How to Think and How to Act: Liberal Education and Political Corruption

Reading in today's New York Times (October 4) about the latest revelations that the Justice Department secretly approved extraordinarily brutal interrogation tactics made me wonder where these people got their ideas. What led them to a point of view where they could live with public decency and private corruption, lying to the public and making the Justice Department into an arm of the Administration machine instead of a servant of the public, not to mention a defender of national honor? And why aren't we, the thinking public, as enraged about what has been done in our name as we surely ought to be? Are we all just so many people skilled in separating private and public life as were the SS rulers of Nazi concentration camps, listening to Bach in the evenings and butchering Jews and gypsies as a day job?

What makes this kind of deceptive double-think possible is the inability to think other than strategically, to link clear lines of thought with a vision of what a human person is and to be consistent in making humanity take precedence over expediency, not to mention over sucking up to some elected official. And by the same token, what makes the public tolerant of such behavior is our own failures in intellect and compassion, and the connections between them and an honorable society. Add to this the sort of self-justification that the late and unlamented Attorney General indulged in before Congress and with his own department. Was he lying (terrible enough) or was he deceiving himself (considerably worse). And shall we throw in to the mix the fact that we live in what sociologists rightly consider to be the most religious society in the developed world, at least if we measure "religion" by a person's claim to believe in some kind of higher power watching over us. (Parenthetically, the churches have been pretty darn quiet about U.S. prominence in the torture business.)

Religion isn't the problem or the solution, education is. The fundamental purpose of education from which everything else worthwhile will follow is self-knowledge, as the Greeks knew. Without self-knowledge, all that we might learn may never be put to good effect in promoting human flourishing, but all too often will simply serve strategically to promote our own private self-interest, however disguised as "the public good" or "in the national interest." Knowing ourselves is where integrity begins, and with it a grasp of what is important in life, why we should always speak the truth, and what we should be willing to die for. This is missing in so much of our public life today, perhaps because it is missing to a high degree in private life. You can't just blame the politicians, because we let them get away with it.

Education isn't primarily about acquiring information and skills. They are secondary to coming to understand the world as it really is and then finding our place in it as concerned and constructive citizens of the world, which means as human beings. But none of this can happen unless people, above all those in undergraduate education in colleges and universities, are first and last rewarded for disciplined attention to the process of language and thinking through which self-knowledge emerges. All undergraduate education ought to be liberal arts education. Save business and engineering for later, like medicine and law. Not because they are not important, but because they are too important to be put into the hands of people who haven't learned to know themselves and to recognize that self-discipline and self-knowledge, not technology, are the foundation of civilization.

Anyone reading this who works in the academy will now expect a tirade against the liberal cultural elites and a call for a return to great books written by dead white men. However, great books are all over the place, some of them relatively new and lots of them written by the living, by people of color and by women. But whether we read Plato or Toni Morrison, Chinua Achebe or Moses Maimonides, the end product of disciplined attention to language and thought will be a radical critique of ourselves and the society we have made. The accomplishments of the American past were extraordinary, but we are living on someone else's laurels and we need to take a deep breath, turn off American Idol and find a way to know ourselves as individuals and a society. Then we just might stop torturing other human beings and justifying it in the name of the good people of the Republic.

Comments

[dadw5boys]

The federal government still provides only 8.5 percent of education funding. No Child Left Behind, however, gave the Department of Education great powers to exert control over local schools. Policies once left to local leaders, concerning student testing and teacher qualifications, are now set by the federal government.
This new federal power comes at a large cost to local school districts, beyond the loss of control. According to the Office of Management and Budget, No Child Left Behind costs state and local communities an additional 6,688,814 hours, or $140 million, to fill out paperwork and ensure compliance. Thousands of state and local workers across the country spend their days on this task, instead of teaching students or otherwise contributing to their education.

[blowoutfan]

Delusional people will always find some reason to further their weird aims be it religion, politics, or the way the wind blows. The shame is in congress for not holding these nuts accountable. And I do not think more educated morons would help, they are all too apathetic with their over-mortgaged homes, their S.U.V.s and their credit card debt.

And most colleges are ridiculous. Kids I knew in high school that took remedial class made decent grades at my state university. There are few schools left with academic integrity and those are hard to get into.

Some people should just enter a trade instead of wasting thousands on a degree that's not worth the paper it's printed on.

[jeskiley]

Before we can even get to the great books, we must look at the institution that is school. Twelve years spent submitting our will to a faculty whose primary responsiblity is to maintain control. We've learned to compartmentalize with the masters. Disciplined attention to language and thought, that's the destination alright. But first, the excavation of the old...we mustn't be afraid to look back at the system we were raised in and understand the horrible violation of liberty. If we are ever to feel that our destiny is our own, to ever trust the stirrings for a renaissance of thought and deed, then we must cast the stones at our makers.

John Holt, the unschooling revolution, Sandra Dodd, www.lifelearning.com, the homeschoolers around you. There are reasons for defying the status quo. Be one of them.

[dadw5boys]

If Americans want better Educated Citizens they had better take a good look at colleges.
If High Schools would add 10 more reseach papers which they would have to present in class (Public Speaking class covered!), two humanites classes (1st greek and roman art then all wars), a few business finance classes( including how the Federal Reserve works) and a couple of philosophy classes (one dedicated to ethics) kids could graduate with a Bachlors Degrees. They then could go into college for Masters degrees.
Colleges want to force everyone to take a lot of courses few will ever use like WEB PAGE programing. You can buy the software and it will train you.
That would cut college time from 4 years to 3 for a master degree.

[jeskiley]

And colleges force you to juggle so many subjects, you can't really dive into one if you want to. It's all just to get the grade.

[kellygrrrl]

I think that a great many Americans are releasing themselves from the ties to religiosity.

Christianity has been hijacked, corrupted and perverted.

All of the violence associated with Extremists of all faiths is becoming undeniable.

it just makes sense to so many.

"Knowledge is Power.
Faith is Blind."

[jeskiley]

Actually, the more educated I get, the more religious I become. It's my responsibility.

[snaggster]

I think religion IS the problem. Religion is the reason that King George W is where he is. This does not mean that I believe he's religious. I don't. Bushco has simply used religion to trick just enough people into voting R. Churches have been "pretty darn quiet" about a whole host of government actions that they should be pretty darn vocal about. Can't afford to offend the flock of sheep. They might dump their donations at another church that tells them what they want to hear.