A Market Correction in the Humanities—What Are You Going to Do with That? — Leigh Claire La Berge

The GI Bill marked a pivotal moment in higher education. But such a bill should be seen as more broadly reflective of the country’s Keynesian moment: roughly, the late 1940s through the early 1970s, in which art, public culture, and, yes, education, were funded directly by both state and federal governments. In the 1950s and ’60s, as Sharon Zukin notes, public expenditure in arts through universities “opened art as a second career for people who had not yet been integrated into the labor market” so much so that by the end of that decade “more than a million adults in America had identified their occupation as in some way connected with the creative arts.” [2]

Indeed, as millions more students and dollars entered colleges and universities, the number of colleges and universities increased. And as they expanded by population served and subject areas taught, universities became more radical places, particularly in relation to their own funding. Students in New York and Massachusetts began to demand wages for attending college — the “Wages for Students” campaign. From 1969 to 1975, after intense student and community protests and strikes, the City University of New York announced a program of “open admissions,” which included accessible and free remedial education, Spanish-language instruction, and a tuition-free university.

Of course, there were always dissenters from the Keynesian order, and they too laid their eyes on the expanding university. American neoliberal economists like Milton Friedman took note of this expansion. As Melinda Cooper laconically notes, they “began to suspect there was a connection between free and low tuition and the militancy of the student movement.” [3] The extension of their concerns into policy prescriptions — fewer grants, more loans — was aided by the coming contraction of the US economy. By the mid-1970s, the Keynesian curtain had begun to draw to a close. The reasons for its denouement were legion: the emerging productive output of a newly rebuilt Western Europe and Japan, the spending on and loss of the Vietnam War, the reaching of a limit of productive/consumptive capacity in many domestic industries, the rise of an offshore financial system and dollar market. By 1979, inflation topped out at 13 percent a year, and by the early ’80s this particular act was indeed over.…

Is the trend swinging so far in the direction of STEM, business & management, and trade school that the basis of liberal democracy is being threatened by insufficient appreciation of its intellectual roots and the debates from which it arose? Is culture based on consumerism becoming superficial? Is the digital age rendering classrooms, school buildings, libraries and campuses obsolescent? Are a new method, organon and curriculum needed to meet emergent opportunities and challenges?

In the big picture, "what's going" on can be summarized by being simplified into a binary model involving individual reproduction and social reproduction.

Individual reproduction normally takes care of itself through the attraction of the sexes, but presently reproduction rates are falling,  reversing a longstanding population trend. In some societies (nations) this is happening to the degree that some are becoming concerned about reproducing the society and culture,.

Social reproduction involves reproduction of the culture, which requires reproduction of the economy as the material life-support system of a society. This involves reproducing both capital, now chiefly technology, that depreciates over time and also labor, both physically (labor time) and with respect to capabilities (labor power).

In addition, the culture itself has to be reproduced to be maintained and improved to grow. This involves innovation.

Social reproduction involves transmitting knowledge and shill to the succeeding generations. This is based on "education" broadly speaking, from childhood upbringing to advanced higher eduction and lifelong learning.

Needs change from generation to generation as innovation results in adaptation to new conditions. In addition, changes in the mode of production lead to changes in era, in the broad sweep, from hinting-gathering, to agriculture, to industry and now toward digitization.

The need for knowledge and skill transmission changes according, although institutional change often lags change in conditions.

Are we at this point presently?

Los Angeles Review of Books
A Market Correction in the Humanities — What Are You Going to Do with That?
Leigh Claire La Berge | Associate Professor of English at BMCC CUNY

Sparky Abraham & Nathan J. Robinson — What Is Education For?

This article looks at Bryan Caplan's The Case Against Education critically. Caplan is a professor of economics at George Mason University. The economic school of thought with which he identifies is public choice, e.g, James Buchanan.

