A Sad Farewell to Academia... (Part 02)

(This piece of writing was inspired by ideas taken from Mark Edmundon's essays and the book "Why Read?" and also from Anthony T. Kronman "Education's End: How Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life." This piece of writing in no way represents personal sentiments or allegories to any story related to anyone alive, dead or yet to be born. This is a simple exercise problematizing the condition of the Humanities and the present world conditions of globalization and economic upheaval).

The teaching part of his obligations brought him the most pleasure. In the fall of 1956, finding himself in a world completely devoted to the humanities and to the exploration of the Great Ideas, he felt a little too lucky, guilty in some strange and disturbing way. Yes, most of the answers came to him as a student; now he must make sure to pass them along to the young, fresh minds entrusted to him. Within a few years he had moved along to teaching the upperclassmen courses. He convinced the department head and designed a course on Kant's "The Critique of Pure Reason," a book that represented to him the most pure conception of philosophy. And thus, he taught that course practically every year (with the exception of 1986, 1990-91) and found a footing in the peer-review publishing process with his expertise of Kant's masterpiece. Between the late 1950s and the early 1960s, he taught with his entire heart and soul into his endeavours. The beginning of each term was a magical time for him, and the restlessness each first day offered him was like a brand new ecstasy.... the new lists of students, the expectation of wanting to know how each of his lectures would be received. He worked hard at preparing the best materials for his lectures, and read and re-read the Great Classics in the hopes that every year there would be something new to offer to his students.

As for his time outside the classroom, he devoted his time to office hours and conferences with students (along with mentoring the college's debate team). His entire life was his work, but he never considered the work as work--there was a heightened and rapturous meaning to his life which he could never put down in writing, or express verbally. Year in and year out... all he did was live for the Great Ideas, for his students, and the College.

Of course there were many difficult times along the way. He saw how the country imploded within itself; how changes in morality influenced people's cynicism rather than help them think critically about their actions. For all of this, the late 1960s were a catastrophe as far as he was concerned. True, the Civil Rights Movement had made momentous advances towards the equal treatment of all people, but he also knew how politicians and activists alike also manipulated the language and meaning to fit their agendas. This he would think of not as a cynic, but as a rational and logical being. The late 1960s were also a time for him to go back to the basics. For as many illogical and borderline ridiculous there are in Plato's Dialogues concerning the State, he could pick accordingly those ideas that transcended time; ideas universal enough to help him make sense of the "Age of Aquarius." What he had to re-learn (and he did this the hard way) was the power of the people to speak, to voice opinions and dictate the course of government. He never had a problem with this in principle, but what he saw in the late 1960s was a revolution without an aim, a flautist without a flute. The public demonstrations did achieve much, but he felt that compared with what the students could achieve by other means, the chants and the rallies seem devoid of meaning. He lectured on the virtues of citizenship, and had to struggle against the student revolutionaries which constantly interrupted him accusing him of teaching only bourgeoisie studies rather than the proletariat ideas that were needed in the world. And he did try to engage those students revolutionaries in a healthy discussion, but logical reasoning and empiricism had no place in their argument. He was patient, kind, compassionate, but still he could not get through to them. Perhaps Bob Dylan said it best when he sang about the times changing. That much he had to admit to. The fact that his students had become so blind to their own interest and self-satisfaction in their activism to ignore how Plato and even Aristotle was applicable to what was going on in the nation as a whole cemented the idea for him that most students were doing what they were doing without fully understanding the meaning behind their actions. All the hedonism going around on campus also bothered him, but he truly felt helpless to influence his students toward a different direction.

Between the 1970s and 1980s, he dedicated himself to his teaching again without being too obsessed with the idea of what was going on in the world. Both Vietnam and Nixon were now part of the past, and what he most wanted was to look forward to every semester with the same love of learning that had carried him since coming back from the war. He did not differentiate between his personal life and his academic life, and, as a result, his emotional health suffered greatly. Without intending to, he had become the old bachelor scholar, set in his way, irreparable in some things, more than willing to adapt to others, etc. But his teaching continued to grow, as each generation brought into the classroom more and more demands for answers; answers that only true philosophy, in its most pure state, could bring to them. There was a thirst, he decided, for the Great Ideas, and generally students cooperated by bringing into the classroom a healthy dose of debate and even contradiction. His goal was more of facilitator rather than plain lecturer. What he wanted the most was to keep the students' interest alive, to contribute to their own thinking process. Most especially, the course on Immanuel Kant offered him the most material to work with in this respect. Kant's "Categorical Imperative" provided the best (in his opinion) base to depart from, a premise not unlike a first word, a given truth from which all other discoveries in the classroom could emerge. Of course, his long years of experience now could help him understand that the young mind is quickly given to generalities and relativist ideas, and his task was to show, not tell, how seeking a deeper understanding could transform the lives of his students. Glorious was a word he usually mused with in his mind after every single classroom discussion. But little did he know the world was about to change, and he would be out of place even in the place he loved the most: his classroom.

