The Aims of Education

George Madden
Education, MSU-Billings

It is not the best of books. It is not the worst of books. It is a good book and comforting in its stately affirmation of the continuing vitality of liberal education. This is especially welcome for the faculty of the Montana University System, who in the last few years have been told over and over that great technological changes are about to sweep away the traditional classroom and with it the traditional role of the professor. The Aims of Education reaffirms that at this prestigious institution, The University of Chicago, a liberal education is still considered the true education.

The College of the University of Chicago offers the Common Core sequences taken during the first two years of the university experience. Some thirty years ago, the College began a tradition in which a senior faculty greets the incoming freshman each fall with an address on "The Aims of Education." The title is taken from Alfred North Whitehead's lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1912. This book consists of twelve of these addresses and an introduction by John Boyer, the Dean of the College. From the introduction we learn

Our book's intended readership, like the very subject of the book itself, is open-ended. Whether the book is read by students and alumni of our own college and University, or by friends of the University of Chicago around the country, we hope that by engaging the reflections of our colleagues about the perennial issue of the value of liberal learning the reader will be encouraged to reflect on her or his own understanding of the aims of education. This is a time in the history of American society when the ultimate purposes of universities have never been more severely questioned, and when the value of liberal education has never been more seriously challenged, when the dogged pressure of vocationalism on the one hand and the hazardous luxury of curricular incoherence on the other jeopardize the possibilities of and the conditions for liberal learning. At such a time it is vital that we be willing to debate candidly and openly the purposes and the meaning of liberal education. (6)

It is not clear why these particular addresses, about one-third of the total, were chosen for inclusion. If there were some reason it would be well if the reader were alerted to it. We are told in the introduction that the invited faculty member each fall is given little guidance and left to his own devices within the very broad scope of the Aims program.

The dates of the addresses span the years from 1963 to 1995. Curiously, the contributions are arranged alphabetically by author rather than chronologically, which might have helped the reader see the progression in the series and would have made clearer the relevance of liberal education to the times.

A feel for the substance and tone of the addresses may be gained from a few samples.

Karl Weintraub, an historian whose address was the second in the series (1963) but comes last in the book, offers some delightful insights:

I cannot offer you joy of discovery. The wise things about education have been said before. You can find wisdom in Plato's dialogues about Socrates, still the patron saint of education, and equally in Cicero's De Officiis, the writings of Erasmus, Montaigne, Comenius, Rousseau, Whilhelm von Humbolt, Cardinal Newman, or in the friendly-voice of Alfred Whitehead and in the not-so-friendly voice of Robert Maynard Hutchin. (273)
* * *

On one level...education can give you little else than the opportunity to develop what you already possess. The education, which disciplines for the adventure of life, is of that nature. It takes serious the paradox stated by Pindar: "Become what you are!" Under this motto, we teachers merely seek to aid the development of your potential. We cannot give sight to the blind. But we have techniques for sharpening the eyes you have. The magic of sound and touch cannot be given to the totally insensitive. But what senses you possess can be made more sensitive. The powers of intellect and judgment cannot be handed over to you. But you can significantly augment the rudiments you possess. (275)

Any educational program worth its cost to you and society must seek to inculcate a responsibility for your culture. Aside from it being an utterly foolish thing to do, you simply do not have the right to neglect the work of your forefathers. Past generations have a valid right to be heard and respected. Without the support they lend to your life, you would simply fall back into the most primitive state. As a historian, I frankly would not care to teach at an institution which denigrates the task of making you responsible members of your culture. (278)

We often assume that our own classics provide a shared communal base for all educated members of our culture, but this assumption is unfounded: we do not know our own classics. If, however, we are willing to admit that we do not know them, we may make it possible for ourselves to possess a whole new series of classics, other people's classics. (37)

When commenting on the sorry state of students in the sixties, Weintraub makes comments much like some of those that have appeared in recent pages of The Montana Professor and elsewhere about students of the nineties:

In spite of these wondrous advantages of our civilization, it also presents temptations which can easily ruin education. In our days the puerile mind is on the loose, threatening all of us because we all possess it in some measure. Our very rich and complex civilization fosters the mentality of the young man who refuses to grow up, the spoiled brat. We claim a right to everything without wanting to pay the price.

Sure we want education, but please dress it up as play. We want wisdom, but give it to us in predigested capsule form. You say calculus is important? So teach me in three easy lessons. It would be nice to know French: But could you not do away with three years of study by putting it all on records which I can play while cooking dinner? For every real problem we desire an expert with a ready solution to make the nagging nuisance disappear. (281)

Leonard Krass (1981) includes as one of the aims of education combating the crassness of modern students:

Liberal education is more than general education. It is also more than aesthetic and cultural enrichment. Our tastes and sensibilities can certainly stand refinement: it should be one of your goals here to learn to recognize and to love the difference between what is noble and beautiful and what is vulgar and ugly. (86)

Richard Shweder (1993) while discussing Allan Bloom's famous book on the subject, makes this observation about the modern student:

College students, Bloom complained, have become so open-minded that they don't make moral judgments and feel embarrassed when others do. They have become so tolerant that they have lost their sense of taste. They are so enamored of the idea that beauty, goodness, and truth are in the eyes of the beholder that they have become blind to things of genuine worth. They ascribe no greater value to the dialogues of Socrates than to those of Beavis and Butthead. (193)

But this is not to say the faculty is hostile or even indifferent to the students. Geoffrey Stone (1995) in his final paragraph makes this clear:

President Edward Levi once noted that our faculty warmly welcomes our students "because students are where the future lies." It is in this spirit that we welcome you. We hope you will find in these halls the air that Hutchins said is "electric" and that you will take away from this place a stimulation that will last the rest of your experiments be filled with curiosity, boldness, and courage. (257)

As a commemoration of a University of Chicago tradition the book will doubtless be successful with those involved with the University but it is not a source of new insights on the Liberal Arts. But then it didn't pretend to be. After all, the addresses were given to freshmen.

But there is value in this book for those of us with a commitment to a liberal arts education but with no particular ties to the University of Chicago for the addresses remind us of who we are and why we remain committed to this sort of education. It was Alfred North Whitehead who held that the first stage of learning is a romantic stage where the student with the assistance of the teacher literally falls in love with the subject and with learning. These addresses reveal a group of scholars, eminent senior faculty from a variety of specialties, who have this sense of romance and are willing to share it with a new group of freshmen each year. They invite the uninitiated into a life of the mind, which in the end is all that much matters in this world. And in reminding us of this great truth perhaps they will help us stiffen our backs as we engage those among us who would reduce education to grubby vocationalism and those who would replace the romance of education with a soulless electronic dog and pony show.