have been increasingly focused on doing a better job of helping them transition from campus to life after graduation. Whether students do this through activism or internships, service learning or "intellectual cross-training," they learn to make their education feed into what they will be doing in the world.
This is pragmatic liberal arts education. To talk of pragmatism doesn't mean that we stop reading great books, absorbing powerful art, or learning languages. After all, what I've written here depends on reading Addams and knowing something about de Quincey, Homer, and others. We should feel no threat to our studies when asked what we shall do with them. There are so many possibilities. The sphere of possible action wasn't limited to industrialism at the beginning of our century, and it sure isn't limited to finance or digital media entrepreneurship today.
One of the founders of American pragmatism, C.S. Peirce, wrote that the whole function of thought is to produce habits of action. William James emphasized that we had to take action in the broadest sense, "every possible sort of fit reaction...brought by the vicissitudes of life." With Jane Addams in mind, we might say that the whole function of education is to produce habits of action, fit reactions that contribute to our individual and social good.
Cross-posted at washingtonpost.com.
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BA degrees come in all the same flavors sold at your local public college; you're just required, in addition to the normal courseload needed for a major, to take a large variety of interdisciplinary courses (policy, science, health, history, Classics,culture, etc) and to participate and volunteer. As a biology major, my Sophomore 'Models of Scientific Thought' course certainly helped but the courses I had to take on the Classics, history, politics, policy and literature did, too. You're trained to digest information beyond the scope of your focus. If anything, in terms of vocational training, that aspect is preparation for management; you're accustomed to solving your own problems--whatever comes and in whatever format.
And if you think you'll be graded on a bell-curve, good luck. You get what you earn; the relative performance of the rest of the class isn't a factor you can often rely on.
You work hard. You're challenged to think. And in terms of my career, the benefits have been obvious.
:-)
And the relationship between education and participatory politics in a democracy is clear. But what does it mean to be a full human being? We can know that only as we gain insight into our potential. That is a gift from education that, as the saying goes, keeps on giving. The successful artist represents the most obvious model of the complete human being. Is it any wonder that "suffering" is what most commonly goes with "artist"? It;s only a jungle out there so long as we remain primitives.
A more thoughtful approach is to ask the students what they would like to do with their lives. I, as an engineer, benefit from the great books that I've read. Not so directly, in my profession, but in the living of my life, personal and professional. But calculus probably benefitted me more than English Lit.in my earning capability.
Earning a living is a necessity. The standard of living that you aspire to is probably as important as the satisfaction you find in earning that living. I know attorneys who hate being attorneys, but like earning an attorney's income.
I would counsel a student (who, for example, loves the Spanish Inquisition) that spending 6 years studying the Spanish Inquisition (thesis, etc.) prepares you for (a) working for Cardinal Richelieu (sp), or (b) teaching the Spanish Inquisition. But most likely, you'll be coding forms in an insurance office.
There is a balance to be struck. Crass as that may seem, civilization as it stands now rewards work with geld, from which everything else springs. The ratio of those who write grant proposals and those who fill out employment applications is huge. I would never discourage a student who wants to do research as a way of living, but I would remind him or her that their kid may need braces, at $5,000 a pop.
The problem is that the model does not work anymore. Like you said, that history major becomes a data entry clerk and unlike the 1960s-1980s there is probably no path for advancement.
College graduates need to be prepared for a vocation, specifically one that will allow them to repay the loans they took out to get that education.