During the 1990s, he contemplated retirement but held fast to the idea that retirement was an alien word to him, not a possibility but a redundant proposition. He had no idea of what to do other than teach--he was a teacher, and the classroom was the only place for him. Despite his age he was still very energetic and active. For the most part, students' evaluations were generous and full of praise, but the negative ones were increasing year by year. What touched him the most was the students' who went out of their way to explain that it was not him personally, but that the ideas and the core of the courses was too dated, not applicable anymore, not useful outside the classroom, or even in daily life. The progress of the decade began to take shape and technology's relentless race had led the entire world to the "Information Super-Highway." To him this was a ridiculous proposition. We have had "information super-highways" since antiquity... they are called libraries. He never considered himself a Luddite, proposing that education was best done only with books and notebooks, but the over technologization of the world in such a short period of time worried him greatly. This was not because he was beginning to see how "dated" his work was, but because no one (it appeared to him) was studying or taking account of how technology was changing every one's behavior and interests. This worried him the most because he considered it too close to indoctrination.

He faced the fact with dignity and even alacrity. Change was happening too fast for him to understand it, but it seemed his students did, and that's all that mattered to him. Teaching changed over the last few years faster than it ever had before. Long gone were the days of full or even over-flowing classes. Nowadays, students in courses highly technologized could listen or even few their courses online from their dorm rooms. There were always, of course, hard working and dedicated students, idealists in the best definition of the word, that loved philosophy, literature, art and the Great Ideas with a purity he remembered from his own early days. With those students he was generous beyond compare, but even that could not stop the course of events, events that happened now at the speed of light. More and more, his courses were cancelled due to lack of enrollment. The few students who continued a set interest in philosophy began to visit him first in his office, and then later at his own home. They were still in love with the Great Ideas. They still wanted to explore their own minds in a way technology could not satisfy. And so he began to welcome students into his home, where between pastries and tea, and Beethoven playing smoothly in the background, the best philosophy teaching he had ever done took place.

A Sad Farewell to Academia... (Part 01)

He came of age during the Great Depression, a mere "child" of 17. The following decade, he fought in Patton's 3rd Army and crossed the Rhine river under intense small fire arms and a barrage of heavy artillery that would make Hercules run away. Yes, this is the story of one of those many men who courageously saved this country from fascism and God knows what other evils the rhetoric of politics (now and then) wishes to ascribe to amazing feat of arms. He was an ordinary soldier of low rank. He blended in with the rest of the thousands of men. Of course, he knew his Chain of Command well, and respected it to his utmost sense of duty. He stood by General Patton during the controversy that threatened to undo the great General's accomplishments. Suddenly, and in what appeared a flash of destiny, the war in Europe was over. He hadn't expected it, really, after that treacherous hike up the boot of Italy and the disastrous mistakes of the Allies in Sicily. But by then he had lost track of time, and, when peace finally came in Europe, and like so many other soldiers in his unit, he felt lost, disoriented, useless and tired.


The Japanese surrendered as well, and it seemed to him at the time (1945) that the world had perhaps learned its lesson. He made good use of his G.I. Bill and enrolled in NYU in 1946. His mind was an open receptacle--all of the questions the war seemed to have ingrained in his mind were now finding--one by one--the answers he so desperately sought. From an Introduction to Philosophy he learned the various definitions of Justice. From "Meno" whether it was possible or not to teach virtue. This appeared as the most interesting of arguments to him. He thought of the Germans and Italians soldiers whom he had fought against, "Were they virtuous men?" He assumed that they had mothers and fathers, and that the family values of the German, Italian, and Japanese traditions were no better or worst than those of Americans. What he discovered in that first semester of school was the beauty of philosophy, its adaptability to life and its timeless message. Literature and writing, of course, also caught his attention. He read voraciously and scored high marks on his compositions. During the course of the summers and seasons that followed he did nothing but read--Classics, contemporary novels, poetry, philosophy. He grew and grew humanistically, spiritually and, more importantly, as a human being. All of his "wounds" from a war that now appeared so far away in the timeline of his young life began to heal. He was a new man. He was happy. He was full of purpose and his mind was lit with the lamp of knowledge. What better career path than to become a teacher, a professor... to help contribute to young people what was given to him by his own professors, and to them by their ancestors, and in the great line of scholarship and humanity where we are all the same... yes, he wanted to be a part of that greatest endeavour.


