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A Crisis of Ends: University Education as Formative Reading
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
Beginning with Mark C. Taylor's Crisis on Campus, and its critique of the structure and delivery of contemporary higher education, this essay argues that if there is a crisis in education, it is not technical, not reducible to the delivery of education. If there is a crisis, it lies in the contemporary world's misunderstanding of the goals or ends of the university. Borrowing Antonin's Sertillanges’ account of reading from the Intellectual Life, the essay concludes by suggesting that the goal of university education is formation of the mind, not mastery, edification, of entertainment.
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References
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2 See, for example, Haskins, Charles Homer, The Rise of Universities [1923] (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1957)Google Scholar. One of the great virtues of Haskins’ study of the medieval origins of the university is its ability to show the modern reader how the medieval university is at once drastically different from our own and surprisingly similar. Haskins points to this duality when he writes, “the Middle Ages are very far away, farther from us in some respects than is classical antiquity, and it is very hard to realize that men and women, then and now, are after all much the same human beings” (p. 93). Hard though it may be, it is worth our while to remember that universities have educated and always will educate human beings. Historical variations are not insignificant, but they also ought not to obscure the fact that there is something universal underlying university education, namely, human nature.
3 Taylor, Mark C., Crisis on Campus: a Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities (New York: Knopf, 2010), pp. 3-4.Google Scholar
4 See Taylor, Crisis on Campus, pp. 48-67. For a similar complaint, see Angus, Ian, Love the Questions: University Education and the Enlightenment (Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2009)Google Scholar. The basic model critics like Taylor and Angus have in mind is Kant's. See Kant, Immanuel, “the Contest of Faculties,” in Reiss, H.S., ed., Kant: Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 176-190Google Scholar.
5 Taylor, Crisis on Campus, pp. 8-9.
6 Taylor, Crisis on Campus, p. 10.
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11 Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, p. 10. By “aristocratic leisure”, Maritain seems to mean something like laziness, not leisure in the traditional sense. All humans are made for leisure, for skolē, for study.
12 Hutchins, John Maynard, the Higher Learning in America [1936] (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 1995), p. 66Google Scholar.
13 Nothing would be gained from citing all or even most of these books here. Some of the works from which I have drawn most include Côté, James E. and Allahar, Anton L., Lowering Higher Education: the Rise of Corporate Universities and the Fall of Liberal Education (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Donoghue, Frank, the Last Professors: the Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008)Google Scholar, Fish, Stanley, Save the World on Your Time (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Kronman, Arthur, Education's End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007)Google Scholar, and Nussbaum, Martha, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010)Google Scholar.
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17 I count on the plausibility of the metaphor, not on a demonstration of its usefulness. The latter would move me too far afield. For a detailed discussion of education as interpretation see Gallagher, Shaun, Hermeneutics and Education (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992)Google Scholar.
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19 Pieper, Leisure: the Basis of Culture, p. 46.
20 Sertillanges, the Intellectual Life, p. 154.
21 Sertillanges, the Intellectual Life, pp. 156-157.
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23 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 10.4, 1175b 23-1176a 29.
24 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 10.7-8, 1177a 11-1179a 32.
25 No contemporary philosopher has done better than James Schall in stressing and defending the pleasures of learning and the playfulness of study, especially philosophical study. See for instance Schall, James, Another Sort of Learning (San Fransico: Ignatius Press, 1988)Google Scholar, the Life of the Mind (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2006)Google Scholar and on the Unseriousness of Human Affairs (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2012)Google Scholar.
26 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1.7, 1098a 18.
27 Unless secular universities are governed by a hidden dogma, maybe something like secular relativism or radical pluralism, most universities simply cannot adhere to a singular moral vision. Moreover, as relativistic as university programs and courses can be, it would be an exaggeration to conclude that universities are just relativistic; after all, the non- and anti-relativists have not all been fired yet – thankfully.
28 Plato recognized this. According to Socrates in Book 7 of the Republic, the study of mathematics, when students and teachers are unconcerned with practical application, is a necessary precursor to the apprehension of the Good, but is on its own insufficient for moral improvement. Without subsequent dialectical study of moral categories, mathematical thinking will serve no ultimate moral or theological end. See Plato, Republic, translated by Joe Sachs (Newburyport: Focus Publishing, 2007), 522c-541b.
29 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 6.5, 1140b 4-5.
30 Plato, Republic, 514a-518e.
31 I will leave Aristotle, Aquinas, and Pieper out of this second question, not only because their writings might be mostly correct, but because their books are some of the best objects for formative reading. A university that devoted significant time to the study of their texts would likely do very well. Unfortunately, with the exception of Aristotle's brief appearances in ethics, metaphysics and ancient philosophy courses, it is rare for students to meet these great thinkers, let alone on their own terms.
32 Sertillanges, the Intellectual Life, pp. 152-153.