Make Way for Trendy Theory

Conservatives
(such as me) agree with many
libertarians in not thinking much of the way the humanities are often (although
not always) taught in our country.  Respect for texts is replaced by trendy
theory; the open-mindedness of philosophy is replaced by strident ideology;
disciplined reflection is replaced by angry activis; the guidance of tradition
is replaced by the relentless liberation from oppression. And there’s more: the
search for God and the good are replaced by dogmatic relativism; scientific
inquiry (and an appreciation of its limits in grasping the whole truth about
who we are) is replaced by scientism (or a proper appreciation of scientific
truth is replaced by blather about Western logocentrism); and human dignity is
replaced by the class-based struggle for self-esteem and power of identity
politics.  To the extent that liberal
education becomes captured by a conventionally liberal or “radical” political
agenda it becomes vulnerable, with good reason, to criticism by those who have
a different, but not necessarily less reasonable or “liberal” in the precise
sense, political agenda.

Having
said all that, it remains the case that when we conservatives read about
libertarian think-tanks that are concerned with the affordability and productivity
of higher education, we fear that those two concerns are their only educational goals.  Republican governors in southern states, such
as Texas, are all focused on delivering students degrees at the lowest possible
cost.  And they want to apportion
education resources according to the single standard of salaries offered to
graduates, aiming to starve not only “gender studies” but philosophy majors and
professors.  For some of our most
libertarian governors, the disruptive thought is that our colleges should
become discount job-training centers. 
That means, of course, most of the requisite skills and competencies can
be more efficiently acquired online.  And
the “conversational” and bookish romance of liberal education does little more
than support unproductive illusions that generate an inefficient use of
resources.  Those self-indulgent
illusions, our libertarians believe, are a main cause of the outrageously
unsustainable higher-education “bubble.”

What Tocqueville Saw

From
the perspective of us conservatives, the exclusively middle-class perspective
that generates too single-minded a concern with affordability and productivity
is hostile to genuinely higher education as such.  We conservatives, of course, are especially
moved by Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy
in America, the best book ever written on democracy and the best book ever
written on America.  Tocqueville observed
that America is a pretty much exclusively middle-class country, and that
“middling” orientation affects every feature of American lives.  One result, he claims, is that he couldn’t
find any higher education in America.

The
good news about being middle-class, of course, is that everyone is free.  Nobody is compelled to work for someone
else.  The bad news is that everyone has
to work for himself; nobody is given the aristocratic leisure that comes
through relying on the work of others. 
The most unfriendly way of putting this is that the Americans are free
like aristocrats to work like slaves. Another way of putting it is that
everyone is a being with interests.  Nobody is above and nobody is below pursuing
his or her self-interest rightly understood.

That
means that everyone is interested in education to secure the skills and
competencies required to flourish in the competitive world of work.  So, Tocqueville marveled, literacy is more or
less universal in America.  And we
conservatives don’t deny for a moment the justice of this practical
orientation; everyone really does have the personal responsibility to work
effectively to secure himself and his (or her) family.  So we agree with the libertarians that we
should be concerned when our educational system fails to help people acquire
the skills they need to find a productive place in the competitive marketplace
that is a free economy.

But,
for Tocqueville, that middle-class vocational
education shouldn’t be confused with higher
education.  Higher education is for
those who are more than beings with interests. 
It is for those who are restlessly impelled to know the truth about who
we are and what we’re supposed to do as beings with souls.  So for us conservatives the big downside of
democracy is, as Tocqueville says, metaphysics and theology–and art,
literature, and theoretical physics–lose ground to the pervasive
techno-orientation of democratic life. 
Our problem with democratic education and democratic language is that
understand us as less than they really are.

What Doesn’t Hold Up Today

When I
teach Tocqueville, I ask students what parts of his descriptions of American
life just don’t hold up that well today. 
They point, of course, to his praise of the exemplary chastity of the
American woman, as well as the close American connection between love and the
almost unbreakable bond of marriage. 
They also say that he was very wrong on the absence of higher education
in America.  Look at how many of our
young people are in college today!  But
it not so hard for me to point out that what we call college Tocqueville would
call training in the competencies required to flourish in the middle-class
world of work.  I can even add that what
there is of liberal or higher education is in America is withering away.  Look at what’s happened to our “general
education” programs!  The number of
students choosing “traditional” majors in the arts and sciences continues to
drop steadily.  Also dropping steadily is
the number of residential colleges proudly displaying the “liberal arts
brand.”  And some of those who are
keeping the “brand” (or the brochure and website) are dispensing with the
liberal arts substance.

So it’s
actually easy to convince students that most of what goes on in our colleges
and universities isn’t higher education. 
If it’s about textbooks, PowerPoint, online this or that, MOOCs, multiple-choice
texts, and assessable competencies, it isn’t higher education.  And we think that our libertarians, in their
laudable efforts to secure the skills and competencies against political
correctness and ideological self-indulgence, are ready to scuttle properly
higher education as luxury we just can’t afford anymore.  Even worse, they sometimes suggest that
philosophy, literature, theology and so forth are just preferences or hobbies that students shouldn’t be scammed into
paying big bucks for.

Too Vocational or Not Vocational Enough?

So we
conservatives think of the countercultural agenda of higher education as an
indispensable correction to the reductionist excesses that accompany thinking
of ourselves as too exclusively a middle-class people.  Countercultural doesn’t mean, of course, some
variant of Sixties’ self-indulgence.  It
means, among other things, orthodox theology and Socratic philosophy.  It has to do with kinds of disciplines that
you can’t pick up “on the street” in a free and democratic country.  A worthwhile human life, it’s true, is rarely
complete without the satisfactions of meaningful and productive work.  But it’s also true, as Allan Bloom reminded
us, that each is meant to be more than a clever, competent specialist.  To be human, to live “in the truth” about who
we are and what we’re supposed to do, is most of all to live well, to live
responsibly in love and with death.

So one
obvious difference between conservative
and libertarian descriptions of our
colleges is that we conservatives say they’ve become too vocational or too exclusively middle class.  But the libertarians say that they’re not vocational enough.  There’s truth to both criticisms.  Too much of what goes on is neither
vocational education nor higher education. 
We could dwell here over gender studies and various other “studies”
majors.  And I’ve already mentioned the
various trendy and self-indulgent innovations throughout the social sciences
and humanities.  I could even add how
worthless the business major has become–not enough math and careful writing and
too much pseudo-psychology and “working in teams”–as a way of preparing for
being an entrepreneur or a corporate leader. 
Don’t get me started on “service learning” and “civic engagement” as
ways of giving college credit for being charitable or being an indignant
activist.

Having
said all that, we conservatives still say, on balance, that the middle-class,
“vocational” impetus is stronger than ever and stronger than it need be. And so
we defend genuinely liberal or higher education as having a place–even if not
the dominant place–in our colleges.