Graduate school was a delightful time. The more he studied, the more he fell in love with life. His mind had never known more peace, more love and faith, more passion. The months passed in such a pleasurable way that it was difficult to measure time in terms of hours and minutes and days or even months. The days of his life were a straight line of ideas, writings, inspirations, music, art, museums, preparation for the life of a teacher/philosopher. He graduated from Princeton University with a Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1956 and was immediately hired to teach at R..... College, dead-smack center of the American Midwest.

An Unnecessary Rant about Education

My mood today is that of despair. Of course, I am not talking about despair generated by my students--those little lamps of bright light at the end of what is presently a very dark tunnel. What I am referring to is the generally accepted assumption that education reform works. Educators in general are simply telling each other what they want to hear. Educational reform has become a business and nothing more. Politicians call on privately owned companies to develop highly complex theories as to why children are not achieving standards. And that is precisely the problem. What does it mean to achieve a standard? It simply means that you can perform a task; simply put, it is little more than what trained monkeys do. SAT? ACT? Get on a cram program and you'll score higher/achieve more. The question being ignored, of course, is "Do you remember anything a week later?" "Did any of the material you studied touched you so deeply at a humanistic level that it literally transformed your life?" I don't have the answers to those questions, and I don't pretend to be the classroom cure for all the ills that plague the American education system. I am simply proposing that we need (and I mean desperately need) more people like Mark Edmundson and Anthony T. Kronman. Schools should be in the business of teaching virtue. If we can't teach to how become a better human being, how in God's name do we propose to teach better doctors, lawyers, engineers, entrepreneurs, librarian, teachers, bankers, or real estate agents?

If you believe we fight wars in order to bring freedom and democracy to other countries, I've got a bridge to sell you. American domination (and here I don't mean to go off on a political critique of the former or present American governmental administration) around the world is designed for the purposes of spreading capitalism. How was the first crack on the Iron Curtain measured? A McDonald's in the middle of Moscow! How will we measure success in Iraq or Afghanistan? Perhaps a Walmart, K-Mart or Target department store could be used as a strong indicator of where our efforts have taken us in that part of the world. We have taught the rest of the world the worship of success and the lack of virtue that is necessary to flaunt "your goods." So, turning the argument back to education... how do you secure that you will dominate the capitalist sphere of influence? You turn educational institutions into vocational schools. Never mind that the Great Ideas have been taught throughout millennia, if they don't yield capitalistic results, they are not necessary in a curriculum designed to produce sharper, quicker, hungrier, and perhaps even more criminally-minded business people. Shakespeare has nothing to teach Bernard Madoff; he probably never learned a single lesson from Plato's "Meno" dialogue. Again, those are not "the things that are necessary right now." Don't teach Jane Austen, Charles Dickens or Ernest Hemingway because the students can't identify with those novels. I am, however, appalled at how fast we give in to any book recommendation the head of Harpo Productions (Ms. Oprah, if you are not familiar) makes in her show. The publishers adore her taste in literature; authors jockey and elbow to have their books read by her. What people do not realize is that it is all a business, and those books being sold at alarming rates, and rocketed to the top of (yet another capitalist term) bestselling lists are not there because of the humanistic value of their content, but rather because some celebrity said "this book is very good." Again, I am not trying to convert anyone into socialism or, heaven forbid, communist ideas, but rather I am asking everyone to please examine if what is talking place today is not the triumph of capitalism/consumerism over academia and the great virtues of a humanistic education.

As an educator, I see every day how students devour any humanistic topic I bring up in class discussion. They really are "hungry" for the Big Questions. During a reading of "Crime and Punishment" this year, students did not want to move on to the next novel, they wanted to continue the discussion of Ubermensch and Will to Power and the Napoleonic ideas they so insightfully connected to present-day political and diplomatic issues plaguing the world. But "we don't need those..." what we need is more drill, drill, drill... better scores on standardized tests that will help the student get into a better university so she can "earn" a better degree and make a contribution to some large capitalist endeavour, without wasting a second to reflect on her value as a human being, a spiritually-driven individual whose concern should be to do good toward others. I believe that capitalism has finally triumphed over the last great stronghold that kept it at bay: the Academy.