While I regard Caplan's solutions as questionable if not ridiculous, as does the author of the review, he does make a point. What is contemporary education really for? That does not seem to be clear as Caplan points out. He concludes therefore that education is worthless as it stands and needs revisiting. I agree with that. However, I regard Caplan's error as looking in the wrong direction owing to his ideological presumptions that operate as cognitive-affective bias.

The fact that the purpose of education is not clear from examining the current educational process in the US ( strongly suggests that it needs an overhaul. This is not surprising since the Western classroom model and curriculum now longer seems to fit. I agree with that.

This requires stepping back and revising the question of the purpose of education and the means for realizing that purpose optimally in the lives of learners.

That question is a foundational question in the philosophy of education, as subject that apparently the author of the article is unfamiliar with.

There are basically two types of educational philosophy — traditional and liberal.

The goal of the first is to inculcate a tradition. This type of education ends to be one-sided, as in religious education, or military school, or vocational education.

The goal of liberal education is to develop a well-rounded person capable of both creative and critical thinking, and of citizenship in a liberal society. The goal of liberal education is developing full potential as an individual and a human being in a society in which the fundamental question is what it means to live a good life in a good society, and how to implement this in one's life and one's society. There are many possible answers and liberal education explores them.

Philosophy is the basis of liberal education, in that philosophy is concerned chiefly with critical thinking. The method is understanding of logic and the principles of critical thinking by applying them to the great thinkers of the past that were foundation in shaping history and culture.

Liberalism has now become a tradition in the West, where it emerged in ancient Greece, and over time in some other parts of the world. The challenge, therefore, is to present liberal education as open, innovative, synergetic and adaptable instead of a one-sided tradition.

The author of the article confused education with the subjects taught and their practical application. The etymology, of the term "education, which means to lead from" in Latin, shows that education is about learning and not teaching. A major aspect of this learning is self-discovery, self-creation, and self-actualization. This cannot be put in but must be drawn out.

The criticism offered of the author's analysis and proposals is also off target in presuming that education is about doing and learning to do.

The solution offered at the close, which is not explained or elaborated is, "What is education for? It’s for becoming a person, not a worker." That is correct in my view but it needs explanation.

Education should be chiefly about being, then doing as a result and finally having based on what one has accomplished. However, the end it view is not chiefly about career success or material accumulation. It is about being a person of excellence" as Aristotle observed in Nichomachean Ethics.

First comes personhood. Second comes expression of that personhood in an individually unique way. Third comes receiving the feedback of this expression from the objectification of one's action in world, which concretizes the abstract.

Aristotle argued that all agents act for some end that that end is regarded as some good, a good being that which increases happiness. He then looks at the various proposals based different assumptions and finds them wanting. He argues that happiness is a by-product of living a good life in accordance with excellence (Greek arete).

This requires education based chiefly on being rather than doing or having. That is the goal of liberal education as conceived classically and which has been largely forgotten in the stampede for fame, fortune, power and pleasure.

While may seem non-specific, it is for an important reason. Each individual is unique and should be approached as such. Specificity need to be designed for individuals instead of a one-size-fits-all approach being applied indiscriminately.

There is no problem in combining liberal and traditional in the liberal paradigm in that liberalism is central to the Western intellectual tradition, having been initially explored in ancient Athens, which was a direct democracy of male citizens, at least of sorts. Western liberalism was eclipsed for a long while by traditionalism when the West was dominated by Christendom, although it began to reemerge with the Protestant Revolution.

Liberalism did not really comes of age until the 18th century Enlightenment, however. Eventually,  in "modern times" liberalism came to embrace tolerance of different views and different traditions, while becoming a tradition itself, opposed to anything it viewed as single-side traditionalism. This led the paradox of liberalism as a single-sided tradition itself opposing other single-sided traditions.

In spite of some rigidity setting in to liberalism as a tradition, liberal education requires learning about different traditions objectively, which is a necessity in a liberal society, especially a global one, since a key purpose of liberal education is developing a culture in which "we can all get along" despite differences in views and culture.

Current Affairs
What Is Education For?
Sparky Abraham & Nathan J. Robinson