More excellent reading about education

In a comment to my post last night about the value of higher education, fellow blogger Dad29 pointed me to an article on the subject by Russell Kirk. It was published as long ago as 1945, while its author was serving in the US armed forces during World War II, but it's as timely and powerful in its observations today as it doubtless was then. It was recently republished in two parts by The Imaginative Conservative. Here's an excerpt from the second part.

We have long been tending to reduce our educational problem to the lowest common denominator. In our anxiety to make equal those whom God created unequal, we have been as industrious, although not as successful, as was Colonel Colt. We have tried to explain the learning of the ages in terms comprehensible to the dullest little boy from the East Side; that little boy is unable to understand Homer; so Homer is not taught. A prejudice has arisen against brilliant teachers deserving the satire of Swift; a teacher, it is said, must not rise above the level of his pupils, or they will not understand him; therefore a teacher must be found as dull as the dull little boy. Now all this is most generous toward the dull little boy; but too often he is not sufficiently appreciative, and remains dull as ever, while his classmates, out of boredom, descend to his level. It does no harm for a teacher to lecture in a tone somewhat lofty for his average pupil; the dull student gains something, the average student is stirred to curiosity, and the intelligent student is pleased. This soldier never learned anything from men who came down to his level; admiration of knowledge, followed by emulation, is more effective. We talk of education for leadership; but actually we educate for mediocrity. It is better to increase the knowledge of one average boy by ten degrees than to increase that of two dull boys by one degree.

Our second curse, the popular acclaim of “practical” knowledge, of technical skills, the training of young people to minister to our comforts, is harmful not so much per se as it is incidentally; it occupies precious hours that once were given to literature, languages, and the story of the past. All our material progress has not enabled us to increase the number of hours in a day, or the number of years in a boy's youth; and if he is learning arc welding, he is not likely to read Milton. Some boys, of course, never could read Milton with profit; but not enough of those who could are given the opportunity. They are occupied building clumsy bookcases, and the girls are baking soggy cakes, during the period when the old rhetoric hour used to come round. It is well that some men be able to build bookcases, and that most women be able to bake cakes; but they once learned these useful skills without going to a big brick building in the center of town. For manual and domestic acquirements, apprenticeship and practical experience still are the schools of greatest worth; and were we to lock our school shop and kitchen doors tomorrow, we should still have bookcases and cakes. Since it is popular to level shafts at the industrialist, this soldier shoots one more bolt: much of this vocational training is simply a subsidy to management, for public money provides for experience the industrialist otherwise would furnish in his factory.

Technical and manual skills are necessary; but they can be taught elsewhere than in public schools, and, so far as practical mastery is concerned, already are taught elsewhere. The enlightenment of minds should take priority. Constitutional history and woodcarving cannot be taught simultaneously to the same boy in the same classroom; and of the two, America and the boy are more in need of constitutional history.

There's more at the two links. Highly recommended reading. Thanks, Dad29 - and thanks also to The Imaginative Conservative for republishing so thought-provoking an article.

(As an aside, something I find very hopeful is that in this discussion, I referenced yesterday an article from a progressive source, and today this one from an unimpeachably conservative author. Since both would agree on many of the problems confronting higher education, perhaps there's hope for dialog yet!)

Peter