I do have to apologize for some of my ideas. I didn't set out to write a scalding indictment against who (and what) we are as a country. I am, nevertheless, concerned, very concerned, mainly because I live this every day, and, little by little, I see how the small piece of influence I have over the young minds entrusted to me vanishes before my eyes. I am not saying that I want them to learn solely what I want to teach them. On the contrary, I want them to learn those things that transformed my life and the life of so many others before the world got too commercialized, technorized, capitalized, politicized. God help us all.

(Ps. My apologies for the earlier version... when I "said" rant, I meant it, and didn't stop to revise the many mistakes herein. Again, my apologies).

On Reading as Life-long Learning... Heathcliff Speaks.

A few years ago, my excitement about Mark Edmundson's book "Why Read" reached such a peak it nearly bordered on the manic. I felt that Edmundson's point was so clearly how I felt that I immediately began to preach his gospel. It basically states that we read to grow humanistically, to understand ourselves and our peers better. Simple enough as a premise, but to keep this constantly present is easier said than done. I have so say with much regret that I didn't enjoy reading "Wuthering Heights" much--or at least I didn't enjoy it until the lesson became clear to me. Heathcliff waits all the way to Chapter 33 to say:

"The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her."

I don't think I have ever taken a line from a character in a novel more serious than this one. It goes back to Edmundson's premise: "to learn about ourselves, to understand our humanity." Heathcliff speaks of that incomparable sense of loss we've all experienced at one time or another (some of us more than others). The reader knows, I believe, that once he/she comes across a line like this one, the enlightenment is quite unavoidable. One must really not be paying attention to miss such a thing. Again, I confess this was not a book I absolutely adored or enjoyed, but felt an irresistible sense of duty to finish it regardless of its shortcomings. I am glad I waited--glad that in the penultimate chapter, finally, as the pages evaporated in front of me, Heathcliff spoke.

I am reading a series of lighter books about the writing process as the decompression from "Wuthering Heights" continues. Natalie Goldberg's books all seem to preach the same premise. I often see her as a hippy, out there on her own little world (Zen, and peace and love and puppies), and I wonder how people can embrace that lifestyle. They are far healthier for it, too. I don't think I've ever been one of those "organic, do-it-yourself, granola eating, greenie" type and now I am wondering why I never embraced that way of life. It really does seem a heck of a lot easier living than what I am doing. I am not trying to trivialize it; I really mean this in a good way.

We had two snow days this week (Tuesday and Wednesday) and I finally caught up with my sleep. This, of course, at the expense of other things like writing and running, but what the heck, I just needed it. Teaching is good and writing is good... and the weekend is here.

"Book by Book" by Michael Dirda "Why Read?"

As I said before, I think I read all of these books about people obsessed with books because I feel I need to "justify" (not sure if that's the right word) to myself that I am not the only crazy one; that there are more like me out there. It is, I believe as Dirda has stated in his other books, a dying art. People seem to be losing their interest in reading as a whole. I recommend highly a book I read two years ago entitled "Why Read?" by Mark Edmundson. He begins with a simple enough premise, something he observes as "the recent identity crisis in the humanities," that "reading can change your life for the better." We have become so consumerized that the art of reading for personal growth and edification has been relegated to an obsolete function of human necessity. Edmundson sticks to "the best that's been thought and said," which I am sure would offend some of the liberal revisionists out there, and perhaps this is why this book didn't get much press. At any rate, it is what it is and we cannot cover the sky with our hands... liberal thought (which makes nearly everything in western intellectual history offensive to some political/sexual identity/ethnic or racial group) has created a problem... the proverbial elephant sitting the middle of the library. We all see him there, but pretend not to notice, lest we offend some political-correctness credo. At any rate, it is not my intention to rant. I would like to make the disclaimer that I do "bash" both conservatives and liberals alike. I stick to the William James' way of absorbing and digesting information: pragmatism.

Where does this leave me? Ah, yes... Dirda. Dirda is clear of any liberal or conservative interpretation and that is why I like him so much. He doesn't take an analytical stance based on political-correctness, nor does he goes out of his way to interpret in the "old-dead-white-male" way. Although "Book by Book" is not ranking among my favorites by him, it is nonetheless a great source of "I-am-not-as-crazy-as-I-thought" material.